Gaming on the PC is fun but it can be tiring spending long hours in front of it. Gaming laptops are a great idea and we highly recommend considering one if you’re someone who needs to travel a lot, and need to carry your work (and play) station along. However, if you’re someone who wants to play PC games in the comfort of your bed or couch, there is a very robust and freely available option present. It’s made by Valve, the folks behind Half-Life, and they now run Steam, the world’s largest online game store and distribution system. Enter, Steam In-Home Streaming, a feature that lets you stream games from one device to another. You can now run games across systems even if all of them don’t have high-end gaming hardware on-board. You can stream from a gaming PC to a basic laptop, or from a gaming laptop to a mobile device, or a gaming laptop to another laptop or any such combination. Here is how you go about setting it up.
How does it work?
You run Steam on your primary gaming PC or laptop. Next, you run the Steam software on it and it stream your display, your games over the home network to the device of your choice. This device could be a very basic Android phone or tablet, an Android OS TVs, another laptop, or a PC. It’s that simple. The device that you play the game on does not need to have a high-end graphics card or processor. Pretty much any device can play most HD videos will do just fine. The PC or laptop from where you usually play and now will stream, needs to be reasonably powerful though and have all the games you want, installed.
What do you need?
If you haven’t got a gaming laptop, you can consider some models here or visit a Reliance Digital store. This should be a good starting point. You also need a decent router to make sure that the stream is stable so you don’t notice any lag or delay. If you’re sitting in the same room as the streamer gaming laptop (or PC) and the router, you could manage to stream this on an 802.11n (300Mbps) router, but we would recommend a faster 802.11ac (750Mbps and above) router for optimum performance. If you have wired connections at home setup, those could be better options too.
Oh, and this setup requires no internet connectivity for streaming, just to login to Steam and authenticate your devices. Steam in-home streaming only works on the same network, so don’t expect to stream games from a different city or location. Also, make sure your Windows screen isn’t logged out or locked. You cannot have others using that device at the same time.
Next, you need to choose a device you want to stream to. Most phones today will do just fine, although if you have a tablet around, the larger screen makes it a lot more fun. A basic or old laptop might work too.
How do you setup Steam In-Home Streaming?
Testing out your Steam In-Home Streaming setup
Go the remote device on which you want to stream games to. If this is your phone or tablet, open the Steam Link (BETA) app and click on Start Playing. You’ll be taken to the Steam Big Picture mode which is a basic interface that lets you choose a game to stream. Try out some games on this. If you’re using a secondary PC or laptop, open Steam and go to the Library. You should see an option to Stream games in place of the Play button. This will let you play those games remotely.
Tweaking your streaming setup further
How do you make the gaming experience more intuitive?
Hopefully, this tutorial is of some help and this solution opens up a lot of possibilities for you. If you prefer just gaming on a laptop, or a gaming console, you can either head down to a Reliance Digital store near you to check out the offerings there, or browse through our product catalogue online where you can even buy a model that suites your needs.
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There's never been a better time to be a PC gamer. Tons of great games. Amazing graphics hardware. Virtual reality. Thinner and fancier gaming laptop designs. But if you're stuck using a standard laptop (or desktop) with only Intel's built-in integrated graphics instead of a dedicated GPU from Nvidia or AMD, finding games that will work well is a little tougher.
We tested a wide range of PC games for this updated list, using a few different laptops with seventh- and eighth-gen Intel Core i5 CPUs and Intel HD 620 graphics. These weren't especially high-end configurations, but they weren't bottom-of-the-barrel either. Your mileage will vary depending on your PC setup, so use this list as a general guide.
The standard here is that the game installs without errors, and runs smoothly enough for a satisfactory casual gaming experience. My strong preference is for that to happen at full 1080p resolution, but in a couple of cases, I dropped the resolution for better performance. Either low, medium or high in-game graphics settings are acceptable.
For our latest suggestions, see our new top five game picks for for nongaming laptops list.
Disclaimer: CNET may get a share of revenue from the games featured in this guide.
A remade version of the near-forgotten 1999 cult classic that was one of the very first "open world" games. It still has a pretty retro, low-res look, so it worked fairly well on our Core i5 laptop when set to "normal" graphics options and knocking the resolution down one step from full HD, with frame rates in the low 20s most of the time.
Get it on Amazon.
Have these Star Wars classics from 1993 and 1995 aged gracefully? No, not really. But thanks to a recent rerelease, you can now play them on modern PCs. It'll be a real nostalgia shot for gamers of a certain age, and the digitized live-action footage is a blast. The best thing about playing 25-year-old games is that they run great on even modest hardware.
Get it on Steam.
The Unreal Engine from Epic powers many of the games made today, but the original game from 1998 still has its charms as a more sophisticated brother to the better-known Doom. The Gold edition, usually available for somewhere between free and $10, works great. But depending on your PC, it might need an Epic-approved patch found at oldunreal.com.
Get it on GOG.
A cool little survival strategy game that looks and feels a lot like the isolated arctic horror of The Thing. This time it's more glowy alien things than shape-changing monsters, but there's still a lot of crafting, surviving and sneaking for your small band of survivors. It ran great at medium detail settings.
