The New Framework Laptop 16 Has An Upgradable GPU!
A Big Change From The FrameWork Laptop 13
Ars Technica got their hands on the all new FrameWork Laptop 16 and it has something they’ve been hoping for for a long time, a fully removable and replaceable GPU. It’s not just replaceable, it is optional if you don’t want to spend the money on a discrete GPU when you buy your Laptop 16 and possibly upgrade later on. Until now the only way to upgrade a GPU was with an external Thunderbolt enclosure, which also requires external power which makes it a less than portable solution.
The Laptop 16 has a removable Graphics Module, which can be empty except for CPU cooling fans, or you can get one with a RTX 5070 Mobile GPU. That will certainly increase the cost of a Laptop 16, but as mentioned you can buy and install it in the future. That is the biggest of the changes to the Laptop 16 but there has been a general hardware update as well. The motherboard, which remains removable, offers a choice of an AMD Ryzen 7040-series CPU or a newer Ryzen AI 300-series CPU, both of which are compatible with the RTX 5070.
Check out the rest of the specs along with the good and bad points to the FrameWork Laptop 16 here.
The original Framework Laptop 16 was trying to crack a problem that laptop makers have wrestled with on and off for years: Can you deliver a reasonably powerful, portable workstation and gaming laptop that supports graphics card upgrades just like a desktop PC?
