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

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.

Laptop:

• Cheap when buying used, meanwhile used PC parts still are insanely expensive. So on the used market in my country you get the most value when buying a used gaming pc.

• Especially cheap when considering I don’t have to buy a laptop. A useful laptop would cost like 400€, I bought my gaming laptop for 900€ (3 months used, instead of 1400€), same performance in a desktop would cost 1000€+ So normal laptop + gaming desktop would be 1400€+, I only spent 900€.

• Portable. Not much to say here.

Pc with steam deck for me. Although, my gaming has been 80-90% steam deck lately…

Desktop first, steam deck very close second.

Laptops can stay very far away from my household

Gaming PCs by far.

Since some computer games require the mouse, I’d rather use a PC mouse than the touchpad or a mouse plugged to the laptop.

No particular reason, it’s just more pleasing to the eye.

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, 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.

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.

I prefer my desktop. But I can game 6 hours of not more of my work day since my job is to make sure the Internet works and stare at an email. So 99% of my gaming is on my laptop

Both, each have their place. I have a desktop in my office. Decent recent spec and kept fairly up to date.

Laptop I have a reasonable “gaming” spec in the lounge we both use it.

The laptop will always be a compromise. You cannot shift the dissipated heat from a full power gpu at all in that form factor, and most cpus are going to also be lower power editions because they need to work on batteries as well as connected to power. But they’re still for sure usable.

Desktop will always outperform. Even the stock cpu and gpu options will perform at a higher tdp, and you can usually improve cooling in a big case to either improve stock boost frequencies, or over clock.

Physics is the limiting factor for laptops, both in terms of power delivery, and heat dissipation.

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).

I have use a gaming laptop since 2014 and miss being able to switch out components. The laptop I have is pretty modular and easy to service. Finding the parts at a reasonable price is not really possible anymore.

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.

High end gaming laptops are a curse. It’s a package that cannot be performant, you simply don’t have a good space to cool it and keep it portable. Focus on it has made a big part of development in good hardware to be restricted to space and heat efficiency in a non optimal package.

Desktop is the way to go for gaming, you get much more affordable power and bang for your buck. If you want a machine for gaming you want a space where you can chill out and be confortable, desktop on a table with a good chair and nice monitors are the way to go and cheaper than the laptop counterpart.

Laptop is pretty handy for taking it to wherever you need it. But you cannot enjoy that high end performance on a comparatively tiny screen. If you are just carrying you laptop from desk with monitors and keyboard to another, you’re just using a less effective and expensive desktop in two spots.

Even for working, it’s handy to have a way to take your stuff elsewhere, but the way workstations work you’d much more benefit from having a cheaper desktop at you office and/or home and have a notebook to stream the content you need.

All the while all the money and research spent on high end laptops and graphs cards that live in them is being used to fuel a worse product that will invariably overheat and not work at full capacity.