Customs regarding external computer components in laptop bag as carry on

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As long as you travel within the EU (which for now still includes the UK), customs are not involved, the only thing they may check (and that's very very rare) are things that are actually illegal (drugs...) or where there are significant tax differences (cigarettes for instance). They will definitely not care about a laptop, accessories, or a graphics card.

If you enter or exit the EU (or travel between non-EU countries), in theory, they could force you to pay tax and duty on everything you carry beyond your personal allowance (usually around a few hundred euros), and you could then reclaim those when exiting again. In theory, you should use an ATA Carnet to avoid paying tax and duty.

In practice, in most countries (there are exceptions), they really don't care about all the stuff they know you'll bring back home when you leave. What is an issue to them is anything that will remain in the country. If your laptop, accessories, graphics card and whatnot look like you actually use them, they probably won't bat an eyelid. It would be different if you had a brand new laptop still in original shrinkwrapped packaging.

I think you confused security checks and customs in your question, but if it was indeed customs and not security that asked you to turn your laptop on, it was more probably to check that it was actually used (i.e. not waking up to the initial setup screens, but with an account created, applications installed, files present...).

As long as you can show them what you use the card for, I don't quite anticipate an issue.

If you really want to be on the safe side, get an ATA Carnet. But that's a bit cumbersome as it needs to have details of each trip, you often need to show the hardware to customs in your own country before and/or after leaving, you need lots of stamps, it's only valid for specific types of activities, etc. This is usually done only for hardware with prices in the thousands and more.

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