Can I upgrade the GPU in my gaming laptop?

Let’s set the scene: you bought a gaming laptop a while back, and after years of playing, it's no longer keeping up with the latest titles. Maybe it’s just barely scraping by the minimum requirements. Or maybe you opted for a standard laptop, got into gaming after the fact, and have been coasting on integrated graphics that just aren’t cutting it anymore. At this point, you're probably wondering if you can upgrade your laptop’s graphics chip similar to how you'd upgrade the graphics card in a desktop PC. The answer is “not quite” ... but the ROG XG Mobile may be the solution.

In short: no, you can't usually upgrade the graphics chip in a laptop. The supermajority of laptop CPUs and GPUs are soldered directly onto the motherboard, and are not designed to be removed. This is a big difference from desktop PCs, which often rely on modular graphics cards that can be easily plugged in and swapped at will. Laptops eschew this bulkier construct to maintain thin form factors. But external graphics docks like the XG Mobile can provide an upgrade to your portable machine.

ROG XG Mobile: Take Your Laptop’s Graphics to the Next Level

Much like an external hard drive can extend the storage of your device, an external GPU (or eGPU) can expand its graphical prowess. The ROG XG Mobile is a series of external graphics cards that not only power up your PC, but are portable enough to take with you anywhere, so you can keep gaming on the go.

As long as your laptop is running Windows 11 24H2 and has a Thunderbolt 5, Thunderbolt 4, or USB4 port, you can plug in the 2025 ROG XG Mobile external graphics card and imbue your computer with the power of a heavyweight, cutting-edge NVIDIA 50 Series Laptop GPU. Unlike many eGPU enclosures, which are bulky and designed to sit on a desk indefinitely, the ROG XG Mobile external GPU is lightweight and roughly the size of a hardcover novel. This means it’s easy to tuck away in a backpack alongside your laptop. And whether you plug it into a gaming laptop, standard laptop, or even a desktop, it doesn’t matter; the XG Mobile will amp up your machine all the same.

Maybe you're rocking an ultra-thin and light ASUS Zenbook S16 and decide you want more graphical power to play the latest games. Not a problem: plug in the ROG XG Mobile and voila, you've got a top-of-the-line gaming machine. Pair this setup with a monitor and you have yourself a truly flexible big-screen gaming arrangement. Thanks to its incredible bandwidth, the ROG XG Mobile offers support for 8K video and can even simultaneously support up to three 4K displays at 144Hz, making multi-monitor setups a cinch.

This year’s ROG XG Mobile configurations offer up to an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, giving you the power to turn your existing laptop into a super-charged gaming machine in an instant. Plus, the 50 Series GPUs’ Blackwell architecture grants you all kinds of high-tech, AI-powered benefits. You’ll gain access to DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, reduce latency by up to 75% with NVIDIA Reflex 2, score next-level graphical fidelity with NVIDIA RTX Neural Shaders, and more. These technologies help your GPU punch above its weight class, letting you play the latest games for years to come while enjoying boosted framerates, improved visuals, and more.

What can you upgrade on a gaming laptop?

Gaming laptop vs desktop: The age-old debate between performance and portability continues. To bridge this gap, ROG is committed to bringing the benefits of desktop PC gaming to the portable laptop form factor. That’s why all our gaming laptops feature upgradeable storage. Games are getting larger by the day, so when your library reaches its limit, we make upgrading easy. Just grab a screwdriver and check out our guides for how to upgrade your ROG Zephyrus laptop, how to upgrade your ROG Strix laptop, and how to upgrade your ROG Flow Z13. Visit the ROG site for additional guidance.

Our ROG Strix laptops are a particularly great demonstration of our ambitious upgradeability efforts, allowing for both storage and RAM upgrades. AAA gaming’s RAM requirements have gone up in recent years, from 8GB, to 16GB, and now even some 32GB requirements. That’s why we make sure you can inject more RAM into your existing ROG Strix laptop whenever the need arises.

While many Strix machines only require a screwdriver to get the job done (as shown in the guide linked above), our 2025 Intel-based Strix SCAR and Strix G are truly special, featuring an all-new tool-less design. This means you can remove your laptop’s bottom panel with the flip of a switch for easy RAM and storage upgrades. You don’t even need a screwdriver to hold the SSD in place, thanks to our Q-latch system. Click here to learn more about what our 2025 ROG Strix SCAR and Strix G gaming laptops bring to the table when it comes to next-gen power, style, and upgradeability.