Desktop vs Laptop in 2022

Super Spartan · January 19, 2022

I bought a new Alienware 38 Curved Gaming Monitor AW3821DW and an Alienware keyboard which I have hooked up to my Dell XPS 13 laptop.

Now I want to get a new gaming laptop or desktop and hook them up to that monitor and keyboard but I am thinking, why buy a desktop in today's age when no upgrade is guaranteed anyway since CPU and GPU form factors are changing all the time there is never a guarantee to upgrade even a desktop. With that said, and for someone who wants to stick to Alienware rather than building his own custom PC due to easy of warranty and on-site support from Dell here, my choices are either to wait a few months for the new Alienware 12th GEN CPU laptops to be released or get an Alienware Aurora R13 with their new Cyrotech cooling and an 12900KF / RTX 3090

What are your thoughts? what is the benefit of a large desktop in my case vs a laptop that has everything in a smaller package?

IPD · January 19, 2022

That's not an apples to apples comparison--and almost never is when you're talking about laptops. The GPU #'s can be "the same" but the performance most definitely isn't. You may have desktop GPU's that consume more wattage than the entire laptop combined.

CPU sockets do change every few generations--but the new generations from both AMD and Intel--right now--are the 1st of the type; so the potential for upgrade will probably be around for several years. "GPU Form Factor" - I'm not even sure what that means. PCI-e is the interface standard. I'm not even sure we've maxed out 5.0 yet, so I wouldn't really worry about that either.

Size wise? Cooling options are always superior on a desktop--and of necessity. There are no gaming laptops that are designed with cooling as the top priority. "Thin and light" means I can usually get 90 degrees in 15 minutes without much effort; just load up a recent game and you may not even need to crank the details.

Dell? I mean, if you are zealously tied to whatever "on-site" offerings you have--then I guess that's your call. Alienware (post Dell acquisition) is near bottom of brands for gaming rigs (imho)--with Gigabyte being one that I would recommend even less. I would pick anything Clevo over anything Dell (though I realize that those aren't always distinct categories).