Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) systems comprise light modulation and transmission of mm-wave signals over fiber links. The aim of this study is to investigate the performance of external and direct intensity modulation in RoF links and to analyze the drawbacks induced by different components of the optical system. In external modulation, the Mach-Zehnder Modulator (MZM) is used, while the Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is utilized in direct modulation. Both modulation schemes are tested for a vector modulation format, i.e., the quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), where an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme is used to generate signal subcarriers. The simulations are carried out with the same values of commonglobal parameters for both schemes of intensity modulation. Although VCSEL is a promising device for future RoF systems, the external modulation shows a more robust performance compared to that of VCSEL when implemented with the OFDM modulation technique.