I currently use a desktop with an Intel i7-11700K and an RTX 2060, and I'm planning to upgrade it while also buying a laptop. I need to balance my budget between the two systems. The laptop would mainly be used for computer science work, especially machine learning, while I'd use the desktop for 1080p gaming, including demanding multiplayer games such as BeamNG.
With prices in my country, I'm considering two options:
1. Upgrade the desktop to an RTX 5070 and buy an HP Victus 15 with an RTX 4050 and i5-13420H.
2. Upgrade the desktop to an RTX 5060 Ti and buy a Lenovo LOQ with an RTX 5050 and i5-13450HX.
I'm leaning toward the first option because I expect to do most of my work and gaming on the desktop, but I'm worried that the i7-11700K could bottleneck an RTX 5070. The CPU upgrade path would also require replacing the motherboard, power supply, and RAM with DDR5 parts. Which setup makes more sense?
2 Answers
Since most of your work and gaming will happen on the desktop, I’d prioritize the stronger desktop GPU. The i7-11700K may limit performance in some CPU-heavy games, but it’s still a capable processor, and you can address that platform limitation later. A laptop CPU and GPU bottleneck would be much harder to change, so choose the laptop carefully if it will handle most of your machine-learning work.
The second option gives you the more powerful laptop, which may be preferable if you need to run models locally while away from your desktop. The RTX 5060 Ti should still be plenty for 1080p gaming, especially if your monitor isn’t extremely high refresh rate. Just make sure the laptop has enough RAM and check the GPU’s actual power limit, since laptop graphics performance varies significantly between models.
That CPU shouldn’t make the 5070 unusable, but the impact depends on the game and settings. CPU-heavy titles and high-refresh 1080p gaming are where you’re most likely to notice a limitation.
The desktop would be my main machine for both gaming and schoolwork, so I’m mostly concerned about whether the 11700K would hold back the RTX 5070 too much.