I won't go into length about all the problems and expense and limitations of trying to get an CPU/PSU/GPU of an ATX gaming build similarly silent, except for two points. One is I've done the silent gaming build and Apple Silicon and I cannot recommend Apple silicon enough. Two is that it's ultimately futile to try and get a gaming build as silent as Apple silicon because the sheer fact you are pulling more power from the wall to get the same level of performance means you will get more coil whine on average.
In terms of less expansion:
- Having lots of storage on laptops is very arguably bad practice to begin with and you should be using a NAS or cloud storage. 1TB is realistically going to be enough storage for 90% of devs for the lifespan of their laptops.
- Apple Silicon memory may be less expandable, but it's also effectively GPU memory running octo-channel instead of dual-channel, which makes it an insane bargain when you look at the pricing of GPU memory. You can "expand" your gaming desktop to have 128gb of pooled GPU memory and higher memory bandwidth, it just will likely run you 5 figures.
- For ports, Apple is running three TB4 connectors and an HDMI 2.1 port with 168gb/s combined bandwidth with Wifi 6E/BT 5.3.
- Finally, Apple Silicon holds its resale value, so selling your current model and buying a different one if needed is really not THAT big of a deal.
As someone with a gaming computer, I never understood devs that use a laptop...
its way slower, waaaaaaay worse cooling = more noise and less expansion possible in terms of RAM, storage and ports.