When it comes to choosing a device to play their favorite triple-A titles on, most people often find themselves torn between buying a gaming desktop tower or a gaming laptop. And while both devices are capable of performing many of the same tasks, there are certain key differences that set them apart from one another. Depending on your use case, one can be better than the other. Here are a few reason why a gaming desktop tower can be a better investment over a gaming laptop:
Better Performance
In almost every respect, a gaming desktop tower will consistently outperform any gaming laptop, even if they have similar or close to similar specs.
Heat is one of the major factors behind it. Specifically, heat dissipation. In a gaming laptop, the components are crammed into a smaller space in order to provide portability. They rely on passive cooling to maintain usable temperatures, which involves throttling the speed of certain components. They may be equipped with high-powered fans, but air cooling often isn’t enough to keep the laptop cool enough to consistently run demanding processes, such as graphics-intensive game titles.
Meanwhile, a gaming desktop tower is roomier, allowing for better airflow. You can also outfit a gaming desktop tower with alternative cooling solutions, from water cooling to mineral oil. Using these methods, a gaming desktop tower can run games at the highest graphical settings much more consistently.
Hardware is another major factor. Gaming laptop manufacturers are limited to mobile versions of certain components, such as the processor and the graphics card. In gaming desktops, these limitations do not apply. That’s why games run smoother on a desktop than a laptop, even one built with gaming in mind.
Value
Buying either a gaming desktop tower or a gaming laptop represents a significant investment. It’s natural, then, to want value for the money you’ll be spending.
In terms of cost, you’re looking at more or less the same figures. You can find budget gaming laptops for under $1000 that can run games on low to medium settings. Add a few hundred dollars and you can instead get a decent gaming desktop tower that can run games on medium settings or higher. It comes down, then, to your personal preference.
Long-term value is where a gaming desktop tower shines. Most laptops have a shelf life of 4 years or so, even gaming ones; by then, the components within will be severely outdated and won’t be able to run the latest triple-A titles. Meanwhile, gaming desktop PCs can easily be upgraded. You can swap old parts out for new ones and they will remain competitive.
Upgradability & Ease of Repair
Building a PC from the ground up has always been the more attractive option for serious gamers because of how easy they are to customize, upgrade, and repair. This is not possible for most gaming laptops.
For the most part, gaming laptop manufacturers have enough foresight to understand that users may want more RAM or faster storage in their machines. That’s about as far as you can get with a laptop, though, even one that’s marketed as a desktop replacement. Components such as the CPU and motherboard cannot be easily swapped out, and you’re stuck with what you get until it fails.
With a gaming desktop tower, you can choose the components yourself and upgrade any components as you see fit. When something fails, you can still reuse the parts that work and swap the broken components out.
Interested in a gaming desktop tower? CLX specializes in them! Consider a pre-built gaming desktop tower from their Horus or Ra collections, or build one yourself using their Ultimate Configurator.
