Skytech Blaze Gaming PC
Thanks to the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor plus ample 32GB DDR5 RAM, the Skytech blaze PC is a formidable contender in the high performance category of best PCs this year. Its 2TB SSD storage capacity is excellent for not only storing all on-device games and other large files but also for the rapid transfer of files. The NVIDIA GeForce 4070 Ti Super 16GB GDDR6X graphics card means it can deliver stunning visuals without a glitch.
Razer Blade 16 Gaming Laptop
The Razer Blade 16 is one of the best laptops with the best CPUs. It features a powerful Intel Core i9-14900HX, a 14th-generation processor with 24 cores and a maximum clock speed of 5.8GHz.In addition to its robust, blazing-fast processor, the laptop has the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card for 30 percent more graphics per cubic inch than other gaming laptops.
The debate between a gaming PC, specificallya gaming desktop, anda gaming laptophas existed for decades now and is more popular than ever before since laptops have come so far. Several years back, laptops were limited in their capabilities due to their hardware, which made most gamers go for the desktop, but things have drastically changed due to laptops now being equipped with desktop-equivalent parts.
Still, the debate continues between the two, as one is portable while the other is not. The cost, peripheral access, ease of usage, and immersion also remain debatable, despite both desktops and laptops being more versatile than ever before. If you have a particular budget and are not able to make up your mind about whether you should go for the gaming desktop or laptop, this comparison guide will help you decide between the two in just a couple of minutes.
Specifications: Gaming PC vs Gaming Laptop
Before delving into various aspects, let’s discuss what makes each of them special with regard to their specifications. Note that we aren’t considering any particular models of gaming desktops or laptops to compare their specifications, but rather, we will look at how each of them differs in their configuration.
Gaming PC or Desktop
Gaming PCs use individual components that are detachable from the motherboard. A gaming PC has technically six or seven components in total that are interconnected via the motherboard directly or indirectly based on how it needs to be powered through the power supply. These components include a CPU, RAM, motherboard, storage drive, graphics card, power supply, and CPU cooler.
Some gaming PCs utilize an APUor Accelerated Processing Unit, which brings both the CPU and GPU onboard. On APU-based gaming PCs, you may or may not require a graphics card depending on your requirements, but commonly, gaming PCs that are aimed at providing higher frame rates on high visual quality tend touse a dedicated GPU.
One of the biggest merits of a gaming PC is to be able to install or uninstall any part without having to pick up any soldering iron or open a chassis that is secured with dozens of screws. Installing or uninstalling a GPU takes a couple of minutes and so does the wiring process. This is why gaming PCs are considered highly versatile in their assembly; each component has a specific interface on the motherboard, easily identifiable via the slot structure.
PC manufacturers, therefore, are free to create components of any caliber, keeping in mind that the interface is universal for a particular slot. For instance,Intel’s whole 12th, 13th, and 14th gen CPUlineup is ready to fit an LGA 1700 socket, and despite how big or small the motherboard is, or whether it boasts an unlocked or a locked chipset, every CPU from those generations is technically supported on such a motherboard.
Now if we move to the actual specifications, as the parts on the gaming PC are more versatile, you have a lot of choices for each component. Furthermore, barring space or design limitations, the components can be made bigger andwith better cooling solutions. This unrestricted aspect of PCs helps manufacturers develop high-end, top-tier components that can break records.
Gaming Laptop
Gaming laptopshave proprietary motherboards, which means that you can’t install regular desktop parts inside them. Even the GPUs and CPUs may differ in size and design even in the same generation, depending on the performance class they belong to. This is why the CPUs and GPUs are soldered permanently to the board, which can’t be upgraded with a simple swap.
That said,the system RAMand storage drives do offer upgradeability, just like gaming desktops, but they feature different interfaces. Due to the default design of gaming laptops, they will have a totally different set of configurations than their desktop counterparts. Even if you do attempt to match the configuration of a particular gaming laptop and desktop, you will see them still varying a lot, as PC manufacturers have to make specific alternatives to make them fit inside the laptop’s compact chassis.
For instance, for an equivalent Intel Core i7 processor from the 13th gen family on a desktop, you will have a different Core i7 model on the laptop, ending with something like “H” or “HX”. On desktops, you will have models ending as “K” or “KF”. Compare the Core i7 13700HX for laptops to the i7 13700K for desktops and you will find that, despite featuring the same number of cores and threads, the clock speeds, TDP, and the iGPU’s configuration can be a lot different. While on the desktop, the Core i7 13700K is much more versatile when it comes to clock speeds and has more room for higher clocks due to a wide range of operating TDPs. However, on a laptop, the 13700HX has to be nerfed to limit the power consumption.
