Why Are Laptops Moving to Soldered RAM? (digitaltrends.com) 219
This year Dell moved to soldered RAM for its XPS 14 and 16, writes Digital Trends, which "makes it impossible to upgrade, or even repair."
"This was a big change from the past, where the XPS 15 and 17 were both celebrated for their upgradability." Of course, Dell isn't the first to make the transition. In fact, they're one of the last, which is what makes the decision so much tougher to swallow. Where soldered RAM was previously limited to just MacBooks and ultrabooks, it's now affecting most high-performance laptops for gaming as well. Even the fantastic ROG Zephyrus G14 moved to soldered memory this year.
After two months of research, the article's author acknowledges "there are tangible benefits to companies using soldered RAM, and all the people I spoke to while writing this agree that they outweigh the downsides, but how that applies to the end-user is a bit more complicated." If there's one thing and one thing only that soldered RAM is indisputably good for, it's saving space. [Haval Othman, a senior director of experience engineering at HP] explained the benefits, saying: "If battery life, mobility, form factor (thin and light), and power efficiency are my priority among other design choices, then my mind immediately goes to soldered RAM; because that's where soldered RAM can be beneficial and power-efficient, which will lead to longer battery life. Plus, it's going to give me more space on the motherboard, so I can design the product thinner and lighter. [...] If we want a thin product, the trade-off is soldering more of the devices onto the board."
This tracks. In a laptop, there's only so much space that can be used for components, and that free space grows smaller by the year to make ultrabooks possible. They're an industrywide trend that was first popularized by Apple, and the rest of the laptop manufacturing world quickly caught on. Each year, laptops are released thinner and lighter, and that means having to squeeze the components together in new, innovative ways... Soldering the memory down onto the motherboard means that it can be attached almost anywhere within the laptop instead of being slotted into a specific part of it. It effectively makes the laptop thinner by cutting back on the space that the RAM module takes up. The space saved by soldering memory can be used for other things, such as a bigger battery....
All three companies that I spoke to stress the form factor much more than any tangible cost benefits... Stuart Gill, director of global media relations, campaigns, and corporate content [said] "Both soldered and socketed RAM designs are now quite mature. As a result, we see no impact on the manufacturing process and, therefore, the cost to the consumer."
SO-DIMM chips also have "relatively limited bandwidth," according to HP's Othman, "while when you solder the memory chips onto the board, you can build it for a much wider bandwidth."
But the article ends by looking to the future. "The good news is that SO-DIMM memory might eventually be replaced by the CAMM2 standard." Recently approved by JEDEC, CAMM2 is said to be significantly thinner, and it'll be available both in soldered and non-soldered variants. Using CAMM2 will allow laptops to stack up to 128GB of RAM, and the frequencies are said to be going up, too. CAMM2 can also activate dual-channel memory with just a single module.
"This was a big change from the past, where the XPS 15 and 17 were both celebrated for their upgradability." Of course, Dell isn't the first to make the transition. In fact, they're one of the last, which is what makes the decision so much tougher to swallow. Where soldered RAM was previously limited to just MacBooks and ultrabooks, it's now affecting most high-performance laptops for gaming as well. Even the fantastic ROG Zephyrus G14 moved to soldered memory this year.
After two months of research, the article's author acknowledges "there are tangible benefits to companies using soldered RAM, and all the people I spoke to while writing this agree that they outweigh the downsides, but how that applies to the end-user is a bit more complicated." If there's one thing and one thing only that soldered RAM is indisputably good for, it's saving space. [Haval Othman, a senior director of experience engineering at HP] explained the benefits, saying: "If battery life, mobility, form factor (thin and light), and power efficiency are my priority among other design choices, then my mind immediately goes to soldered RAM; because that's where soldered RAM can be beneficial and power-efficient, which will lead to longer battery life. Plus, it's going to give me more space on the motherboard, so I can design the product thinner and lighter. [...] If we want a thin product, the trade-off is soldering more of the devices onto the board."
This tracks. In a laptop, there's only so much space that can be used for components, and that free space grows smaller by the year to make ultrabooks possible. They're an industrywide trend that was first popularized by Apple, and the rest of the laptop manufacturing world quickly caught on. Each year, laptops are released thinner and lighter, and that means having to squeeze the components together in new, innovative ways... Soldering the memory down onto the motherboard means that it can be attached almost anywhere within the laptop instead of being slotted into a specific part of it. It effectively makes the laptop thinner by cutting back on the space that the RAM module takes up. The space saved by soldering memory can be used for other things, such as a bigger battery....
