Can I connect laptop to PC with USB

The big difference between laptops and desktops is that the latter are, well, big: ideally placed on a nice comfy desk and festooned with accessories. But if you have a laptop already, you have all the components of a desktop, and then some. If youre not going anywhere for a while, why not kick back and get the full desktop experience?

Heres why: you probably dont have all the stuff you need for a full desktop setup. But getting that stuff is relatively easy, and so is assembling it in such a way that getting your laptop in and out is a cinch. That way you get the best of both worlds: a full, comfortable desktop setup when you want it, and an on-the-go laptop when you need it. This guide explains everything you need to know to turn your laptop into a desktop workstation.

The big advantage to building this setup is that you get to use your laptop with awesome, easy-to-use desktop components. [Oh, and youll also need a desk or a table, and a chair, obviously.] You can use as many or as few of these as you like, but here are the big ones:

Monitor: a larger external screen to give your eyes a rest and make movies and games really pop. You can use your laptops screen and

at the same time, or if your hardware supports it,for a full battlestation.

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Mouse: Most laptop users are an ace at a trackpad, but even the best of them will agree that

. Get a USB model if you want speed, or Bluetooth if you want a connection that wont take up a USB port.

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Keyboard: A lot of users just stick with their laptop keyboard while using it at a desk station. But if you find yours particularly uncomfortable, or if you want to get into the growing mechanical keyboard scene, consider adding on a

or.

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Speakers: Again, the speakers in your laptop will remain functional while you work at a desk, but for bigger, bolder sound, get a

. [Or if you prefer,or a pair of.]

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Rob Schultz / IDG

Other peripherals: Heres where everything else goes. Maybe you want to add on a high-quality external

for meetings, or connect a game controller or. Maybe you want a hardwired network connection, a DVD drive, or a card reader for your digital camera. You can use almost any external accessory made for a desktop PC with a laptop, so long as you can find a way to connect it.

Note that its possible to close the lid on your laptop, keep it running, and have it connected to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Youll want to adjust your power settings so that the laptop does nothing when the lid closes in order to enable this. In Windows 10, this is in the Power Options of the Settings menu, under the Choose what closing the lid does link on the side. [Start button > Settings > System > Power & Sleep.]

How easy or hard it is to expand your basic setup without any extra hardware will depend on what kind of ports your laptop has, and how many. If you have a ten-pound Dell with every port under the sun, odds are pretty good you wont need anything to connect all those components up. If youre rocking a

after you plug it in, well, its going to get tricky pretty fast.

Lets break this down into connection types, shall we?

Video connections

Most laptops have a maximum of one video connection. HDMI is the most popular at the moment, because just about every monitor [and television] made in the last ten years will have that port. All you need is an HDMI cable, and youre good to go.

Adam Patrick Murray / IDG

A

to connect a monitor to a laptop.

If your laptop is rocking something a little more esoteric, like the Mini-DisplayPort on older models of the Surface or the VGA port still seen on some workstation machines, things might get a little more difficult. But youre still looking at just an adapter cable: check what you have on your laptop, what you have on your monitor, and get a cable that works with both, like this

.

If you want to connect your laptop to multiple monitors, things become more complicated. USB-C has made this a lot easier: see the sections further down for more technical info. If your laptop doesnt have USB-C, youll need to rely on a special adapter that can send video over a USB cable,

. These arent ideal, because they take up one of your USB ports and their performance is poor compared to a standard video cable.

Audio connections

This one is easy: most laptops, even those that can fit in a document envelope, include a headphone jack. If youre keeping it simple and not using a dock, plug your speakers or headphones into the jack and youre good to go. Alternately, you can connect headsets, headphones, or speakers wirelessly via your laptops Bluetooth connection.

If for some reason your laptop doesnt have a headphone jack [or yours is broken], you can once again

to make do.

Network connections

If youre setting up your desk in a place that uses Wi-Fi, greatjust connect to it on your laptop the same way you always do. If you want faster or more reliable networking, you can plug an Ethernet cable from the router or the jack on the wall directly into your laptops Ethernet port.

But a lot of thinner, lighter designs are omitting the Ethernet cable these days. Once again, assuming that you dont want to step up to a dock, you can get

.