Similarly, laptop GPUs are nerfed to limit power consumption and so are other parts. Regardless, modern gaming laptops can be pretty competitive against gaming PCs in performance, which we will see in the next section.
Performance
Keeping in mind that gaming PCs have a totally different construction compared to gaming laptops as we discussed earlier, you may already expect that the desktop is going to achieve higher cores in video games. This isn’t the case with just gaming, but as the CPUs are also weaker on laptops, the productivity is not quite as impressive as one might expect despite having a similar name for the CPU.
Let’s assume you wantthe fastest possible gaming laptopor a PC, but aren’t sure how much difference to expect. The specifications of desktop parts and the equivalent hardware on a laptop may give you the idea that the gaming PC is a little bit faster, but in reality, it completely smokes the gaming laptop when keeping all other specs equivalent to what is found on a desktop.
For instance, takea gaming laptop that boasts an RTX 4090 GPUand compare it with a gaming PC that too uses a 4090. The performance difference can be as big as 2X in games, which is quite shocking to see if you expected a 4090 laptop to perform similarly to the 4090 on the PC. Blame the GPU manufacturer here, as the specifications of the RTX 4090 on the laptop are drastically inferior to that of aregular desktop RTX 4090.
You get 8GB less VRAM, significantly reduced clock speeds and Cuda Cores, a TGP of just 80-150W, and a poor memory configuration of 256-bit interface and a memory speed of 18GBps. Compare it to the regular RTX 4090, you will find that the desktop variant has more memory, a 384-bit memory bus, a faster 21Gbps memory speed, a TGP of up to 450W, and 68% more Cuda Cores. On top of that, when thelaptop GPU is paired with a CPUthat has lower clock speeds, the performance will bottleneck significantly compared to the desktop.
So, despite seeing the RTX 4090, RTX 4080, or similarhigh-end gaming GPUson laptops, don’t get excited because, in reality, you are getting the performance of a budget or mid-range gaming GPU found on regular gaming desktops. Hence, even though gaming laptops can be capable ofplaying games at 4K resolution, it’s still difficult to reach 60 fps in modern titles unless you turn on upscaling techniques.
If the discussion is about productivity, the performance gap is somewhat narrower compared to gaming performance. This is because the only affected spec here is the clock speed. This is generally due to the lower power cap that mobile CPUs bring, but there isn’t much of a degradation in other areas as we saw in the GPU department. If you remember we talked about the i7 13700K and i7 13700HX previously, you will be surprised to know that the i7 13700HX is just 11% slower than the 13700K in single-core performance in the Cinebench R20 test.
The gap certainly increases in multi-threaded tests, but it still isn’t as large as the difference between an RTX 4090 and a 4090 laptop. Therefore, productivity on the laptop can be as good as desktops with slight disadvantages, particularly if you love to experiment with multipliers to reach new heights. On desktops, it’s possible to swap the stock cooler witha premium AIO cooling solutionto maintain better thermals, but with laptops, you are stuck with a specific cooling design, which is impossible to change.
All in all, if you are a performance freak, needing something that can max out the graphical presets without dropping the frame rates below 60 on higher resolutions, go for the gaming desktops. For 1080p and 1440p, gaming laptops can be as luxurious as the desktop variants, but, of course, with their own advantages and flaws, which we will talk about later.
Design, Portability, and Power
Hardware inside a gaming laptop needs to be as compact as possible. In 2024, users are looking for lighter and more compact designs so that their laptops can be easily carried in a backpack. Laptop manufacturers have to design motherboards and GPUs several times smaller than the regular ones because everything goes inside an inch-thick body with carefully positioned connectivity ports on the side and vents.
At the same time, the cooling solution needs to be unified for the CPU and GPU to dissipate the heat effectively without taking up much space. Moreover, the laptop needs to be equipped with a display, a keyboard, and a trackpad, each of them connected to the core hardware of the laptop. This process results in a complex interior that is hard to assemble compared to a regular gaming PC, which feels like connecting a bunch of LEGO pieces.
