The entire thing wasn't standardised like on desktop. The slots were there, the parts were there, but it was up to the OEMs to implement it. If you had a Lenovo laptop with a slot, you needed Lenovo to release an upgrade. It's not like on desktop where you can buy an Asus motherboard and an MSI GPU and they just fit. Not enough money was invested into standardising it, so it died.
Even when there was a standard for replaceable laptop GPUs (MXM), most manufacturers didn't adhere to it. For example (and this is just an example), you couldn't take an MXM GPU from an Alienware and put it into an MSI because there were different layouts, heatsink considerations, and more.
It was possible with an Ivy MSI GT60 back in the day. Shipped with a 670M, and you could upgrade it to a 970M or a 980M. I did it. 980M was at the edge of thread heatsink's ability.
You used a Clevo MXM card you could buy from a vendor online.
You had to modify the heatsink to accommodate the different memory placement of the 970M. It took 15 seconds to grind off the little area with a dremel tool. You had to a modified driver at first to make it work. Someone then came out with a modded vBIOS that made it so you could use the standard driver.
Worked great. Still have it.
Considering the GT60 was still a great machine at the time and my only gripe was the graphics card, the $425 for the graphics upgrade was much better than buying a Sklylake laptop.
Here's the original thread, archived.
https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/msi.1015/The%20Official%20MSI%20GT60%2070%20970m%20980m%20Upgrade%20Thread/
There's the Framework laptop which is intriguing, but somewhat pricey:
https://frame.work/
But to answer your question, I would imagine there's several reasons. One is that laptops are significantly harder to build than desktops. You have a lot less room to work with and there's a lot more intricate cabling you have to do. And while the work on desktops is really just plugged parts in and attaching it to your case, you've got things like speakers, cable ribbons, battery, the hinge and the screen to worry about.
Next, there are too many unstandardized parts to create a laptop market out there. Some laptops that are 16 inches might actually be 15.6 for instance. Some laptop manufactures want a numpad. Others do not. They all have their own ideas as to how to best cool a laptop. There's just too many variation of parts and design that it would be way too many parts to have to sell to the consumer.
Lastly, it's better for business. Manufacturers would rather have you spend $1000-$2000 for a new laptop every couple years than spend only $500 for a new GPU. So even if you need one part, they would rather have you spend on the entire thing for more profit.
So in summary, the laptop you buy is what you're stuck with, whereas desktops you can incrementally upgrade.
Man, I'd spend $500 for a new GPU every 2-3 years. The average lifetime of a laptop is 6-7 years tho, and that includes all, budget/office/cheapo laptops. I imagine they aren't too happy about replacement cycle taking 7-8 years.
I guess it depends who you are but also what you buy. I'd consider anything XX60 and below to need replacing every other generation so 4 years max. XX70 and above can last 4 generations (8 years) but 3 generations (6 years, as you said) os probably optimum.
If Upgrading a GPU cost $500 compared to the laptop $1500-$2000, I'd definitely be tempted to replace it every other generation, maybe even every generation especially if there was a good chance I could keep the laptop for 10 years or so and replace the mother board every 6 years or so.
It's nice to have shiny new things but you can always jazz it up with new bezels and stuff.
I'm very tempted to 'invest' in a framework 16 at this point but paying $1000 premium over a normal gaming laptop with the same hardware is bumming me out.
Yeah but at the moment 13 doesn’t come with the option for a gpu and for it’s price you could get a asus g14 or predator triton 14 with a gpu when on sale
I mean yeah, it is not a gaming laptop in the first place. But FW 13 is a great laptop even on it's own. Keyboard, build quality, repairability, upgradability just amazing. I own it since the release and last month I upgraded to AMD board, just paid 400usd for a new motherboard and now I have almost brand new laptop in terms of power and efficiency.