All three companies that I spoke to stress the form factor much more than any tangible cost benefits... Stuart Gill, director of global media relations, campaigns, and corporate content [said] "Both soldered and socketed RAM designs are now quite mature. As a result, we see no impact on the manufacturing process and, therefore, the cost to the consumer."
SO-DIMM chips also have "relatively limited bandwidth," according to HP's Othman, "while when you solder the memory chips onto the board, you can build it for a much wider bandwidth."
But the article ends by looking to the future. "The good news is that SO-DIMM memory might eventually be replaced by the CAMM2 standard." Recently approved by JEDEC, CAMM2 is said to be significantly thinner, and it'll be available both in soldered and non-soldered variants. Using CAMM2 will allow laptops to stack up to 128GB of RAM, and the frequencies are said to be going up, too. CAMM2 can also activate dual-channel memory with just a single module.
Smaller size or more battery (Score:3)
Re:Smaller size or more battery (Score:4, Funny)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*breathes*
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
That's a good one....
Re:Smaller size or more battery (Score:5, Informative)
It should be lost on no one however that when Apple backtracked a little on that whole "thin at any cost" to actually put a proper magsafecharger, hdmi port and some usbc plugs, sales skyrocketed again.. People actually want a useful device, not just "woah, thats skinny!". Plus, frankly, aesthetically, a slightly fatter laptop is preferable to a slightly thinner one and a whole nest of dongles.
Unfortunately I dont see a sane path to getting pluggable ram back without backtracking on the main selling point of the 'apple silicon' range, which is to gain performance by putting it all on the same die.
Re:Smaller size or more battery (Score:5, Insightful)
It gives you MORE electronic waste too, I recently had to scrap a perfectly otherwise good computer due to an erratic memory cell causing BSODs.
If it hadn't had the soldered RAM then I could just have changed the memory module or even just removed it and I'd have a working computer.
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This really bugs me. My old Macbook 2011 made it nearly a decade partly by me being able to flip on its back, and replace or update parts at will. It was long a machine in decline, as a mangled third party repair had left it so the back case never quite screwed on right again leaving it structurally a little unstable but in the time I had it I upgraded its HDD to a an SSD, upgraded the ram to either 16 or 32gb (Cant remember, might have just been 16), completely replace the wireless daughterboard with one o
Bandwidth (Score:3)
These days all high performance computing is limited by just one thing: ram bandwidth. And with the tradition to AI on gpu this issue got worse. Apple is the only company that is making integrated gpu/cpu memory that is also high bandwidth. Not like the bad old days where integrated memory just meant cheapo motherboard without dedicated video memory.
Memory is in fact moving into the system chip for even better bandwidth so of course it has to be soldered! That's not even the right terminology.
The real qu
Re: Bandwidth (Score:4, Funny)
It takes courage to use cheaper components and charge a higher price anyways.
Re:Bandwidth (Score:4, Insightful)
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Good gawd, thin laptops are a curse.
Listen manufacturers. I don't want to hear about soldered ram until you figure out how to have a thin and light laptop that has desktop performance without any cooling fans. Because the trade off for "thin" is "loud, hot and short lived"
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Meh. I'd like to have datacentre performance without any cooling fans. And less than three pounds. Thanks.
Nonsense anyway. (Score:2)
You can put the dram's socket on the edge of the motherboard instead of the top and make the laptop just as thin as before. And the difference in power efficiency might be as much as a minute on the battery's charge. Maybe.
No, the real difference is they can save a dollar, maybe not even that much, by soldering the ram instead of socketing it. If they can convince you that the soldered laptop is as valuable as the socketed one, that's a dollar's competitive advantage.
Re:Nonsense anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not so much the dollar difference in BOM, it's the fact they can force you to buy the memory upgrade at the arbitrary price set by the mfg.
If onboard memory is cheaper, why is every memory upgrade for soldered-on RAM more expensive than the discreet DIMM cost at retail? It's a sales scam, nothing more, nothing less. The saved space argument is dumb and, with CAMM2, outdated anyway.
Because almost no one upgrades? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, yeah, you upgrade with 3rd party RAM - it still adds up to almost no one overall.
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I also hear soldered RAM make everything faster since you can then skip some interfaces for memory access and not bother about supporting many RAM chips.
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I also hear soldered RAM make everything faster since you can then skip some interfaces for memory access and not bother about supporting many RAM chips.
Wonder how “fast” it is to replace that skip-some-interfaces memory module when it goes bad?
Speed is relative when you’re staring at a brick on a Thursday afternoon, with the big sales pitch due Friday morning.
