Desktop versus Notebook

Speaking of cooling: We installed a third chassis fan (Be Quiet! Silent Wings 2) to ensure a quiet system operation. The stock chassis has "only" one 140mm fan at the front and another 120mm fan at the back. There are additional mounting places for fans at the top, the bottom and the side, but we did not use them. Great: Thanks to the integrated 3-way fan control, you can easily reduce the speed of up to three fans.

There is no shortage of connectors in the Silent Base 600. Below the power and reset button you can find two USB 2.0 ports, two stereo jacks as well as two USB 3.0 ports. As expected, most ports are located on the motherboard. Asus provides a brand-new socket 1151 model, Z170-A, which is designed for Intel’s Skylake generation. The latter manufacturer provided us with a Core i7-6700K, which has a TDP of 91 watts and does not even scratch the limit of the cooler (190 watts). For comparison: The high-end quad-cores for notebooks have a 45-watt TDP.

Back to the motherboard. Like its many other 1151 siblings, the Asus Z170-A has an M.2 slot for solid-state drives. There are also four memory slots and three PCIe-3.0 slots. Since only a few users use dual-GPU configurations (micro stutters), we will use just one graphics card as well. Nvidia and PNY had already sent us the high-end chip GTX 980 and the mainstream GPU GTX 950 a few months ago.

The storage equipment is no less generous. Modern games occupy a lot of space, so we have equipped the system with three SSDs. While the operating system (Windows 10 Pro 64-bit) is installed on a 256 GB Crucial MX100, a 480 GB Crucial M500 takes care of all the Steam games. Origin and Uplay games are stored on a Trion 100 from OCZ (also 480 GB). The package is rounded off with an older 1 TB HDD from Western Digital. Despite the anti-vibration mounting of the hard drive, we can sometimes hear clattering and vibration noises from the Caviar Green, which was not the case in the old chassis (Lian Li PC-7 Plus). We still have to find out if this is caused by the HDD or the hard drive cage. Otherwise, the case and the cooling system ensure a very quiet 3D operation, which is currently not possible with a notebook (more on this later).

The same applies to the connectivity of the motherboard: Most laptops cannot keep up with five audio ports, six USB ports (2x 2.0, 2x 3.0, 2x 3.1) and four video outputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort). Gigabit-Ethernet and a PS/2 port are mandatory for a desktop as well. The power is provided by an 80-Plus-Platinum PSU with a nominal output of 750 watts. The Dark Power Pro 11 from Be Quiet! meets the expectation with the top performance and a very restrained fan. Thanks to the modular cable management and the openings in the chassis, you can use the available space very well.

However, these components are not cheap with a total price of around 2300 Euros (~$2442), which is quite a lot for a desktop system. If you add a display, speakers and peripherals, you quickly reach between 2500 and 3000 Euros (~$2654 to ~$3185). For this price, you can get a well-equipped high-end notebook with IPS panel, quad-core CPU, 16 GB of RAM, solid-state drive and GeForce GTX 980M. So is an expensive desktop system really worth it? We compare the performance, system noise and power consumption.

The quad-core can reach 4.0 to 4.2 GHz under load, which is still quite a lot in 2015. The same applies to the number of threads. The 14-nm chip simulates four virtual cores via Hyperthreading, which can improve the performance in some applications. Thanks to the modern manufacturing process, the CPU does not consume a lot of power despite the high performance..

Nevertheless, some notebooks prove that this level of performance is also possible in the mobile segment. Notebooks like the Schenker XMG U506, the XMG U706 and the XMG U726, for example, can also be configured with the i7-6700K. Laptop counterparts like the Core i7-6700HQ and the Core i7-6820HK are roughly 20% slower in Cinebench R15 and R11.5. Attention: The i5 desktop series does not support Hyperthreading and can fall behind mobile chips in multi-core benchmarks.

We evaluated the system performance with the tool PCMark 7, which benefits significantly from fast storage devices. With a score of 7311 points, the desktop PC is a few percent points ahead of expensive gaming notebooks like the Schenker XMG U726, XMG U706 and XMG U506, all of which were equipped with a PCIe-SSD (Samsung SM951) in our reviews.

We have already indicated that there are hardly any differences between notebooks and desktops in terms of storage devices. However, this is not surprising since both use 2.5-inch drives.

While in the past notebook GPUs were often significantly slimmed-down versions, fps enthusiasts do not necessarily have to use a desktop nowadays.

The mainstream product GTX 950 is in a more difficult position. The Maxwell chip is around 10 to 15% slower than a GeForce GTX 970M and 25 to 30% slower than a GeForce GTX 980M. The results of the desktop models GTX 960 and GTX 970 are available here and here.

All the following measurements were performed with a GeForce GTX 980. The fan control of the case was at the medium position (best compromise between noise and temperature).

Laptops are traditionally the better choice in terms of power consumption. Desktop PCs consume more power, particularly while idling. An example? 47-54 Watts are easily beaten by the MSI GT72S; 21-33 Watts is a much lower range. The main reason is – as we have mentioned earlier – the switchable graphics, which activates the dedicated chip only during complex tasks.

The results between the desktop and notebook are closer under load. At 135 watts, the PC consumed around 20% more than the MSI GT72S (110 watts) on the first level of 3DMark 06. Once again, the gap is bigger under maximum load (319 vs. 231 watts). This changes when we look at the Schenker XMG U726, where the results are comparable due to the similar components.