Gaming PCs have to usea dedicated gaming monitor, which may measure between 22 inches and 49 inches, depending on how immersive the experience a user wants to be. This is why there areportable gaming monitorsthat tend to do better in portability, but they generally don’t go beyond 18 inches of display size. On gaming laptops, the screen size can be as small as 11 inches all the way to 18 inches. The resolution can be FHD/FHD+, QHD/QHD+, and UHD/UHD+, but on regular gaming monitors, the resolution generally stays at a 16:9 aspect ratio but can be 21:9 or even 32:9 if users opt for ultrawide monitors.
Ultrawide displaysare generally avoided on laptops as this will make the laptops lose their portability. Gaming laptops need to be small enough to be kept inside a backpack that can be carried on the back. This also forces the manufacturers to keep the overall weight of the laptop quite light. Somelightweight gaming laptopscan be as light as 2.5 lbs, but as you go higher in the configuration, the laptop weight can increase to over 6 lbs, resulting in increased difficulty in carrying it.
Still, the gaming laptop excels a gaming PC in portability hugely as a gaming PC user also needs to carry a display, keyboard, mouse, headset, and mousepad, which can be an impossible task for a small backpack. However, some gaming PCs have also started to adapt andare becoming smallerin footprint these days. They do tend to lose their upgradeability in the process though, which might hurt users in the long run.
Also, gaming laptops run on batteries while gaming PCs need to be hooked to the power outlets all the time. They consume more power than laptops and increase the electricity bill drastically. Gaming laptops, however, cannot run for more than 2-3 hours on continuous gaming, a flaw that gaming PCs don’t have. With battery life going down rapidly, performance also goes down as laptops try to preserve their batteries to stay on for a longer time.
Pricing
There cannot be a direct comparison between the price of a gaming laptop and a gaming PC because there are a lot of factors involved with each of these. Of course, one can add up the cost of all the peripherals for a gaming PC along with the system’s cost and compare it with the gaming laptop, but the comparison still won’t be fair unless the performance of both systems is measured to be exactly equal or at least equivalent to the point where one may not notice the performance difference in real-time.
Other factors, like how good the display quality of the laptop is, how good the connectivity, the keyboard, and the trackpad are, still exist. All of them cannot be compared directly with their desktop counterparts. Therefore, the first step is to select a laptop/desktop with equivalent performance (not equivalent hardware), and then add up the cost of the peripherals one would go for the desktop and compare it to the cost of the laptop. Typically, with premium peripherals added on, laptops and PCs with comparable specs have comparable prices. However, if you buy mid-ranged or budget peripherals, laptops with comparable specs are much more expensive than their PC counterparts.
Conclusion
When buying a gaming laptop or a PC, it’s best to decide how much performance one needs before everything else. If one needs an unparalleled and immersive gaming experience, the gaming PC can’t be matched. Gaming PCs are also highly upgradeable, allowing users to choose and swap any part they like anytime. With a bigger, faster, and curved display, dedicatedhot-swappable mechanical keyboards, and high-end competitive mice, gaming PCs are still the number one choice for professionals and will continue to be so for a long time.
If you are somebody who travels a lot or doesn’t have muchspace on your desk, a gaming laptop will be a no-brainer, since it doesn’t take too much space on the desk, comes with peripherals onboard, is easier to keep inside a backpack and operates on a battery. Gaming laptops have become quite good in recent years with the ability to max out visuals without dropping much in performance. The best thing is that you can connect your favorite peripherals to them to stay more competitive on the go.
ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 (2024) Gaming Laptop
The ASUS ROG Strix Scar 18 Gaming Laptop is a newer 2024 model of ASUS’s successful Scar lineup that pairs Intel’s latest 24-core Core i9 CPU with Nvidia’s fastest GPU to date, the RTX 4090. With an excellent 18-inch 2.5K display that boasts a high peak brightness as part of ASUS’s Nebula offerings as well as a high 240 Hz refresh rate, the Scar 18 offers plenty of power under the hood. In addition to this, it also has built-in lighting on the laptop itself that offers software control via ASUS’s Aura Sync.
FAQ
Q: Does a gaming PC last longer than a gaming laptop?
A gaming PC generally lasts longer as it is much better at maintaining good thermals and uses individual parts, which can be swapped separately without having to change every part inside the system. Gaming laptops also have the flaw of running on batteries, which degrade quickly overtime.
Q: Is it worth buying a laptop for gaming?
In 2024, Yes, it’s completely worth buying a laptop for gaming unless you are looking for 60 fps at 4k resolution. For 1080p and 1440p, there are some incredible laptops with high-end configurations that can provide a stutter-free and smooth gaming experience.
