[farmdve]

Remember that Haswell laptops were the last to feature socketed CPUs.

RAM is nice to upgrade, for sure. As well as an SSD, but CPUs are still a must. I would even suggest upgradeable GPUs but I don't think the money is there for the manufacturers. Why allow you to upgrade when you can buy a whole new laptop?

[zamadatix]

I'm not sure I really get much value out of a socketed CPU, particularly in a laptop, vs something like a swappable MB+CPU combo where the CPU is not socketed.

RAM/Storage are great upgrades because 5 years from now you can pop in 4x the capacity at a bargain since it's the "old slow type". CPUs don't really get the same growth in a socket's lifespan.

[immibis]

Socket AM4 had a really good run. Maybe we just have to pressure manufacturers to make old-socket variations of modern processors.

The technical differences between sockets aren't usually huge. Upgrade the memory standard here, add or remove PCIe lanes there. Using new cores with an older memory controller may or may not be doable, but it's quite simple to not connect all the PCIe lanes the die supports.

[seanp2k2]

but then what excuse would you have to throw another $500 at Asus for their latest board that while being the best chance the platform has, still feels like it runs a beta BIOS for the first 9 months of ownership?

[farmdve]

As I said to the comment above, it makes perfect sense. In 2014 we purchased a dual core Haswell. Almost a decade later I revive the laptop by installing more ram, an SSD and the best possible quad core CPU for that laptop. The gain in processing power were massive and made the laptop useable again.

[zamadatix]

I'm sure it's all subjective (e.g. I'm sure someone here even considers the original dual core Haswell more than fine without upgrade in 2024) but going from a dual core Haswell to a quad core Haswell (or even a generation or two beyond, had it been supported) as an upgrade a decade after the fact just doesn't seem worth it to me.

The RAM/SSD sure - a 2 TB consumer SSD wasn't even a possible thing to buy until a year after that laptop would have come out and you can get that for <$100 new now. It won't be the highest performing modern drive but it'll still max out the bus and be many times larger than the original drive. Swap equipment 3 years from now and that's also still a great usable drive rather than a museum piece. Upgrading to a CPU that you could have gotten around the time the laptop came out? Sure, it has twice as many cores... but it still has pretty bad multi core performance and a god awful perf/wattage ratio to be investing new money on a laptop for. It's also a bit of a dead end, in 3 years you'll now have 2 CPUs so ancient you can't really do much with them.

[pavon]

This matches my experience. Every PC I've built over the last 30 years have benefited from memory and storage upgrades through their life, and I've upgraded GPU a few times. However, every time I've looked at upgrading to another CPU with the same socket it is either not a big enough step up, or too much of a power hog relative to the midrange CPU I originally built with. The only time I've replaced CPUs is when I've fried them :)

[seanp2k2]

Yup, so I've adopted a strategy for my past few desktop builds like this:

  - Every time a new ToTL GPU comes out for a new family, buy it at retail price as soon as it launches (so, the first-available ToTL models that were big gains in perf: GTX 1080 Ti, RTX 2080 Ti, RTX 3090, RTX 4090)

  - Every other release cycle, upgrade CPU to the ToTL consumer chip (eg on a 12900KS right now, HEDT like ThreadRipper is super expensive and not usually better for gaming or normal dev stuff). I was with Ryzen since 1800x -> 3950x -> 5950x but Intel is better for the particular game I play 90% of the time.

  - Every time you upgrade, sell the stuff you've upgraded ASAP. If you do this right and never pay above MSRP for parts, you can usually keep running very high-end hardware for minimal TCO.

  - Buy a great case, ToTL >1000w PSU (Seasonic or be quiet!), and ToTL cooling system (currently on half a dozen 140mm Noctua fans and a Corsair 420mm AIO). This should last at least 3 generations of upgrading the other stuff.

  - Storage moves more slowly than the rest, and I've had cycles where I've re-used RAM as well, so again here go for the good stuff to maximize perf, but older SSDs work great for home servers or whatever else.

  - Monitor and other peripherals are outside of the scope of this but should hopefully last at least 3 upgrade generations. I bit when OLED TVs supported 4K 120hz G-Sync, so I've got a 55" LG G1 that I'm still quite happy with and not wanting to immediately upgrade, though I do wish they made it in a 42" size, and 16:10 would be just perfect.

