What to look for in gaming PCs and laptops

What to look for in gaming PCs and laptops

Firstly, which do you want?

Here are some pros and cons

While a gaming laptop is smaller and portable, a gaming desktop is larger and more customizable. Both are excellent options, but both also have their strengths and weaknesses.

There is little difference in performance between the two these days, so the issues are more about portability, ease of upgrade when needed, and how easy each is to customise.

The ability to customise is one of the biggest draws for a PC. You can get a range of hardware options, reliable performance and more aesthetic choices in colour, design and size.

With laptops, although you may be able to choose from a selection of core components, including the storage and RAM, the CPU and GPU but changing the hardware later is generally more difficult if not actually impossible.

So what qualities do you need for a good gaming machine?

Before you start getting into the details consider whether you want Entry-level gaming, Mainstream Gaming or VR and the Highest Settings.

Whichever level you are at you will need a good GPU (graphics processing unit). Remember, you won’t be able to change the GPU on a laptop. The latest graphics cards on the Nvidia series are the newest RTX 40-series cards, from the RTX 4050 through the RTX 4090. On the AMD front, there’s the Radeon RX 7000M and 7000S series,

The fastest displays, going up to 480 Hz, only come at 1920 x 1080 resolution (or, on a 16:10 screen, 1920 x 1200) right now, so a 4K screen will be slower.

8GB is what is recommended for even average productivity tasks. If you can, you should go for 16GB on a gaming PC. A decent amount of RAM (random access memory) is crucial.

There are two choices for storage, either Hard drive or SSD. The majority of gaming notebooks also include a small SSD to serve as a boot drive. Like memory, storage is often upgradeable in gaming notebooks.

Visual qualities

The things to consider are screen size, resolution and speed of loading. Most gaming laptops have 15 or 17-inch screens. Never get anything less than a 1920 x 1080 display. It’s rare to find one with a lesser resolution,

Keyboards

Here, the things to consider are key travel (how fare you need to press the keys), how much force you need to press the keys.

Anti-ghosting and n-key rollover: These are two features that will keep you performing at your best in games. Anti-ghosting means that when you mash on several keys for combos or perform several actions, they will all register. Additionally, n-key rollover means that each key is independent of the others and will be registered no matter which other keys are being pressed.

And finally, battery life.

Gaming is power hungry so you should not count on your battery if using a laptop. It’s better to keep the laptop plugged in to get the full performance out of your GPU. Otherwise your battery may not last more than an hour!