Get it on Steam.
This deliberately lo-fi game takes place in an open-world-style spaceport, with shades of Blade Runner and Luc Besson. Yes, much of the game is literally picking up trash (you are a janitor, after all), but there are countless people to talk to and mysteries to explore. There's also an existential feeling that you're at the mercy of an essentially random universe.
Get it on Steam.
This creepy 2010 game still holds up in the scare department and is more about walking slowly through a spooky castle than fast-paced action. As this is one of the older games on our list, it ran great, even with all the graphics options set to high. Fortunately, it's been updated many times over the years to include features such as Xbox controller support.
Get it on Steam.
A true modern classic, and still one of our favorite games. The PC version is just old enough to run, and look really good on basic hardware like this, as long as you turn the detail settings down to low (medium still felt a bit choppy).
Get it on Steam.
A 2014 adventure game that takes its cues from the classic adventures of earlier decades. That makes sense since this Kickstarter sensation comes from the mind of designer Tim Schafer (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango). Aside from the screen resolution, there are no graphics settings to mess with, and no problems running the game.
Get it on Steam.
It's hard to believe this open-world RPG was released in 2011. It still feels fresh and exciting, and fans are still building new add-on levels and mods for it. It also runs great at medium settings and 1080p resolution on our test laptop.
Get it on Amazon.
This post-apocalyptic adventure works on a wide range of PCs and also has a near-endless supply of fan-made mods you can download. At 1080p and "low" graphics settings, it's a little choppier than Skyrim, but the slowed-down combat system means you should be able to get away with it. I'd say this one is on the borderline, but playable. Trade up to a gaming PC and VR headset for the cool (and sold-separately) VR version.
Get it on Steam.
A moody mystery-adventure-exploration game that takes place in the Wyoming wilderness. To say more would be too spoiler-ish, but I get a bit of a Twin Peaks vibe from it. For such a simple-looking indie game, it's not especially well optimized for low-end PCs, and I found it choppy but playable with graphics options set to low. Dropping the resolution to 1,600x900 helped a lot.
Get it on Steam.
Gods Will Be Watching is a retro-style point-and-click adventure-puzzle game with a sci-fi setting. It tackles big philosophical topics and ethical quandaries. It's also pretty funny.
Get it on Steam.
It took 17 years for this 1998 LucasArts classic to get a (slightly) modernized rerelease in a special remastered version. It recounts a film-noir-style mystery involving a skeletal detective solving a case in an underworld universe inspired by the Dia de Muertos.
Get it on Steam.
The go-to game when you've got a bunch of PC gamers looking for some co-op action, this zombie classic is still a fast-paced fun time. It's often on sale, so pick up four copies and share with your friends. L4D2 (as it's sometimes called) runs great at full resolution and high settings.
Get it on Steam.
An inventive episodic adventure game telling a high-school-set story that incorporates influences from superhero movies. Great voice acting and writing, and it plays well at low or medium settings and full HD resolution.
Try the first episode for free on Steam.
A creepy side-scrolling walk through a small child's nightmares, with a lot of the same spooky feeling as the acclaimed Limbo. Runs decently at 1080p and medium detail settings.
Get it on Steam.
A quirky, love-it-or-hate-it puzzle game in which a demonic child causes the death of several snooping adults. It's a low-budget game, and not terribly well optimized, so I had to drop it to medium settings at full HD to run smoothly.
Get it on Steam.
This indie sci-fi game gets its Blade Runner feel not only from its dystopian urban futurism, but also from lead voice actor Rutger Hauer. Its performance on our casual laptop is just on the borderline of acceptable, but it ran mostly fine at low detail settings and FHD resolution. Fortunately, it's a slow-paced exploration game, so a little lag creeping in isn't a big deal.
Get it on Steam.
One of my favorite game experiences from the past several years, this talky 2D adventure takes a boatload of teens to a deserted island. Think less horror film, more David Lynch. With almost no visual settings to mess with, just run the game at full HD resolution and you'll be fine.
Get it on Steam.
This co-op crime caper is essentially the same as Left 4 Dead, with bank robbers and cops replacing zombies and survivors. Even though it's a few years old, there's a nearly nonstop flood of content updates and the game plays great on medium-to-high settings.
Get it on Steam.
Even though this mind-bending puzzle game has been out since 2012, it still feels fresh and inventive. Fans keep making amazing new levels and posting them online, so the game literally never ends. Runs like a dream, even at high detail settings.
Get it on Steam.
This game's highly unusual presentation is both deeply weird and refreshing. Using only a sonar gun, paint the walls of a deep, dark cave with tiny points of light, while exploring ancient mysteries. Because the visuals are so limited, it runs great at FHD and high detail settings. It also works in VR (but you'll need a real gaming PC for that).
Get it on Steam.
We'll keep this list updated as we discover more games that work on laptops with basic integrated graphics. Got a favorite to add? Let us know!
For a more high-end PC game experience, check out this updated list of the best performing gaming laptops, as tested by the CNET Labs team.