Even the layman could fumble their way through a SODIMM replacement in a matter of an hour. Future laptop repairs are looking about as expedient as car repairs.
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The idea is to have backups in the cloud and then replace the whole laptop, at least, that's they wish for /s
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They seem to offer repairs, replacing main board (Score:2)
The idea is to have backups in the cloud and then replace the whole laptop, at least, that's they wish for /s
Well, actually they seem quite willing to replace the mainboard that has the soldered storage and soldered RAM.
... I wonder if you can purchase an upgrade during such repairs?
Hmmm
Re: Because almost no one upgrades? (Score:3)
I use a Chromebook. The dream is real.
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Oh also, when I wrote faster, it also means cheaper to make for the same speed. :)
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You don’t solder SMD RAM? Kids coming up now days.
Re:Because almost no one upgrades? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure those are also benefits, but it mostly makes things faster because you don't have connectors in the way. Solder joints can be a pain for high speed, low power signals. Actual connectors are much worse, and if those connectors lead to off-board modules that's even worse. And actual connectors that are accessible without disassembling everything (i.e. the traces are likely even longer) worse yet.
First reply here has more detail:
https://electronics.stackexcha... [stackexchange.com]
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Indeed, it's the laws of physics getting in the way now. At the speed RAM operates at, the wire connecting every bit to the CPU has to be exactly the same length as all the other ones, or the bits arrive out of sync and get confused with the next read/write. That's why PCIe switched to using multiple serial lanes, all independent so that bits can arrive at different times without issue, and in fact at the speed it operates there will be multiple bits on the wire between the CPU and the slot at the same time
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You hear wrong. Except for special purpose cases such as Apple matching selected ram with their CPUs, there's nothing unique about soldered on RAM chips in a laptop, and there's nothing especially fast about them, either configured or benchmarked.
There is *potential* for it, but it just isn't happening outside of a few edge cases, and we're a long way from maxing out the speed limits of the SODIMM interface.
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Well, I also hear some CPU now have all their RAM on chip with no external RAM at all, that should be fast enough /s
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BIOS spends so much time faffing about and twiddling it's thumbs, the time to bring up the RAM is lost in the noise.
People definitely upgrade (Score:3)
A surefire way to build obsolescence into your product so that you're not losing sales down the road is to solder in ram. This is especially true for Apple devices.
As an added bonus you can't just buy
Its really upgrade now, not later (Score:3)
A surefire way to build obsolescence into your product so that you're not losing sales [to upgraded used systems] down the road is to solder in ram. This is especially true for Apple devices.
Yes and no. A surefire way to avoid obsolescence is to upgrade RAM at the time of the original purchase, build to order. Basically suppliers are pushing us to upgrade now, not later.
Also, upgrading at original purchase does not harm the used market, it might actually help it. Fewer flaky systems. How many of those folks who upgraded their own RAM went on to run memtest for 48 hours?
Personally I've doubled RAM at original purchase in the three Mac laptops I've had these last 20 years. 4 -> 8, 8 -
Do-it-yourself OK for desktops, not laptops (Score:3)
found the mark
Nope. Its a minor savings, and the advantages of do-it-yourself on the desktop side doesn't carry to over the laptop side.
Even building your own desktop is not really saving much money, its really about getting to pick all the parts individually and making sure they all have good Windows and Linux support. That's what makes do-it-yourself worth it, you get a reliable Windows or Linux box. But you don't have that option with laptops, you are largely stuck with whatever Dell chose. You might as well upgrad
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"Nope. "
Yup.
"It's a minor savings"
$300 vs $45. Go back to school and learn some basic math.
Found the mark.
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Future drnb response: "Yeah, yeah, you install linux - it still adds up to almost no one overall."
Just because you choose to ignore a feature provided to you doesn't mean that others should be denied that choice because of "market forces."
Linux usage grew during the era of signed binaries (Score:4, Insightful)
Future ./ headline: "Why Microsoft is locking PCs to only run Windows"
Future drnb response: "Yeah, yeah, you install linux - it still adds up to almost no one overall."
A straw man, and rather ill-informed at that. My built from parts PCs have been dual booting Windows and Linux since the 90s. You are just recycling the paranoia circulated when UEFI was first discussed. Linux usage actually grew during the era of signed binaries.
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This may be true, but the Dell XPS line is mostly preferred by power users, who are much more likely to upgrade than others.
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This may be true, but the Dell XPS line is mostly preferred by power users, who are much more likely to upgrade than others.
Dell, like Apple, offers build to order upgrades at initial purchase. I doubled my RAM when I had to buy a Dell laptop for school. I'd do the same for an XPS laptop today.