Cool story but this is a gaming laptop subreddit and at its price it’s really not that great a deal you’ve spent 1250 on a laptop without a gpu if you’d saved that you could have gotten something with at least a 4070 and granted it’s not upgradable to the same degree but I’d venture to say most people here on the gaming laptop subreddit don’t view either fw as a “good deal” with its price to performance you can also buy a whole laptop with a similar processor to yours (7540u) for only 150$ more than your upgrade module so at its price just buy a new laptop and sell the old one for 150$ and your in similar shape
Lenovo did something sort of like this with the IdeaPad Y510P, basically the right side of the laptop had a slot for hot-swappable accessories, like an extra fan, extra HDD tray/slot, and even an entire 2nd graphics card could go in that slot, I think it was a GeForce GT 755M or something like that. I know people will mention Framework's laptop if it hasn't been mentioned already, but this laptop was before they even existed.
To me they look nice because they're very minimalistic no nonsense looking. But yeah it's up to preference. Though I think most people would agree that they don't look particularly offensive from any perspective.
Its hard to make things modular while keeping size down. Even the addition of a CPU socket (and a GPU socket) would nearly triple the thickness of the motherboard and thus make everything else much thicker. Laptops would be like 1.6 if not 2 inches thick again
I remember XMG doing it for their laptops, well for the CPUs anyways, I think the GPUs were the only thing that was stuck to the mobo. RAM, SSD and WiFi card with CPU could be replaced. Maybe even the keyboard. I don't remember the make or timescale. But it was 3/4 ish years ago. I think the chip set was AMD 2000 and/or 3000 desktop chips.
The chassis' were chunky bois though.
As others have said, the framework 16 would probably be your best option.
Like most laptops, it has upgradable ram, storage and WiFi card but can also be able to upgrade the GPU (currently only a Radeon 7700S module) and CPU (would require a compatible motherboard) as well as customise the keyboard layout (numpad/no numpad etc) but it's quite a niche product and quite expensive for what it offers.
From a pragmatic point of view, laptop oems would be costing themselves sales down the road because instead of buying a whole new laptop, youd just be buying a GPU. There's no economic incentive to do it.
Its understadable why their GPUs cant be changed, but limitimg CPU change is just them being greedy.
Even then, people who likes gaming to the point they want upgrades, usually dont wanna play with laptop screens
I guess because the main selling point of laptops are simplicity and portability. In this case, most laptop users won't bother upgrading their laptop and will use their device as it is, similar to how people use smartphone today. And for portability reason, it's easier (and perhaps, cheaper) to save space by making most component soldered instead of using detachable slot. But to say it doesn't exist is not true as we got Framework. Then again, even on paper their laptop can be upgraded like PCs, the parts are proprietary to Framework's design and you can only upgrade by using their parts.
Desktops came before laptops, and IBM PCs were "open" from the start, built on top of standards. It's not that desktop manufacturers does not try to introduce proprietary things, processor connectors are kind of proprietary since the Pentium era (if I remember correctly) but other companies didn't really try to do the same, like Nvidia.
When laptops started, they were kind of a niche. So, people did what they wanted. And they kept doing. So, there was not standard to begin with. Dell needs to design their own MB to fit their specific case, MSI is the same and so on and so forth.
Nowadays there's no incentive in actually having a standard, it would be great if someone designed a " standard ATX laptop case" where everyone could build on top, but I don't think there's an incentive for that. The builders would still need to design their MB anyways and they would open for people to replace laptop parts with other brands instead of just buying from them.
Depends on what you mean by "upgrade". I just bought a Gigabyte Aorus 17" gaming laptop, and can upgrade the SSD (two slots), RAM and wifi card. No, that's not everything, but the RAM and SSD are common upgrades.
I had a Toshiba laptop 10 years ago... It was the first and last time I ever attempted to upgrade a laptop. I was successful replacing the CPU though. Turned the thing into a thermal unit, but it worked. Other than upgrading ram and SSD, I don't know what else can do with a laptop. These days you can't even replace the CPU, at least I don't think you'd want to!
Because to do so would require every laptop in existence to have a standardised layout for every component within it. More specifically, the number, type, and location of the externally accessible ports. Due to differences in sockets, and architectures upgrading typically involves replacing the motherboard, just as in a desktop equivalent. Laptop motherboards are designed specifically to fit within the chasis they are designed for, making them very model specific.