[farmdve]

Maybe it is subjective. For me it made perfect sense. I could not afford a new laptop but could afford rejuvenating an old one.

[Night_Thastus]

On a laptop it's not very practical.

Because you can't swap the motherboard, your options for CPUs are going to be quite limited. Generally, only higher-tier CPUs of that same generation - which draw more power and require more cooling.

Generally a laptop is built designed to provide a specific budget of power to the CPU and has a limited amount of cooling.

Even if you could swap out the CPU, it wouldn't work properly if the laptop couldn't provide the necessary power or cooling.

[farmdve]

I can't say I agree. Back in 2014 a laptop was purchased with a dual-core haswell CPU. 8 years later I revive the laptop by upgrading the CPU to almost the best possible CPU, which is a 4-core 8 thread CPU or 4-core 4 threads, I am unsure which of these it was, but the speed boost was massive. This is how you keep old tech alive.

And the good thing about mobile CPUs is that they have almost the same TDP across the various dual-quad versions(or whatever is the norm today).

[Rohansi]

How old was the new CPU though? Probably the same or similar generation to what it originally came with since the socket needs to be the same.

IMO the switch to an SSD would have been the biggest boost.

[farmdve]

Same gen but with 2 more cores + Hyperthreading

[yencabulator]

> On a laptop it's not very practical.

> Because you can't swap the motherboard,

https://frame.work/ has entered the chat.

[leduyquang753]

The Framework laptop 16 features replaceable GPU.

[freedomben]

I'm writing this from my Framework 16 with GPU and it is the best laptop I've ever known. It's heavy and big and not the most portable, but I knew that would be the case going into it and I have no regrets

[FloatArtifact]

> The Framework laptop 16 features replaceable GPU.

In a way I don't mind having non-replaceable ram in the framework ecosystem as an option. Put simply because the motherboard itself is modular and needs to be upgraded for the CPU. At that point though I would prefer on integrated ram CPU/GPU.

[farmdve]

These are very obscure, or perhaps I mean to say niche laptop manufacturers. We need this standard for all of them, HP, Lenovo, Acer etc.

[nwah1]

Framework open sources most of their schematics, if I understand correctly. So it should be possible for others to use the same standard, if they wanted to. (they don't want to)

[nrp]

Published here: https://github.com/FrameworkComputer/ExpansionBay

[Dylan16807]

The form factor isn't great for being a vendor-neutral thing.

If we can convince the companies to actually try for compatibility, then a revival of MXM is probably a significantly better option.

[Manabu-eo]

MXM was problematic because the inflexibility of the form factor to upgrade a given system. If your laptop size, power and cooling was designed for a gtx1030 you couldn't replace it with a gtx1080 module.

In framework's case, the cooling is integrated in the gpu module, and both it's size, cooling and power deliver can be adjusted depending on the gpu power.

[Dylan16807]

I don't mind having a wattage limit on the slot. That's easy to factor into purchasing decisions. The much bigger issues are how custom each kind was, with very limited competition on individual modules and a big conflict of interest in wanting to sell you a new laptop.

A friend of mine was betrayed on this by MSI, where laptops with GTX 900 series GPUs were promised upgrades and then when the 1000 series came out they didn't offer any. I think they did make weak excuses about power use, but a 1060 would have fit within the power budget fine and been an enormous upgrade. A few people have even gotten 1060 modules to work with BIOS edits, so it wasn't some other incompatibility. It seems like they saw they couldn't offer a 1080 and threw out the entire project and promise, and then offered a mild discount on a brand new laptop, no other recourse.

[seanp2k2]

They've done upgradeable laptop GPUs before with MXM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_PCI_Express_Module

Looks like the best card they have out with MXM right now is a Quadro RTX 5000 Mobile which seem to be going for ~$1000 on eBay.

[sojuz151]

I would say it would make the most sense to have a replaceable entire ram+cpu+gpu assemble. Just have some standard form factors and connectors for external connectors.

This way, you could keep power consumption low and be able to upgrade cpu to a new generation

[immibis]

Laptops have always been trading size for upgradeability and other factors, and soldering everything is the way to make them tiny. If you ask me they've gotten too extreme in size. The first laptops were way too bulky, but they hit a sweet spot around 2005-2010, being just thick enough to hold all those D-Sub connectors (VGA, serial, etc).

And soldering stuff to the board is the default way to make something when upgradeability isn't a feature.