For desktops I've been building my own from parts since the 90s. But for laptops I'll do the factory upgrade.
Retail profits (Score:5, Insightful)
Soldered RAM is not being utilized to save costs at the manufacturing stage, it's being done so that consumers have to anticipate their future RAM needs when buying the machine and pay a premium for models with upgraded specs. If you buy the base model, then the profits materialize when you're forced to buy a new machine sooner due to planned obsolescence.
"Thin and light" is just how companies like Apple have always spun soldered RAM as some kind of benefit, but the reality is they're either gonna hit you up now if you want a machine with a decent amount of RAM, or they'll hit you up tomorrow for a whole new computer. It's insidious, but highly profitable.
Re:Retail profits (Score:5, Interesting)
Framework computers have never looked better. I've known about them for awhile. For kicks I just tried their component configurator for the first time, and it's everything I want. The price for added RAM, disk, etc. isn't close to rotten Apple prices for the same parts, and not far off from Amazon ala carte prices.
https://frame.work/ [frame.work]
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Framework computers have never looked better. I've known about them for awhile. For kicks I just tried their component configurator for the first time, and it's everything I want. The price for added RAM, disk, etc. isn't close to rotten Apple prices for the same parts, and not far off from Amazon ala carte prices.
https://frame.work/ [frame.work]
If I still had mod points you'd have some coming your way. I logged on just to say exactly the same thing about Framework laptops. In fact, I'm saving for one now.
Re:Retail profits (Score:5, Insightful)
Until, well about now they has been no socketed form factor for LPDDR. SODIMM just doesn't have the electrical spec to slow for it. The impedance of the contacts is too variable for the very low voltages sand high frequencies. This is why the new form factor has a much higher contact pressure. Also it's easier to get consistent trace lengths which helps too.
This isn't a grand conspiracy, laptops with SODIMM have serious power draw penalties.
Re: Retail profits (Score:2)
Dunno, I think the reason Apple likes to sell 8gb machines is because their already finicky SSD wears out faster.
Re: Retail profits (Score:2)
The SSD will not fail within the warranty period, which is all Apple really cares about. But if you're constantly running 20+ chrome tabs for 3 years, along with any other memory heavy application, which is fairly common, that could very well do it.
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The vast majority of users never upgraded laptops in the first place even with removable memory and drives, they would throw it out or at best offload it onto the user market.
It's more likely that whoever buys a used laptop would have upgraded the memory.
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This isn't a grand conspiracy, laptops with SODIMM have serious power draw penalties.
Are those power draw penalties so high that there would be an ROI on the cost of replacing the entire laptop instead of repairing or upgrading? Would the engineers who designed this be shocked to find out that this restricts repairs and upgrades?
If the answer to those questions is "no", then:
The OP didn't call that a "grand conspiracy." What's with the change up?
Re:Retail profits (Score:5, Insightful)
One man's spin is another man's critical feature. I have never upgraded RAM in a laptop. Never. I've owned plenty of laptops. Never felt the need or desire to. On the other hand I do like laptops that are small, light, or have bigger internal batteries, something that is possible when the main board is made smaller by not wasting space on a connector I won't ever use.
It may not suit you, but don't pretend just because it doesn't that it is "spin". These are actual features to some of us.
Re: Retail profits (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm pretty rough on my laptops. None of them has ever lasted more than 4 years. The upgrade cycle never has a chance to kick in. I definitely prefer longer battery life to upgradeable RAM. Because that battery is the only thing to go which drives me to purchase a replacement every time.
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Great. Now I dare you to justify soldered-in SSDs.
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There are two aspects to it.
First, RAM slots have traditionally be huge things. It might not seem like much, but in this day and age of super thin laptops (think like the popular MacBook Air or the ThinkPad X1 Carbon series), the RAM slot is simply too big. You might think that's a problem you don't have, but thin laptops are nice to have if you want something to carry easily with you all day. Adding the RAM slot can easily double the thickness.
Second, I'm sure manufacturers have done the research that few
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Different laptops for different markets. People who buy workstations do appreciate upgrade capacity, things like RAM sockets and NVMe slots. They are usually less concerned about running the RAM at the absolute maximum speed too, as for workstation loads the difference between DDR5 5600 and 6600 is basically zero. ECC is likely to be more important.
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Re: (Score:2)
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I'd imagine that the next version of Microsoft Office will come with a bunch of AI bloatware (because that's where the company is "innovating" now) that will increase its minimum memory footprint from 6 GB to 12 GB of memory. Suddenly, all of those new Macbooks and Dell XPS systems that only came with 8 GB of memory soldered to the motherboard will become expensive paperweights if/when you need a software upgrade.
