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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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).

PCs. Gaming laptop underperform for price, are larger than non gaming laptops, and generally are less serviceable & durable. Just the entire market segment lags behind.

Desktop. Gaming laptops end up being the worst of both worlds when it comes to power and portability. Weaker than a desktop, heavier and bulkier than a laptop. Makes it hard to game, and hard to carry.

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.

Desktop first, steam deck very close second.

Laptops can stay very far away from my household

PCs. Who wants to be at the mercy of battery to game, deal with high heat, and take a major performance hit to be a laptop that you will have to plug in to the wall anyways if you want to game for a decent amount of time

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.

It’s down to the expected use case.
If you have some reason to want portability, like you travel for work or expect to want to game at a place other than you home, then a laptop is likely the right choice.
If you only expect to game at home and don’t have a need to constantly move your system around, a desktop is usually a better “bang for the buck”.

Personally, I don’t travel and don’t have a need to move my gaming rig around. I also like having the ability to upgrade in a piecemeal fashion. So, I have a desktop. This particular PC of Theseus has been going for a decade and a half now and shows no sign of stopping.

When I get a job and settle down, I definitely plan on getting a PC. It just has so much more bang for the buck, and you can actually use the entire performance. My laptop basically overheats immediately if there’s an intense load on it, even though it has the raw power to actually run it. But the reality is that currently, as a student, a gaming laptop is a lot more practical to me.