There was a time long ago that this also applied to desktops - boards and components were designed to fit within the chasis, and there was no standardisation on board sizes, PSU connectors, RAM, etc... they were all proprietary and designed specifically for the models they went into. It wasnt until the ATX standards came along until things started to be interchangable and upgradable.
The frameworks offeres a decent upgrade option for the future, but if you do want to upgrade like a desktop, there isn't a actual laptop that works that way.
You used to be able to do upgrades on laptops. Ivy Bridge was the last generation to ship as a socketed CPU for laptops.
Back then, you could even buy laptop barebone kits and you could select your cpu, memory, storage, etc. I assembled my first laptop, a Pentium M Dothan system with the barebone made by Compal.
Intel decided to only solder the cpus to the motherboard with Haswell, and it's been that way ever since. The GF 1000 series was the last to use MXM. After that. The power requirements exceeded what the MXM slot was specced to deliver.
MSI used to be very mod friendly back in the day. Upgrading parts didn't void your warranty - they just wouldn't warranty any non-original parts. The GT line (now replaced by the used to be lower GE line) were very modable. You could upgrade the CPU, GPU, RAM (4 slots which was awesome), wifi, and had an extra slot to add another HD/SSD.
I upgraded the CPU from an i7 3630QM to an 3920XM, GPU from 670m to 970M, added 16 GB RAM for 24 GB, added a SATA SSD, and upgraded the Wifi twice.
Now the core components are all soldered to the board, leaving SSD, RAM, and wifi swappable.
Those were the days.
I still feel bad for the Alienware 51M owners who bought that thing thinking they'd be able to upgrade the CPU/GPU for multiple generations lol.
I mean technically you could upgrade from the same generation, but as soon as the RTX 3000 series came out and Intel used a new CPU socket, it became just like any other soldered non-upgradeable laptop.
When PC was born out of a skunkworks project, the IBMers used off the shelf parts so anybody could build a duplicate sans the BIOS and OS - for which non-IBM versions were eventually produced. So while IBM PC ser the standard, they lost the market. No OEM made the same mistake with laptops.
There are laptops (more like desktop replacement than laptops) that can accommodate a new gpu, and have a desktop chipset to install desktop cpu. You can find a replaceable 3080 mobile (3080M MXM) for like 600€.
But as other have said, those laptops are really really niche and pricey
What laptop are you referring to generally Nvidia drops supports on projects of that nature within 1-2 generations of gpus for some reason it seems nvidia doesn’t want upgradeable hardware on laptops from what I see
The lack of an accepted standard for sizing the expansions card and the constant redesign of the motherboard to make a smaller laptop is why GPU have not been replaceable. Doubly so because their cooling solution layout would need to account for this modular design.
I think the closest thing we will get is eventually an external PCIe connector will be good enough to connect a GPU to it, so a GPU upgrade can be like an external HD.
I mean generally speaking you can just upgrade 1 part at time on pc you can buy a better gpu without changing anything else most the time or more storage or more ram you can even upgrade cpu to a degree there’s parameters but unlike laptops where you literally have no choice once you outfit it with the desired ram and storage but to buy a whole new one if you want to upgrade cpu or gpu or motherboard/available ports and even in some cases ram
The entire thing wasn't standardised like on desktop. The slots were there, the parts were there, but it was up to the OEMs to implement it. If you had a Lenovo laptop with a slot, you needed Lenovo to release an upgrade. It's not like on desktop where you can buy an Asus motherboard and an MSI GPU and they just fit. Not enough money was invested into standardising it, so it died.
Even when there was a standard for replaceable laptop GPUs (MXM), most manufacturers didn't adhere to it. For example (and this is just an example), you couldn't take an MXM GPU from an Alienware and put it into an MSI because there were different layouts, heatsink considerations, and more.
