Any real reasons left to go with a desktop / tower over a laptop? (Faster / more powerful perhaps?)

D

d0rian

Just like the title asks, I want to know if there's any persuasive reason to still be considering a desktop (aka tower) PC in 2020.

There was a time when laptops provided portability but at the expense of performance, but that gap seems to be closing if not gone(?) I'm seeing more or less the same processors / chip-sets in both desktops and laptops...and plenty easy to find 16GB or even 32GB DDR RAM in modern laptops. So are there still any compelling reasons to be considering a desktop/tower?

One possibly dumb Q: despite similar processors / RAM, might a laptop's performance still lag behind a desktop because much of that power is "reserved" for / allocated to driving the laptop's native screen? (And if that's true, is it rendered moot if the laptop lid is closed, allowing 100% of the processing power go towards driving the CPU?)
 
GPUs in laptops are still a problem. You cannot dissipate heat effectively in very small spaces. I build a miniITX box myself, small enough to fit into a big backpack. But looking to buy a big tower with 64GB or more memory for backtesting. For intensive long operations, laptops aren't suitable - the heat will harm battery life and cause other issues.
 
Big AAPL said:
What are you using it for? Modern desktops offer the ability to expand exponentially while laptops are somewhat more restricted. Try putting two or three video cards in a laptop...
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Trading, backtesting, running calcs in Excel.

Yes, I figured expandability would be one of the prime considerations where I'm limited w/ a laptop. E.g. i use a high-end gaming laptop w/ 32GB DDR ram, but I suppose I wasn't sure whether the boost to 64GB-or-beyond (not possible in my machine) would be a noticeable upgrade for my purposes.

Big d08 said:
GPUs in laptops are still a problem. You cannot dissipate heat effectively in very small spaces. I build a miniITX box myself, small enough to fit into a big backpack. But looking to buy a big tower with 64GB or more memory for backtesting. For intensive long operations, laptops aren't suitable - the heat will harm battery life and cause other issues.
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Yes, this is the sort of thing I was wondering about -- it seems as though it's not just about a machine's absolute specs...as it sounds like you're saying that a laptop with the identical hardware of a desktop might still exhibit significantly reduced performance because of hardware/structural/heat-dissipation limitations...and if that's the case, it seems as though there still might be plenty good reasons to go desktop...
 
Overnight said:
This. Heat increases resistance in a circuit, impeding current flow, degrading performance. I mean, you never hear of a really hot superconductor, heh.
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If it were just battery life, I probably wouldn't care, since 95% of my usage is at home & plugged in (which is what got me to wondering whether i should be looking at desktops in the first place since portability wasn't all that important...)

But sounds like you're both saying that there would likely be noticeable performance degradation too...? Out of curiosity, is it the sort of degradation that could be measured / quantified beyond me simply sitting here and thinking 'hm, things seem a little sluggish today'? Guess I'd simply like to know to what extent I may be hamstringing myself with my hardware before I go and drop $1-2K on something new.
 
d0rian said:
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as it sounds like you're saying that a laptop with the identical hardware of a desktop might still exhibit significantly reduced performance because of hardware/structural/heat-dissipation limitations...
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That is exactly what I am saying. There's a reason serious gaming rigs have piped-liquid cooling setups.
 
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