A mid-lifetime upgrade where you pop in a new GPU, fill up any unpopulated ram slots, or add in a new drive, can be nice. CPUs last a really long time nowadays.
I would hope that this is more common than GP thinks, and this is also something I look for when I'm buying laptops- if they don't have an okay amount of extra PCIe lanes laying around, I don't want it- because they can become really fun projects (ie strap a GPU to it and get a few more years of Minecraft out of it, or use it as a network appliance with a built-in UPS)
That’s a cool idea. How do you get to the PCIe lanes?
I’ve been hoping thunderbolt would make GPU enclosures more of a thing, but they seem to still be bottlenecked by even that pretty good interface (last I checked, at least).
In the past, the thing to look for was laptops with multiple mini PCIe connectors (generally for WiFi cards and sometimes cellular) but now the thing to look for is M.2 slots with PCIe on them. Generally the easiest thing to do is to yank out the wifi card and add your own thing there, and then for networking you can just use either onboard or a decent type-c gigabit dongle. Some laptops have spots for multiple SSD's and you can just use one of those instead.
Keep in mind that even a basic PCIe card can pull up to 75 watts and that you'll probably need some sort of external power supply. There are two main routes you can go- use a second external laptop power brick, or what I did- slap an entire computer power supply in there.
I bought an SFX power supply from EVGA, who has an awesome B-stock program where you can get returned / refurbished stuff for cheaper than normal and it still comes with a warranty. If you do decide to use a computer PSU, I'd highly recommend one that's modular, because you won't need a bunch of the wires and they take up a lot of space quickly.
To tell the power supply to turn on, you can either use the 'paper clip trick' to jumper it on, or get an "ADD2PSU" board (basically a relay on a PCB) and use a USB cable to power the relay and you should be good to go.
If you use a laptop power supply, you'll either need something that's 12V or get step down boards or a Pico PSU or something like that.
The thing to search up is "M.2 NGFF to PCIe" or something like that. I'd recommend getting ones with some kind of cable and an open back of slot design so that you don't wind up needing two adapters for one thing.
Adapters and cables are available from the usual suspects- Amazon, eBay, and Aliexpress will all have what you want.
This is a lot of information, but this is legitimately pretty easy to do as long as you make sure you check all the boxes- PCI lanes, external power, and something to keep the new stuff you're strapping on safe.
Right. At which point, why pay the cost of the rest of the PC being modular? Both the $800 and the $200 would be smaller amounts in the case of an integrated system.
Sure. But if the entire integrated system can cost a similar amount to the most expensive component you might upgrade in a modular system, there’s little practical difference.
Depends how good the original was if it’s worthwhile. GPUs don’t need that much from the rest of the machine as long as it’s somewhat sensible for gaming. Especially at 1440p or 4k the GPU is a huge portion of the performance
My current PC is using an old 4th gen i7 with an RTX 3060Ti and it keeps trucking along just fine, even with my 144Hz display. It used to have a GTX 960 but its 2GB of VRAM were anemic for some ML stuff I wanted to run + the newer Nvenc is a massive upgrade in quality. I don't see any reason to upgrade anything else.
Amd socket AM4 supports 5 generations of Ryzen processors. AM5 came out with 7000 series and it will be supported by 8000 series as well. Upgrades are easy and give a significant performance boost.
Power standards aren't changing that much. Yes, there's 12VHPWR now, but that's only on the top end gpus, and adapters exist. ATX 12VO might become a thing, but feels like OEM standardization.
Before that, the last big change was Haswell low power states ten years ago. If your old PSU didn't meet that standard, you would probably be ok if you just disable the lower power sleep states.
