The cooling on most so called "gaming" laptops (ie. those with powerfull red graphic cards and some leds) is not enough, unless you search a model with a not top-end GPU and good cooling. There are some tricks to make cooling better, and therefore reduce fan noise.

1-Undervolt!!!! this is a must on most laptops, my laptop coverted to desktop drop power by ~6 Watts (20%) and almost 15ºC while playing games after undervolt both CPU and iGPU, with smoother game performance.
2-change thermal paste for a better one (even liquid metal if you dont mind the disadvantages) and make sure everything is properly aligned. You can go further and modify the cooler itself (for exemple, apply thermal paste where the aluminium meets the cooper)
3-Reduce in game settings and limit framerate where applicable. This is the biggest impact in laptop temperatures while playing "heavy" games.
4-Fine tune power limits if possible. Modern laptops throttle not only because of temps but also power and this introduces many hiccups and drop in framerate, IMHO is better to play at locked 60fps than fluctuation 50-80fps if the screen don't have variable refresh rate.

Of course, all other tips to improve Windows performance still help. and anything you can do to reduce load, will vastly improve life span of the device (including the power supply wich in most cases is barely enough).
Make sure to do a little search about the models and make sure they don't overheat where you rest your hands/arms, specially if playing for long sessions. Been there and is not good!

With that said, the best plug-and-play experience is by far on a desktop. As previously mentioned, a small laptop/tablet is amazing for low-end games and emulators and agree that the perfect size is 10 to 12" screen. I use one even when "gaming" on the desktop, better than a dual screen setup IMHO.

Is this true on the low end? (I'm thinking a budget of $300 or less, where an Intel laptop would have a Celeron or Atom and integrated graphics.)

gaming, laptop, extra cooling solutions for a gaming laptop, extra solutions for extended play on a laptop when at home

I am pretty sure this thread will once again be full of desktop naysayers trying to convince you away from gaming laptops and back to desktops, maybe they feel threatened desktops will become a rarity in the future or something... Anyway, I am a laptop gamer, and here is my view on it (I am actually currently on the market for a new gaming PC, and with 90% certainty it will be a laptop and not a desktop): Yes, thermal control is a bigger problem on (gaming) laptops than desktops, so you should pay attention to those in laptop reviews, especially as nowadays most laptop makers try to make their laptops as thin as possible, which tends to make the problem worse. One thing that somewhat helps with the problem nowadays is that most laptops have now gone fully SSD, not even offering an option for an internal 2.5" HDD (nor a DVD-drive, but those went away even sooner). With SSDs, laptops can both remain smaller/thinner and SSDs naturally produce much less heat too than HDDs. While I prefer the extra capacity of HDDs, I guess this is a reasonable trade-off: for archives I then use bigger external USB HDDs.

Naturally laptop CPUs and GPUs also tend to run on lower frequencies than their desktop counterparts, in order to use less power/produce less heat.

To me it would appear these design decisions would help laptops to remain cooler:

- As said, the laptop is not as thin as possible, but thicker. This allows for better thermal control, better fans etc. Too bad the trend appears to be towards thinner laptops, and most laptop reviews also give extra points for a laptop for being thinner, which to me doesn't make that much sense in gaming laptop reviews (they should always favor better thermal control over the thinness of the laptop in gaming laptop reviews, IMHO).

- The laptop case is made of e.g. aluminum or magnesium alloy, instead of cheap plastic. This lets the whole case help with the heat dissipation as then the whole case is removing heat from the innards, not only the fans/heatsinks. I guess this can also be tricky to design and implement so that the keyboard won't feel uncomfortably warm.

I think this latter is what e.g. Intel did with this laptop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlkFUB_XLVs
I wish more laptop makers would design their laptops like that.

Cleaning a laptop (ie. completely opening it up that you can reach all the innars to blow all the dust away) takes more effort than on desktops, but usually can be done (not sure about the ultrathin MacBooks and ZenBooks and whatever. maybe they are glued shut for all I know, like modern mobile phones). My ASUS G75VW laptop is now like 8 years old, still working great (besides naturally not being able to run the latest games fine, the most demanding games I can fathom playing on it are like The Witcher 3 and GTA V, and those in medium settings or so).

This is its maintenance history:

- Besides blowing some canned air into it from the air vents once in a while, I have opened it up once completely during these years to clean its innards completely. Yeah there were quite a lot of dust inside which I blew out.

