Gaming laptop longevity (vs desktop)

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WilyKit

Gawd
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Bought a gaming laptop a week or two ago (i7-11800H/115watt RTX 3060/1080p @ 144hz) I got a chance to really put it through it's paces over the last couple days while I've been out of town. Performance is great, better than expected. I didn't realize just how much power they've been able to cram in small packages over the years.

After playing for a while, I got curious how the machine was coping thermally. Loaded up some monitoring tools and started playing again. Most of my gaming consisted of playing COD Vanguard Multiplayer or Warzone. The GPU was averaging low to mid 80s the whole time while the CPU was essentially pegged at 99C and of course, throttling. Performance was still great throughout, but that got me wondering... How long do these things last, especially compared to desktops? Besides fans, I've never "had" to replace a component in my personal gaming machines because it went bad. I recently replaced my 1080Ti which I've had since shortly after their release and only got rid of it because I wanted a 3080. Card still worked perfectly. I don't see that type of longevity from this thing at these operating temperatures.

For those of you with lots of experience gaming on laptops, do these things live fast and die young as I'm fearing or do they last far longer than you'd realistically want to keep using them, like their desktop counterparts?
 
My only gaming laptop died when my house was struck by lightning.
My PC I was able to salvage everything but the motherboard that day.
So I don't know how long my laptop might have lasted. The issue with laptops is you can't incrementally upgrade them. Every one I've owned still works somewhat but they are all painfully obsolete.
I wouldn't worry. Yes it will die sooner than the desktop parts, but only because on your desktop if the GPU craps out you can replace it. Also by that time it will be so obsolete you won't miss it.
 
WilyKit said:
Bought a gaming laptop a week or two ago (i7-11800H/115watt RTX 3060/1080p @ 144hz) I got a chance to really put it through it's paces over the last couple days while I've been out of town. Performance is great, better than expected. I didn't realize just how much power they've been able to cram in small packages over the years.

After playing for a while, I got curious how the machine was coping thermally. Loaded up some monitoring tools and started playing again. Most of my gaming consisted of playing COD Vanguard Multiplayer or Warzone. The GPU was averaging low to mid 80s the whole time while the CPU was essentially pegged at 99C and of course, throttling. Performance was still great throughout, but that got me wondering... How long do these things last, especially compared to desktops? Besides fans, I've never "had" to replace a component in my personal gaming machines because it went bad. I recently replaced my 1080Ti which I've had since shortly after their release and only got rid of it because I wanted a 3080. Card still worked perfectly. I don't see that type of longevity from this thing at these operating temperatures.

For those of you with lots of experience gaming on laptops, do these things live fast and die young as I'm fearing or do they last far longer than you'd realistically want to keep using them, like their desktop counterparts?
Click to expand...
I had an old gaming laptop from 2009-13, had it for four years and never had anything go wrong with it. I played a lot of Flight Simulator and a few FPS shooters/war games and it did fine. I upgraded after the four years and got something smaller and more powerful, and that one fared well also. You should be fine for at least a few years, and like travm said, you'll likely find the components archaic before they actually give out, barring any extraordinary circumstances.
 
The hotter you run a laptop, the shorter its life will be. That short life can be made even shorter if you power cycle it frequently, subjecting it to temperature extremes.

Components don't like heat, especially passive components like capacitors. Constant high temperatures tend to bake BGA joints on ICs and cause them to break. Thermal cycling is hard on ceramics and tantalum capacitors and can cause them to short and take out the logic board or power components. I've repaired a ton of laptops of all types due to heat induced failures, so it's best to not leave your CPU and GPU cooking at 80-99C for hours. But you don't have to take my word on it, there are plenty of professional repair shops that have Youtube channels that show these failures, the damage they cause and how expensive it is to repair them, if it's even possible. Companies like Apple don't want you repairing their stuff and heavily restrict access to components, so repair can be impossible if something important blows. But they're not the only ones that do this, most every laptop manufacturer doesn't provide parts or schematics.

tl;dr don't let your laptop run thermonuclear at 99C, get a cooling pad for it, or forced induction for the fan intake.
 
Quick update on this. I used the "intelligent under volting" feature in the Omen Gaming Hub utility which gave me a -0.035v offset. Also got a cooling pad. Both these combined yielded in ~12c drop for both the CPU and GPU. Not too shabby
 
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