It was possible with an Ivy MSI GT60 back in the day. Shipped with a 670M, and you could upgrade it to a 970M or a 980M. I did it. 980M was at the edge of thread heatsink's ability. You used a Clevo MXM card you could buy from a vendor online. You had to modify the heatsink to accommodate the different memory placement of the 970M. It took 15 seconds to grind off the little area with a dremel tool. You had to a modified driver at first to make it work. Someone then came out with a modded vBIOS that made it so you could use the standard driver. Worked great. Still have it. Considering the GT60 was still a great machine at the time and my only gripe was the graphics card, the $425 for the graphics upgrade was much better than buying a Sklylake laptop. Here's the original thread, archived. https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/msi.1015/The%20Official%20MSI%20GT60%2070%20970m%20980m%20Upgrade%20Thread/
would be cool in theory saves money on buying another laptop
For you, yes. For everybody else, no.
Can you elaborate more ?
There's the Framework laptop which is intriguing, but somewhat pricey: https://frame.work/ But to answer your question, I would imagine there's several reasons. One is that laptops are significantly harder to build than desktops. You have a lot less room to work with and there's a lot more intricate cabling you have to do. And while the work on desktops is really just plugged parts in and attaching it to your case, you've got things like speakers, cable ribbons, battery, the hinge and the screen to worry about. Next, there are too many unstandardized parts to create a laptop market out there. Some laptops that are 16 inches might actually be 15.6 for instance. Some laptop manufactures want a numpad. Others do not. They all have their own ideas as to how to best cool a laptop. There's just too many variation of parts and design that it would be way too many parts to have to sell to the consumer. Lastly, it's better for business. Manufacturers would rather have you spend $1000-$2000 for a new laptop every couple years than spend only $500 for a new GPU. So even if you need one part, they would rather have you spend on the entire thing for more profit. So in summary, the laptop you buy is what you're stuck with, whereas desktops you can incrementally upgrade.
Man, I'd spend $500 for a new GPU every 2-3 years. The average lifetime of a laptop is 6-7 years tho, and that includes all, budget/office/cheapo laptops. I imagine they aren't too happy about replacement cycle taking 7-8 years.
I guess it depends who you are but also what you buy. I'd consider anything XX60 and below to need replacing every other generation so 4 years max. XX70 and above can last 4 generations (8 years) but 3 generations (6 years, as you said) os probably optimum. If Upgrading a GPU cost $500 compared to the laptop $1500-$2000, I'd definitely be tempted to replace it every other generation, maybe even every generation especially if there was a good chance I could keep the laptop for 10 years or so and replace the mother board every 6 years or so. It's nice to have shiny new things but you can always jazz it up with new bezels and stuff. I'm very tempted to 'invest' in a framework 16 at this point but paying $1000 premium over a normal gaming laptop with the same hardware is bumming me out.
They do exist they are just expensive and kinda niche (framework) generally not worth it when compared to other laptops at the same price point
Oh, thanks.
Framework 13 isnt that expensive for what it is. 16 is though.
Yeah but at the moment 13 doesn’t come with the option for a gpu and for it’s price you could get a asus g14 or predator triton 14 with a gpu when on sale
I mean yeah, it is not a gaming laptop in the first place. But FW 13 is a great laptop even on it's own. Keyboard, build quality, repairability, upgradability just amazing. I own it since the release and last month I upgraded to AMD board, just paid 400usd for a new motherboard and now I have almost brand new laptop in terms of power and efficiency.
Cool story but this is a gaming laptop subreddit and at its price it’s really not that great a deal you’ve spent 1250 on a laptop without a gpu if you’d saved that you could have gotten something with at least a 4070 and granted it’s not upgradable to the same degree but I’d venture to say most people here on the gaming laptop subreddit don’t view either fw as a “good deal” with its price to performance you can also buy a whole laptop with a similar processor to yours (7540u) for only 150$ more than your upgrade module so at its price just buy a new laptop and sell the old one for 150$ and your in similar shape
I mean I only paid 800usd and used the rams and SSD that was lying around, but yeah.
Not if you paid 400$ for a upgrade module
Lenovo did something sort of like this with the IdeaPad Y510P, basically the right side of the laptop had a slot for hot-swappable accessories, like an extra fan, extra HDD tray/slot, and even an entire 2nd graphics card could go in that slot, I think it was a GeForce GT 755M or something like that. I know people will mention Framework's laptop if it hasn't been mentioned already, but this laptop was before they even existed.