- At the same time, I replaced both of its two fans (GPU and CPU fans), which was the main reason I decided to open it up completely (ie. remove its keyboard etc.). One of the fans had started keeping extra noise so I figured it is about to break up and stop working, so I ordered replacement fans online and then changed both just to be sure. The laptop has worked great ever since.

ASUS G75VW is one of those older thicker and more massive gaming laptops so its thermal control and cooling is quite good, ie. less overheating problems. This even though it has three 2.5" (3x 2TB) HDDs inside which produce more heat than modern SSDs. It originally had a DVD-RW drive inside but once it got broken, I took it out and replaced it with a third HDD. I have an external USB DWD-RW drive if I ever need to use it.

So to your question about how long the fans last: they are normally replaceable in laptops. The only question is whether you can find suitable fans for your laptop, but at least I didn't have problems finding ones for my G75VW, many years after I had bought the laptop. I just googled for G75VW fans and ordered some third-party replacement fans online. I guess the Chinese produce these quite a lot even for older laptop models.

Of course, if in doubt, you can always buy replacement fans in reserve already when the laptop is new, if you need to replace them at some point in the future. I guess it also helps if your laptop used to be quite popular and from a big manufacturer, probably easier to find replacement parts years later then. In my case, the fans worked for like 5 years before one of them started giving warning sounds of possibly breaking up.

In my case the laptop fans worked for like 5 years or so before one of them started giving extra sounds (warning that i might cease working in the future), so I ordered third-party replacement fans online and replaced both fans while I was at it. I don't recall the fans being expensive or anything, i guess they were third-party replacement fans from some Chinese manufacturer, but they've worked fine for like 3 years now. (So during these 8 years or so I've had this gaming laptop where I am currently writing this message, I've replaced the fan(s) once.).

Suggesting that he should stay with desktops: maybe he simply can't. Maybe his current life situation favors the gaming station being portable so that he can easily take it with him to long work trips abroad or whatever, or he just loves the ability to move the laptop around within his house between different rooms, like I do (e.g. if my wife is watching TV, I might want to use this in the bedroom, and if she decides to hit the sack, I might move this to the living room). This same gaming laptop has also traveled with me in the past to e.g. Thailand, and each summer also to our summer cottage.

So maybe the desktop is simply not an alternative solution to him anymore. There is usually some real reason why someone prefers gaming laptops over gaming desktops, besides it just being trendy or something. I just find desktops super clunky nowadays, as if they are bolted to the ground. I can, for instance you just don't feel a full desktop PC would really fit your current lifestyle and arrangements anymore.

However, to me his current desktop seems still pretty decent, doesn't it? So how is he going to "replace" it, sell it away or throw to trash? Who knows, maybe he is moving into a tiny apartment and doesn't just have room for his desktop PC anymore, or he is on so long work trips from now on that half of the year he will be living in hotels, like George Clooney in the movie "Up in the Air".

I guess the cooling pads help (somewhat) in these cases:

1. There is something obstructing free air airflow below the laptop, and the elevated cooling pad helps with that. (Don't keep a laptop in a mushy couch or pillow).

2. The laptop case is not plastic, but metal like aluminum or magnesium alloy, and the laptop is designed so that the metal case also dissipates heat away from the innards. In such a case, I presume a cooling pad with fans would help even further, cooling the metal case acting as an extra heat sink.

If it is some cheapo plastic case, no similar effect. Plastic doesn't dissipate heat that well.

"Welded"? No. The internal keyboard on laptops is generally a replaceable parts, except maybe the smallest and thinnest ultrabooks which are more like tablets than laptops.

Also, even if the worst thing happened and the laptop keyboard became somehow broken and you can't find a replacement... the laptop can still be used with an external keyboard, any normal USB or wireless keyboard will do.

"Why would you use an external keyboard with a laptopt?!?" Well, why wouldn't I, if I am using the laptop on a desk most of the time anyway? This is not a tablet we are talking about that you try to use on crowded bus, but a laptop which you move from place A to place B, and generally use it on a flat surface like a desk there.

