Eurocom offers “fully upgradeable” gaming laptops, allowing you to change all components with relative ease. However, it is not quite that simple. MeinMMO explains what Eurocom offers and where issues may arise.
Here’s the deal: The manufacturer Eurocom has presented a new gaming laptop, the Sky Z7 R2. Eurocom’s promise is that you can swap every component of the laptop since it is built on a modular system. According to the manufacturer, you can replace almost everything in the device:
- Memory (RAM) and hard drive
- Processor (CPU)
- Graphics card (GPU)
- even the LCD panel should be relatively easy to replace.
Eurocom writes:
As new and improved technologies are introduced within the same chipset, the hardware components of the Eurocom Sky Z7 R2, such as CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, LCD, just to name a few, can all be relatively easily upgraded and exchanged to achieve more performance based on your preferences.
Eurocom, via PCGamer.com
The problem with laptops: The poor ability to upgrade hardware in a laptop is one of the aspects you should consider when purchasing a gaming laptop. In some notebooks, you can replace RAM or hard drive, but a CPU or GPU upgrade is practically impossible for the user.
Eurocom aims to solve the biggest issue of gaming laptops with a modular design.
Theoretically, this means you buy a gaming laptop and can replace components over the years without needing to buy a new device every few years because the performance is no longer sufficient, thus even saving money.
However, it is not quite that simple, as there are some limitations that are more or less obvious.
Gaming laptops are expensive and there is a difficult upgrade situation
Basically, it sounds like a good idea at first, as theoretically you could buy a laptop and use it for many years without performance issues.
But there are also a few problems that hinder the upgrade:
- On one hand, Eurocom’s devices are very expensive. You pay at least 2,000 US dollars for the cheaper models. For powerful gaming laptops with fast hardware, you will pay a similar amount, which pays off in the long run.
- Eurocom uses MXM graphics cards in their laptops. These are special modules that can be relatively easily swapped. However, the modules are not available everywhere and are also quite expensive. A sample on eBay shows that you would have to pay 500 – 700 euros for a used RTX 2080 Mobile (via eBay.de)
- The motherboard chipset also limits upgrades. Since the manufacturer only uses Intel processors, newer Intel processors are not compatible with an older chipset. Therefore, there are clear limits to possible upgrades.
Display connections and the higher power demand of newer hardware are likely to lead many users who want the latest processor and the fastest graphics card to prefer to buy an entirely new laptop.
The manufacturer may also refuse to allow you to upgrade, as the power consumption of a faster graphics card is higher than that of the currently installed graphics card.
That’s why a high-end laptop is the better option: Generally, it is often more cost-effective for many users in the long run to simply buy a high-end model directly rather than a weaker model with upgrade options. Such upgrade models only pay off to some extent in the long run. There are now quite powerful alternatives compared to a modular laptop. Many manufacturers presented gaming laptops with RTX 3000 at CES 2021.
