PCs. Gaming laptops kinda suck IMO, especially their cooling. They also can’t really be upgraded and are much more expensive for the performance. For mobile PC gaming I much prefer a Steam Deck.

No hate, but I’ve never understood gaming laptops. They are noisy, hot, almost always with severely nerfed performance compared to their equivalent non-mobile components.

They are heavy and bulky with poor battery life. They are often garish, which makes them less suitable for a professional environment if you’re in a workplace where that matters.

It just seems like the vast majority of gaming laptops give you the worst of all worlds. Worse performance than a desktop rig, and none of the good things about a laptop, like portability, long battery life, etc.

To me, there are a few exceptions though:

1. Gaming notebooks. You sacrifice a bunch of performance, but you at least gain back some of the benefits of a normal laptop like slimness, portability, battery life, etc. As long as you don’t play super hardcore games, the thermal issue isn’t a huge problem.
2. Your work has a ton of travel and you are allowed to do it on your personal laptop. You can work and game on the same device. If you are traveling like every month flying everywhere for work, that makes sense to have a single device to do it all on.

Again, no hate, just my $0.02

Laptops are uniformly awful.

You can’t upgrade or replace the GPU or CPU, the hinge assembly is mechanically vulnerable, a cup of coffee over the keyboard is game over, the screen dies you’ve got a ridiculous cost to fix, the cooling sucks, the ergonomics suck, and you pay about double the price for half the specs.

You need a proper screen and keyboard at your desk anyway, so unless you’re hotdesking with the thing, it’s just going to act like a shitty desktop most of the time.

More like gaming desktops or laptops. Desktop and laptop are a form factor, PC is just a personal computer. Rage all you want, apple users, a Mac is a PC.

Desktop, of course, simply for upgradability and better thermal management.

I have an AM5 system, so I’ll be able to upgrade not only my graphics card, but my CPU as well, and have a modern machine that’ll last me well into the 2030s. These days you can’t even upgrade your RAM on most laptops.

There’s also the fact that I don’t really feel the need to game on the go, and modern smartphones have fulfilled my need to have a portable computer for everything else. When I did own a gaming laptop, I paid way too much money for it, and the battery didn’t even last an hour playing something as basic as The Sims, so it had to be plugged in all the time like a desktop anyway. Within 4 years the GPU was too old to run anything at a reasonable framerate. Never buying a gaming laptop again.

Desktop. Powerful laptops don’t have enough space for proper heat management. I had a laptop with a Xeon processor and I could get it up to 100C and it would shut off.

PCs. I’ve been living overseas for a couple of years and using a gaming laptop. I can’t wait to start using a PC again.

Laptops can be good but in my experience for demanding games they can have thermal issues pretty easily. I’m not an expert though and maybe it depends more on the individual laptop.

Also the repairability and upgradability are huge things as well. I think desktop PC plus steam deck is my dream combo for all my gaming needs personally.

I’m also in the desktop camp. But I just purchased a Framework 16. The upgradable dGPU (assuming they release new ones) might make laptops more viable for gaming.

Gaming laptops are clunky, ugly, not practical (yeah, technically portable, but not very convenient), loud, hot, drink a lot of juice and always need to be connected to a giant power brick. The worst kind of computer

Assuming that by “PC” you mean desktop computers, that’s what I prefer for gaming.

I don’t care if they are “gaming” specific, but I like PCs because they are more customizable /upgradeable

I prefer laptops, because they are mobile and doesn’t take up much space.

Laptops, cuz I like to travel a lot and…4 years later now, I can still play the new games or go back to the old ones whenever I want to.

It’s very convenient.

If I was in one place, I’d probably get a PC just cuz it’s usually cheaper for the same hardware.

But I love traveling and I don’t love extra possessions! And I love playing games now and then.

Many people I know don’t have room to spare for a PC, small desk etc, nowadays for gaming handheld PCs are more and more obvious choice, as you could use them connected to a TV like a conventional console, and do actual work with a wireless kb/m combo, it’s not ergonomic than a laptop IMO,

Personally I’d go ITX in a small <15L case

Desktop for sure. Though I’ve started to love using Steam Link in my home to stream to my laptop (or TV) to get the best of both worlds.

Same reasons as everyone else, it’s more powerful, better heat management, upgradeable, and still allows me to stream to a laptop when needed. (I’ll even use RDP to my desktop from my laptop most of the time to still get the power for work things too).