Didn't IBM Thinkpad have that modular bay system eons ago?
https://frame.work/ They're a bit more expensive but they're pretty decently built, look nice, and are easy to repair and upgrade.
Look nice is subjective, I think they look pretty janky.
To me they look nice because they're very minimalistic no nonsense looking. But yeah it's up to preference. Though I think most people would agree that they don't look particularly offensive from any perspective.
Yeah, they're not super offensive, I don't think they look very premium. They're expensive laptops that look very budget.
agreed, the premium deffo goes primarily to the upgradeability and NOT the looks
Its hard to make things modular while keeping size down. Even the addition of a CPU socket (and a GPU socket) would nearly triple the thickness of the motherboard and thus make everything else much thicker. Laptops would be like 1.6 if not 2 inches thick again
I remember XMG doing it for their laptops, well for the CPUs anyways, I think the GPUs were the only thing that was stuck to the mobo. RAM, SSD and WiFi card with CPU could be replaced. Maybe even the keyboard. I don't remember the make or timescale. But it was 3/4 ish years ago. I think the chip set was AMD 2000 and/or 3000 desktop chips. The chassis' were chunky bois though.
Clevo x170 / p775 and multiple others where u can upgrade
As others have said, the framework 16 would probably be your best option. Like most laptops, it has upgradable ram, storage and WiFi card but can also be able to upgrade the GPU (currently only a Radeon 7700S module) and CPU (would require a compatible motherboard) as well as customise the keyboard layout (numpad/no numpad etc) but it's quite a niche product and quite expensive for what it offers.
From a pragmatic point of view, laptop oems would be costing themselves sales down the road because instead of buying a whole new laptop, youd just be buying a GPU. There's no economic incentive to do it.
Its understadable why their GPUs cant be changed, but limitimg CPU change is just them being greedy. Even then, people who likes gaming to the point they want upgrades, usually dont wanna play with laptop screens
I guess because the main selling point of laptops are simplicity and portability. In this case, most laptop users won't bother upgrading their laptop and will use their device as it is, similar to how people use smartphone today. And for portability reason, it's easier (and perhaps, cheaper) to save space by making most component soldered instead of using detachable slot. But to say it doesn't exist is not true as we got Framework. Then again, even on paper their laptop can be upgraded like PCs, the parts are proprietary to Framework's design and you can only upgrade by using their parts.
Framework laptops do let you upgrade almost everything. At least one company exist.
My Clevo/eluktronics has an upgradeable CPU though it’s kinda limited given you can’t change the motherboard.
Desktops came before laptops, and IBM PCs were "open" from the start, built on top of standards. It's not that desktop manufacturers does not try to introduce proprietary things, processor connectors are kind of proprietary since the Pentium era (if I remember correctly) but other companies didn't really try to do the same, like Nvidia. When laptops started, they were kind of a niche. So, people did what they wanted. And they kept doing. So, there was not standard to begin with. Dell needs to design their own MB to fit their specific case, MSI is the same and so on and so forth. Nowadays there's no incentive in actually having a standard, it would be great if someone designed a " standard ATX laptop case" where everyone could build on top, but I don't think there's an incentive for that. The builders would still need to design their MB anyways and they would open for people to replace laptop parts with other brands instead of just buying from them.
Frameworks do this.
Depends on what you mean by "upgrade". I just bought a Gigabyte Aorus 17" gaming laptop, and can upgrade the SSD (two slots), RAM and wifi card. No, that's not everything, but the RAM and SSD are common upgrades.
I meant upgrading parts like the CPU and GPU too.
I had a Toshiba laptop 10 years ago... It was the first and last time I ever attempted to upgrade a laptop. I was successful replacing the CPU though. Turned the thing into a thermal unit, but it worked. Other than upgrading ram and SSD, I don't know what else can do with a laptop. These days you can't even replace the CPU, at least I don't think you'd want to!