Hey timppu sorry for the interuption.Do you have the witcher 3 on any another platform

yea i thought so too, the link is only as example, peared into external cooling solutions for playstation and they show also some nice gadgets, not to mention a full water pack for the pc mounted on the outside of your case ( 16 little fans i belief and a very large metal heat dispersion area ) .... another option could be to choose for a boxed portable gpu such as this one ------> https://www.gigabyte.com/nl/Graphics-Card/GV-N2070IXEB-8GC#kf but that needs to fit both in your wish and needs

In response, and to Nicole28 who have both come in full on attack. Better depends on circumstances. Can you fit 6 hard drives in a laptop? Can you have multiple graphics cards? Can you have coolant system on top? What about multiple drives (cd, dvd, disk not swap). Can you move a desktop across country on a train? There are pluses and minus to both. In my opinion if you can use a desktop, use one, if you need portability then use a laptop. And it’s not an either or, as I stated I have both. In fact if you need portability, consider a tablet. Some people swear by playing on a phone. It’s very dependant on what the exact requirements are. The specs he provides are good, but he states he wants to replace with a laptop, if it was me and I didn’t need portability, I would just get the new graphics card - or as you would be saving on buying a full machine, buy two as you will have space for dual graphic cards in a big box.
So as you can see, it’s all dependant on scenario, and it’s perfectly fine for people to recommend desktops without responses such as:
“ I'm going to actually answer your question. ”
And
“ thread will once again be full of desktop naysayers ”

"Laptop gaming" usually doesn't mean playing on a trackpad (nor on battery power) like some seem to believe, but an external mouse is used and the power is plugged in for extensive gaming sessions. This is not a tablet we are talking about which you use on a crowded bus or something, but a laptop that you quite often use on a table or such.

99% of the time I play games on a laptop, and I practically never use the trackpad for that. In fact, I don't even like to do any serious work with a trackpad, it is atrocious.

I quite often use even a external (wireless) keyboard with my gaming laptop(s). I use e.g. Logitech M325 wireless mouse and Logitech K360 wireless keyboard with a laptop, and at least they are good enough for me to dominate other players in online shooters like Team Fortress 2. (I somewhat prefer corded mouse over wireless mouse as the battery or batteries inside the mouse make them heavier to move around, but the K360 wireless keyboard is great IMHO, not obstructing my gaming in any way. And it is still so "small" that it easily fits into my laptop bag.).

Exactly, but that is not what you originally said. You said:

"If it’s for your main machine, I can’t see any reason for going for a laptop, as a box will surpass in all ways, heat dissipation, storage, addin capabilities etc."

I don't agree with that, as if it is unthinkable that one's main (gaming) PC would be a laptop.

The OP didn't say why he wants to "replace" this desktop PC with a gaming laptop, but since he is talking about replacing it altogether (as in, he will not have that older desktop anymore after he buys the new laptop?), I take it to mean there is some real life reason for that, not just because it is "trendy" or anything.

And yes, I am somewhat annoyed that any time someone asks anything about gaming laptops, there is an army of desktop gamers who are strongly trying to convince the OP that he should not replace the desktop. My theory is that these people are quite often threatened by the idea that there will be less and less desktop PC owners in the world, as more and more make the switch to the "dark side" of gaming laptops.

That said, many "naysayers" did formulate their answer with an "unless you need it to be portable...", and I have no issue with that. So, if you don't need the portability of a laptop... then sure, why buy an laptop? If you don't need a car but can do well with public transport, don't buy a car either. Agreed, makes sense.

But if someone asks what kind of car he should buy, I am not expecting an army of car haters to try to convince him that he shouldn't buy a car but either use public transport or a bicycle instead. Well, that seems to be the trend nowadays at least here in Europe as well, damn car-hating hippies.

"Portability" and "mobility" are not the same thing.

A (gaming) laptop is great for portable gaming, ie. you want to be able to easily move your gaming device from A to B, and then use it at B. Quite often that means that B has a desk and even a power outlet you can use. B can either be outside your home, even another country, or simply another room inside your home (like moving the laptop back and forth between the bedroom and the living room as I tend to do).

Mobile gaming means you want to take the gaming device out in a crowded bus or an airport while waiting for your flight for another 4 hours, WHILE moving from A to B. For those cases, a tablet or even a phone is better than laptop.

Plus, I can't play The Witcher 3 or GTA V on an Android tablet.

The thing is, doing this gets rid of one of the big advantages of the laptop, which is that it can be played while lying down. External keyboards and mice don't really work during times you don't have a flat surface.

(The whole trackpad issue is one reason I wish game developers would provide keyboard-only control modes for their games.)

A good mouse will work on a very small place, mine on the arm of a very comfortable relax chair or on a small book lying next to me ... I nearly never use a Trackpad for working or playing, but have a Logitech MX Anywhere 2 linked per Bluetooth for ages now.

That actually isn't an issue, or at least not a major one, with low cost low power laptops. In fact, my current one (Lenovo IdeaPad 110S) doesn't even feel hot at any part on the body. (Some of the ones I've had do get hot in parts, but not to the point of being unholdable or any throttling that I noticed.)