CheckMag | Socketed mobile CPUs – the modular laptop potential that lived in the worst time possible

Remember when mainstream laptops had CPU sockets instead of coming with CPUs soldered-in? No? Well, that's because the last socketed lineup died with Haswell in 2014. Since then, Intel has been packaging their CPUs to be soldered to the motherboard.

Frankly, they had every reason to make that switch. Removing the option of swapping CPUs may not seem like a consumer-friendly move today but for that era's gaming laptops, it was entirely reasonable. Those laptops had to be pretty thick to accommodate the bulky components with little to no room left for cooling. Upgradability was out of the question back then. Could it have been a different story today?

The fall into the niche market, and then some

Eurocom was the only brand to offer both socketed laptop CPUs and MXM-based graphics cards in recent memory. These were desktop-grade chips crammed into a laptop but paired with MXM sockets, they were at the forefront of the laptop upgrade game. The laptops having the thickness of a dictionary however meant that carrying these beasts around was akin to breaking one's back voluntarily. They were only mobile in name, and therefore not an option for those who liked it portable. Eurocom's latest offering packs in an RTX 4080/90 and an i9 HX chip, meaning the company has relegated to using soldered-in components.

Framework offers light and customizable laptops but in spite of all their modular bells and whistles, said laptops still come with soldered-in CPUs with an optional RX 7700S expansion module for their Framework 16 model which, while fast enough, is only upgradable in name. I'm still looking for a laptop that resurrects the idea of CPU sockets and has a modern MXM module to go with it.

Today's potential for upgradeability

Laptops of the olden days were held back by cumbersome designs and inefficient components. Today's offerings, however, have moved past that. I mean, look at the gaming laptop lineups currently available. While 16" cases do teeter on the edge of portability, many of 16" laptops have the ability to cool and fit various Core-H and Ryzen-H chips (up to i9 and Ryzen 9 respectively) while still being relatively compact, in addition to rivaling the power of some desktop CPUs. The same goes for their GPUs, with anything including the mighty RTX 4090 Laptop available on certain models. Considering that such a wide range of components is available for one specific chassis, MXMs and socketed CPUs could make a comeback, but will they? We can always say our chipset overlords are denying us this modularity to line up their own pockets, but where's the fun in that? For now, I'll keep picturing the day in my head when I will finally get to buy my dream laptop with an upgrade potential vast enough for me to be able to turn it into a ship of Theseus.