Is Owning A Desktop Relevant?

I first started using desktops computers at home in January of 2016. It’s been about two years since my first custom desktop computer build and since then, I feel that my entire workflow for my college assignments has drastically improved. Prior to using my own desktop for the first time, I spend a number of years using a few different kinds of laptops, none of which were very spectacular or capable, but I was able to complete my work regardless. Now that I’ve been accustomed to using a desktop computer as my main machine for around two years, I can now understand how limited I was by using a laptop as my daily driver at home. Let me elaborate on that a little bit.

The Desk

Obviously upon dedicating yourself to a desktop configuration, you have to have the space to use the thing. Perhaps you already have a desk and it’s just a matter of moving your belongings around to make room for your new setup - if that’s the case you are way ahead of where I was when I decided to build a desktop. Now, I am a huge gamer, and prior to ascending to PC gaming I was primarily gaming on consoles, so a portion of my bedroom was dedicated to my television setup for gaming. I had a chair I would sit in to game placed directly in front of an entertainment center, and as you can imagine this took up quite a bit of space. 

When I switched integrated the desktop computer into my life, I decided that I would trade having a entertainment center setup for simply mounting my television above my desk, which gave me more room for a desk and thus more room to spread out when working on documents and papers. I find this to be an important feature of the desk setup that I think a lot of laptop users would appreciate - I get the impression that a lot of laptop users simply do the most of their home computing in bed, on the couch or at the kitchen table, no desk required. It’s easy, cheap, and it works. However, I also understand from a student’s perspective that when I’ve got several papers due within a short amount of time that I may need room to spread out books, writing prompts, notes, both digital and paper formats, all out in front of me so the information I need is easily accessible.

This is also where, if you decide to go with a desk setup, a multi-monitor configuration would be most beneficial in addition to adequate desk space. There’s more opportunity for organization and it’s a little more difficult to accumulate clutter (at least for me). 

Laptop or Desktop?

When speaking about fairly current and modern laptops and desktops, which I’d say are those that are maybe 5 years old and less (though technologies become outdated so much faster now than ever, it may be more like 3 years old and less), typically I’d say that the desktop outweighs the laptop of similar configuration. With the recent implementation by NVIDIA of full desktop graphics cards into newer laptops makes the gap between desktop and laptop performance smaller, but even so the majority of laptops with dedicated graphics are running mobile, less powerful versions of desktop graphics cards. This spices up the decision making process for those of you who are looking to upgrade your daily driver computer and brings even more uncertainty to that golden question: Laptop or Desktop?

As far as investment for the money, I’ll almost always go with a desktop. Desktops can last a while longer than laptops and for potentially less money. When your laptop screen breaks, what do you do? A few things, like maybe call your local computer repair shop to see how much a repair would cost, consider purchasing the replacement screen and doing the repair yourself, or maybe just getting a new laptop or computer altogether - a potentially hefty investment.

If the screen on the monitor of your desktop setup breaks, you can just replace or repair the monitor while still having your computer functional and there for you to use (Unless your desktop computer is an all-in-one. Don’t buy an all-in-one.). When you buy a laptop, you’re buying every piece of the computer crammed into a compact device, which though convenient for you makes repairs and replacements just as expensive or potentially more than the same service for a desktop device, though with a desktop device overall you are getting better performance.

Longevity

Repairs and replacements are overall better on a desktop when you build your own, which I am wholeheartedly convinced that anyone can do (I believe in you!), especially considering that each individual part can have a minimum of a one-year warranty. Corsair power supplies, for example, have 5-year warranties, which makes sense considering that your computer can’t be operational without a functional power supply, making them even more worth the investment.

When you become more invested in the world of custom desktop computers, you start to familiarize yourself with the various parts that make your PC run and how they work, and, at least for me, that familiarity that I gained with my parts made me more capable of solving various issues with my system. Display not working? Is it the display cable? Is the monitor on and plugged in? Is the computer on? Or, perhaps, if you're using a graphics card, is it slotted into the motherboard properly? Being able to troubleshoot problems on your own in this way is surely to gain you a reputation for being the "computer person" in your family if you aren't already.

Present and Future Relevance

As the prices of graphics cards continues to skyrocket, along with DDR4 RAM prices, financially it's hard to justify building a computer considering how much more affordable these items were just a few years ago. The concurrency mining craze and the mobile phone market respectively are responsible for the hike in prices and it's hard to know if GPU and RAM prices will come down anytime soon.

One thing that saves the desktop market is the presence of prebuilt desktops, which, though not often outfitted with the best components, they're still just as capable for gaming and media production tasks and can be upgraded down the line with better parts, hopefully when prices come down. Overall, I feel that despite the state of the PC market right now, most people can benefit from owning a desktop at home. However, everyone's needs and uses are different, so take yours into account before you buy (or build) your next computer.