USB devices

Boy, were connecting a lot of stuff up to USB, huh? If your laptop has just three, or two, or [perish the thought] one USB port, you might find yourself running out pretty quickly.

For a cheap solution, a

can handle quite a lot of data and connections at once. So long as youre using it for more basic peripheralsmice, keyboards, storage drives, etc.you shouldnt see any kind of slowdown. Try to make sure you get a USB hub with at least USB 3.0 speeds, and connect it to a compatible USB port on your laptop; some are still using the older 2.0 ports in some places.

Power

Well this ones easy: to keep your laptop powered up and running, just use whatever adapter it came with and plug it in near your desk. That is, unless you have a newer laptop with a USB-C connection. This is where things start to get really interesting!

Most newer laptops come with

. Thats the one thats shaped like an oval, and doesnt need trial and error to see if youre plugging it in upside down or not. On most of these newer designs, the USB-C port also doubles as the power jack.

Gordon Mah Ung

A USB-C cable.

See, USB-C is designed to be truly universal: on that one cable, its possible to transfer not just data, but power for your laptop [and anything its connected to], video to an external monitor [or monitors], sound to speakers, and even hardwired network data. In short: a USB-C port can, in the right circumstances, be your power input and your USB ports and your HDMI port and your Ethernet port, all in one.

This makes it possible, with the right laptop and equipment, to connect up to a dozen or so desktop components by plugging in a single cable. Its the Holy Grail of combining laptop portability with desktop comfort.

Mark Hachman / IDG

To get the basic benefits of a USB-C port, you can

to add a bunch of ports in one, with power pass-through for your laptop charger. But if youre ready to step it up, its time to look at USB-C docks.

USB-C docks mirror the functions of older desktop docks supplied for workstation laptops, often seen on Lenovos ThinkPad and Dells Latitude lines. But with the prevalence of USB-C, this kind of plug-it-in-and-go functionality is available to everyone.

Take my USB-C dock, for example, a fairly typical one

. When I plug a USB-C laptop in with just one USB-C cable, I have access to up to three monitors over DisplayPort and HDMI, three USB 3.0 ports, another two USB 2.0 ports, an extra USB-C port, hardwired Ethernet, separate speaker and microphone jacks, and camera card readers. It is, in technical terms, dope as hell.

Michael Crider/IDG

In addition to all those ports, and unlike USB docks from years past, the dock supplies my laptop with up to 60 watts of charging power over the USB-C cable. So not only do I get access to a smorgasbord of monitors, speakers, and USB gadgets, I dont have to hunt for an open wall outlet. Its fantastic!

Most laptops with a USB-C port can take advantage of this. There are a few exceptions: some cheaper models will only use USB-C for power and data, and lack the dedicated lanes of bandwidth for video. [The Microsoft Surface series is one notable, and frustrating, example.] Check to make sure that your laptops USB-C port is compatible with video out, and that the dock you buy can supply enough power over USB-C to keep it charged. Ideally the dock should supply the same amount of watts [or more] as the charging cable that came with your laptop.

Dell

This monitor includes USB-C input for video and USB, Ethernet, and headphone ports its a USB-C port built right in the screen.

Theres a neat alternative here, too: because USB-C can handle video, some newer monitors build in a USB-C hub right into the screen.

can connect to a laptop directly over USB-C, power it up to 90 watts, and expand it with multiple USB, USB-C, and ethernet connections, all on a single cable. Some can even daisy chain to other monitors, creating a true multi-monitor setup over a single cable without even needing a dedicated dock.

But what about games, I hear you cry? Can I still use my gaming laptop with a USB-C dock? Well, yes and no. USB-C docks are amazing, but theyre not miraculous. A lot of gaming laptops cant get power over USB-C,

, and many docks arent compatible with the kind of high-speed, high-resolution performance monitors gamers own.

In those cases, its still best to plug your gaming laptop directly into the wall, and then plug your monitor in over HDMI. A bit old-fashioned for 2021, but needs must.

But what if there was another way? A way to keep a svelte portable laptop on the road, but a beast of a gaming or workstation PC at home, all running on the same hardware, and all connected with a single cable? Gamers, let me introduce you to a little-known gadget called the external GPU.