I recently moved to a new place to study, and I require a laptop. I have a desktop at home, and my original intention was to bring it with me, but I’ve realized that it will take up a lot of space, which I’m not sure I want to give.
So I considered selling it and buying a laptop instead. The Cyborg 14 A13VF-005NEU is currently available for 10500kr (~$1000), down from 16000kr (~$1550).
My current PC has a 3070 and a Ryzen 7, so I realize it will be a bit of a downgrade, but I don’t think it will matter too much.
What are the disadvantages of owning a laptop instead of a desktop? How often will overheating be a problem when I would be gaming on it? Can I use it completely silently? I plan on using it for school so I don’t really want to have a wind turbine in the classroom.
Okay, I was in a similar circumstance to yours a year and a half ago, and I’d want to relate my story.
In general, you can expect to pay more for less; this is simply the nature of laptop portability. However, it is a compromise that has proven to be useful in my case; being able to move my entire equipment in a compact suitcase is really convenient. Of course, I could invest in an SFF desktop, but in my country, parts for this type of construction are as expensive as, if not more expensive than, a laptop, even without a display.
Heat and noise levels will be mostly determined by the laptop’s model, brand, and GPU. I have a Lenovo LOQ (the most recent version) with an RTX 3050 6GB, and while it does heat up with heavier games (I believe the ones I noticed the most were BG3 and Cyberpunk 2077), Lenovo laptops are generally not awful in that aspect.
I only use my laptop at home, and I rarely hear any noise when I’m using the browser, Word, or reading. Even while I’m playing games, the noise is muffled by my headphones.
Ignore the “instead of” pricing. MSI (to a lesser extent, all laptop makers) artificially debut their products at exorbitant pricing for two months before putting them on permanent sale.
I’m not sure about other models, but my HP Omen 16 runs fairly quietly in eco mode when doing non-gaming things. The battery life isn’t the best when compared to energy-efficient Chromebooks, but it’s not bad.
But the primary disadvantage I can think of is a lack of future proofing. On a desktop, you can replace components as they age or need to be improved. At best, you can increase a laptop’s RAM and M.2 SSD. The CPU, GPU, power supply, and other components are all incorporated into the system, and you are stuck with them. However, if you can afford a good/high-end laptop, I would argue that it is still a good option. The portability alone is worthwhile. The flexibility to transport it anywhere and easily connect it to a tv and use it like a console is very nice. A laptop paired with a nice wireless keyboard, mouse, and game pad makes couch or bed gaming very nice. All the perks of pc gaming (mods, library, free online), mashed with the comfort and ease of console gaming (big tv, comfortable locations, and hook up and go) make laptops a very appealing middleground.
Laptops are far less powerful, repairable, and upgradeable. Their main benefits are size and mobility. Your 3070 outperforms the 3080 on a laptop and even the 4070 in terms of hardware. However, 4th generation NVDIA RTX on laptops includes features like as DLSS3 and frame creation, rendering simply hardware comparisons useless. However, you can just get a new GPU in the future, whereas a laptop requires an entirely new one.