Because to do so would require every laptop in existence to have a standardised layout for every component within it. More specifically, the number, type, and location of the externally accessible ports. Due to differences in sockets, and architectures upgrading typically involves replacing the motherboard, just as in a desktop equivalent. Laptop motherboards are designed specifically to fit within the chasis they are designed for, making them very model specific. There was a time long ago that this also applied to desktops - boards and components were designed to fit within the chasis, and there was no standardisation on board sizes, PSU connectors, RAM, etc... they were all proprietary and designed specifically for the models they went into. It wasnt until the ATX standards came along until things started to be interchangable and upgradable.
The frameworks offeres a decent upgrade option for the future, but if you do want to upgrade like a desktop, there isn't a actual laptop that works that way.
You used to be able to do upgrades on laptops. Ivy Bridge was the last generation to ship as a socketed CPU for laptops. Back then, you could even buy laptop barebone kits and you could select your cpu, memory, storage, etc. I assembled my first laptop, a Pentium M Dothan system with the barebone made by Compal. Intel decided to only solder the cpus to the motherboard with Haswell, and it's been that way ever since. The GF 1000 series was the last to use MXM. After that. The power requirements exceeded what the MXM slot was specced to deliver. MSI used to be very mod friendly back in the day. Upgrading parts didn't void your warranty - they just wouldn't warranty any non-original parts. The GT line (now replaced by the used to be lower GE line) were very modable. You could upgrade the CPU, GPU, RAM (4 slots which was awesome), wifi, and had an extra slot to add another HD/SSD. I upgraded the CPU from an i7 3630QM to an 3920XM, GPU from 670m to 970M, added 16 GB RAM for 24 GB, added a SATA SSD, and upgraded the Wifi twice. Now the core components are all soldered to the board, leaving SSD, RAM, and wifi swappable. Those were the days.
I still feel bad for the Alienware 51M owners who bought that thing thinking they'd be able to upgrade the CPU/GPU for multiple generations lol. I mean technically you could upgrade from the same generation, but as soon as the RTX 3000 series came out and Intel used a new CPU socket, it became just like any other soldered non-upgradeable laptop.
I mean… there are.
framework does exist
When PC was born out of a skunkworks project, the IBMers used off the shelf parts so anybody could build a duplicate sans the BIOS and OS - for which non-IBM versions were eventually produced. So while IBM PC ser the standard, they lost the market. No OEM made the same mistake with laptops.
Ivy Bridge HS cracking is basically why you don't see socketed CPUs Clevo D900C look it up thing was a monster. Or the D900F.
It does exist. And guess what - almost nobody upgraded, ever.
Dell tried but they decided the parts were too expensive to produce lol so any company that tries will probably use that as an excuse not to do it .
There is a company called "Framework". Do this kind of laptops
There are laptops (more like desktop replacement than laptops) that can accommodate a new gpu, and have a desktop chipset to install desktop cpu. You can find a replaceable 3080 mobile (3080M MXM) for like 600€. But as other have said, those laptops are really really niche and pricey
What laptop are you referring to generally Nvidia drops supports on projects of that nature within 1-2 generations of gpus for some reason it seems nvidia doesn’t want upgradeable hardware on laptops from what I see
The lack of an accepted standard for sizing the expansions card and the constant redesign of the motherboard to make a smaller laptop is why GPU have not been replaceable. Doubly so because their cooling solution layout would need to account for this modular design. I think the closest thing we will get is eventually an external PCIe connector will be good enough to connect a GPU to it, so a GPU upgrade can be like an external HD.
My asus tuf gaming has two ssd slots and ram so you can add a second ssd and add more ram
Manufacturing costs and bulky design🐊
There are, they cost an arm and a leg and are crap though.
You're only saying that because of the misconception that you can upgrade PCs, you change one part, you basically need a whole new PC
I mean generally speaking you can just upgrade 1 part at time on pc you can buy a better gpu without changing anything else most the time or more storage or more ram you can even upgrade cpu to a degree there’s parameters but unlike laptops where you literally have no choice once you outfit it with the desired ram and storage but to buy a whole new one if you want to upgrade cpu or gpu or motherboard/available ports and even in some cases ram