The Community Post
On the 22nd of January, 2025, three high ranking members of Intel posted to the Intel community forums about modular PC design for repairability and sustainability.
Some Biased Thoughts
I will give my thoughts on the content of the article, but first I will explain why I believe this will go nowhere. Caution: heavy, unsubstantiated speculation
This is a community blog post rather than an official announcement. The three authors are a Manager in Sustainability, a Director in System Design, and the VP of Platform Engineering. This looks to me like a chain of command with decreasing enthusiasm as you go higher up. Maybe the VP had doubts about shareholder approval, so decided to get the community to show support for this before going to the decision-makers.
With those completely baseless statements out of the way, here are my takeaways from the article.
Some Unbiased Thoughts
The authors speak of e-waste, and how little it is recycled, and how the ability to repair your devices is fading. Then they lay out three levels of modularity: factory modularity (changes that can only be made during manufacturing), field modularity (changes that require some specialised skill and equipment), and user modularity (changes that can be made by the user).
Computers contain a motherboard, which is effectively the center of communication between all the components (CPU, GPU, RAM, I/O, and storage). While desktop motherboards allow you to choose from a set of compatible components, laptop motherboards have the CPU, GPU, and I/O affixed permanently. The post proposes a design with modular hardware I/O ports, memory, network I/O modules, and storage, for both laptops and desktops.
Desktops are already more repairable than this, and laptops already have field-swappable memory and storage.
Connections between modules are proposed over Thunderbolt-over-USB-C, which is a very versatile connector and well suited to the task.
How do I know USB-C is suited for this?
Framework
A company called Framework announced modular PCs in February 2021, and began shipping them in July of the same year. They have swappable expansion cards (mostly I/O, but some storage, RAM, and GPUs) that communicate via USB-C, and they announced upgradable graphics in March 2023. In other words, Intel is a day late and a dollar short with their community post, furthering my suspicions that Intel's intentions are not in the modular laptop space.
How Repairable Are They?
Shortcomings first - Framework laptops motherboards still have the CPU and GPU permanently attached to them. Louis Rossmann, owner of a repair business, criticised them for not making schematics available for repair businesses to repair individual modules instead of just swapping the modules out.
And now all the good: literally everything else is somewhere between user-upgradable and field-upgradable. They provide guides that users can follow in order to swap the components on their own. Most components come with a QR code on top of them that links to the instructions. They have also figured out a way to make schematics available to vetted repair businesses, with Louis Rossmann praising them for it.
I am not exaggerating when I say literally everything is upgradable. The list of parts you can swap individually comprises the top cover, bottom cover, a full mainboard, wireless cards (WiFi+bluetooth), RAM, storage, battery, display, connectors, camera, hinges, keyboard plates, touchpads, fingerprint readers, dedicated GPUs, display covers, speakers, cooling modules, antennae, and even extra screws and a screwdriver.
They've done everything.
I have to clarify that the dedicated GPU is only available for the 16 inch laptop model.
They also happened to ship their 11th gen Intel devices with a design flaw that meant their computers lost track of time after shutting down. Laptops left unused for weeks or more would also fail to turn on.
They acknowledged it, initially provided a high field-level fix for it, and later provided a free substitute part which still needed low field-level expertise to install.