Best way to pc game on the road

[StartingEarly]

So I'm a pc gamer and I'll be basically continuously travelling hotel to hotel for work starting in August. Luckily almost all of those hotels are paid for and most of my food is paid for. I have a lot of downtime and I like to play computer games but it's hard to bring a full fledged pc on the road especially in a tiny 2 door insight. I was thinking about building a tiny pc tower but it seems like the tower size graphics cards are way inflated now and I'd still have to worry about travelling with a monitor. I know the dollar per performance ratio on laptops isn't great but should I just look into laptops because of the inflated parts prices or should I still build a tiny tower? I'd like to have a decent level of performance since I play first person shooters so I need a decent framerate to be competitive.

My current pc is a 6700k 16gb ram across 2 sticks and a 1080ti with an all in one water cooler, it doesn't keep the card as cool as I'd like so it is definitely out for a new build.

Thanks

[Syonyk]

Just get a few year old gaming laptop with 1080p and turn down the graphics.

You could do something like a Shuttle case and display, but that's a lot of both cost and room in a very small car.

[JLee]

Modern consoles are absurdly powerful and reasonably compact/simple -- I know the console world isn't quite the same, but if that's an adjustment you can make it would be really easy to take on the road.

[Syonyk]

"I know you're used to drawing with fine tip pens, here's a crayon with a blunt end, though!  I'm sure you can draw with it!"

If the goal is an actual desktop, Shuttle still makes some useful small cases and you can get LAN party bags for them.  A 17" 1080p and one of those wouldn't be half bad either.

[Watchmaker]

I gave in and became a console gamer a decade ago for the convenience, but back in the day my solution to your problem was an Alienware gaming laptop. But I was flying a lot of places--if you are driving everywhere I'd go with a small custom built PC.

The mustachian answer might be to play slightly older games that don't need cutting edge hardware.

[JLee]

"I know you're used to drawing with fine tip pens, here's a crayon with a blunt end, though!  I'm sure you can draw with it!"

If the goal is an actual desktop, Shuttle still makes some useful small cases and you can get LAN party bags for them.  A 17" 1080p and one of those wouldn't be half bad either.

Some games support keyboard/mouse on modern consoles and a PS5 / xBox Series X is going to outperform a 3-generation-old desktop GPU.  Though at the resolution/detail settings you're talking about, you could just run a graphics card made out of blunt crayons and be fine.

Consoles are still difficult to get, but they are trivial in comparison to GPUs.

[Syonyk]

Though at the resolution/detail settings you're talking about, you could just run a graphics card made out of blunt crayons and be fine.

If you have a few year old GPU, I thought running high detail at 1080p and a good frame rate was still doable for modern games?  I'm a bit lost, actually.

I assume that the question doesn't involve carrying around a 27" 4k monitor...  if it does, and you want to game high fps at 4k, don't you need a current gen GPU?

I barely PC game anymore, and Kerbal Space Program isn't too demanding on the GPU.

[JLee]

Though at the resolution/detail settings you're talking about, you could just run a graphics card made out of blunt crayons and be fine.

If you have a few year old GPU, I thought running high detail at 1080p and a good frame rate was still doable for modern games?  I'm a bit lost, actually.

I assume that the question doesn't involve carrying around a 27" 4k monitor...  if it does, and you want to game high fps at 4k, don't you need a current gen GPU?

I barely PC game anymore, and Kerbal Space Program isn't too demanding on the GPU.

I'm confused as to how a modern console (which are absurdly powerful, especially if you factor the cost vs building a comparable PC) is considered a "blunt crayon" but a several year old laptop is considered acceptable.

[Syonyk]

Oh, I was referring to the fiddlestick style controllers vs a mouse and keyboard.

[reeshau]

What games are you playing?  Would they be covered by a streaming subscription like Google Stadia, so you don't have to worry about the rendering work?

[yachi]

What about using in-room TV's as the computer's display, and forgoing the monitor?  Most hotels have LCD TV's with HDMI connections.  Is the TV's refresh rate too low for use in gaming?

[StartingEarly]

It's generally not a refresh rate issue though they are generally 60hz, it's generally an input lag issue for first person shooters. A tv processes things slowly because it doesn't matter if your tv program takes a tenth or even a quarter second to go from live tv to you actually seeing it. A monitor is more in the hundredth or even a few thousandths of a second of input lag. Same reason I still use wired mouse and keyboard.

I could possibly take my 1080ti and do a water cooled mini itx build but I'm not the most familiar with it. If I went that route I'd probably have a shop do it.

I play call of duty warzone and cold war so they're pretty cutting edge. Anything much less on performance than my 1080ti would feel like crap. I only haven't upgraded to 3090 because I don't want to pay double what they're worth because of scalpers. I would say gaming is one of my main hobbies and one I get a lot of enjoyment out of so the cost per hour actually isn't all that high.

[yachi]

As both those games have cross-platform play on consoles, I'd be tempted to go that route, at least while traveling to scratch the gaming itch.  On some games for the PS5 you can even use a keyboard and mouse as the input method instead of the normal controller.

[StartingEarly]

I would be a long term nomad basically, not just travelling for a while. I'll likely be travelling until I end up figuring out where I want to live and have enough to buy a house which being self employed isn't that easy.

[misterhorsey]

I haven't watched the entire video, but I enjoy their very comprehensive reviews on other things.

You're always going to have to accept some compromises due to having to be mobile, but with the crazy prices of GPUs at the moment, maybe the premium you pay on laptops isn't quite so significant as it has been in previous times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AOVWCnJYuo

High end gaming laptops still quite spendy tho.  I'm amazed by the power offered by the new Xbox (4k gaming for less than a GPU!) ,but I opted to build a PC myself (just before prices went crazy) because I didn't want to be restricted to controller and I wanted to play a game like 'Hell Let Loose', which at the time was only on PC, but is now being ported to console!

[MilesTeg]