Deep breath... (Score:2)
Not everyone wants thin over everything!
I own a Dell (switched from Macs) precisely because they could be upgraded. Guess the next laptop won't be a Dell.
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I switched from Dell to Mac back around 2003 - in part because of OS X, but also because my Inspiron with its power brick felt like I was carrying an extra 20 pounds on my shoulder. My first MacBook Pro, with its relatively tiny power brick, weighed half what the Dell did.
Of course those Macs were still somewhat user upgradable. I remember some of them made it trivial even to replace the hard drive.
I'm conflicted. I don't really believe there's a grand conspiracy here, but I did like being able to work on m
Re: Deep breath... (Score:2)
That's basically because of how small it is. I have a 16" mbp and a 17" lg gram. When the MBP is in my bag, I definitely notice; the thing is a brick. The LG though? Not at all. In addition to the bigger screen, it's also matte so no fucking around with glare.
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It's hard to avoid. This place is full of them :)
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Sounds like they're trying out the concept of soldered-in ram on the XPS, which is a consumer-grade model. If they start trying this bullshit on the business line (Latitude) I suspect corporate IT departments are going to revolt.
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But not enough to be of interest to the large vendors. For the 1% of users who know how to upgrade memory and actually plan to do so, there are some niche vendors out there.
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Not everyone wants thin over everything!
I own a Dell (switched from Macs) precisely because they could be upgraded. Guess the next laptop won't be a Dell.
Who said thing? In many cases the benefit isn't thin, the benefit is shorter. Shorter motherboards mean more space for larger batteries. Everyone wants larger batteries, even you.
That said if upgradability is important to you then be selective. There's enough choice on the market for you to be. Just don't pretend that your view is common, the overwhelming majority of people do not upgrade laptop components.
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There's a difference between you making assumptions about everyone else's desires and them warning the company that their decision may cost them customers / future profit. One is an opinion, the other is a vote.
Who wants a thinner, lighter laptop? (Score:5, Insightful)
But why do people want a thinner, lighter laptop? The pushback from high-end users against the Retina MacBook Pro was so bad that even Apple has realized that making laptops thinner isn't automatically a good idea.
Lighter, maybe, but you're not going to make enough weight difference by removing SO-DIMM slots to be noticeable.
And battery life is almost entirely a red herring. A RAM chip draws the same amount of power to keep it running and refreshed whether it is soldered onto the motherboard or onto a separate SO-DIMM. You do save a tiny bit of power on the memory bus itself by not sending the signals as far, but that tiny savings would be entirely lost in the noise compared with, for example, the power consumed by the CPU itself.
No, there are really only three reasons:
Manufacturers love that last one. Why would they want to make it easier for consumers to keep using their products longer? That means they make less money. If consumers are still willing to buy computers with non-upgradeable, non-replaceable RAM, why wouldn't they take maximum advantage of that to earn more revenue?
The only time I could see it being a real benefit to users is when the RAM is integrated into the CPU, because that could provide significantly lower memory bus latency and maybe higher memory bus speeds. But even that would only really be beneficial for users who frequently do some operation that is impacted significantly by memory latency, and only if the CPU's pipeline is efficient enough to take advantage of the lower latency.
Otherwise, soldered-on RAM seems like a rather large net negative from my perspective.
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But why do people want a thinner, lighter laptop?
uh... I do. I am using a dell precision 3480 as my daily laptop. And I find it too big and too heavy.
Ideally I'd like my laptop to be under 3lbs. Seems like XPS can be at that weight though.
Re: Who wants a thinner, lighter laptop? (Score:2)
The only time I could see it being a real benefit to users is when the RAM is integrated into the CPU, because that could provide significantly lower memory bus latency and maybe higher memory bus speeds. But even that would only really be beneficial for users who frequently do some operation that is impacted significantly by memory latency, and only if the CPU's pipeline is efficient enough to take advantage of the lower latency.
This doesn't make any sense to me. People keep saying this but the problem in my mind is that the CAS delay takes place over multiple cycles. So how could proximity make THAT much of a difference? If this was SRAM, like what CPU cache is, that would be reasonable. But DRAM? Just doesn't make sense. I'd be curious to see some actual benchmarks.
In programming this is a common thing I see while optimizing. Some people want to optimize everything, but when you have one function running async that can't finish u
Re:Who wants a thinner, lighter laptop? (Score:4, Interesting)
One more: since you can't upgrade later for $150 you have to pay $450 more up front if you'll ever want more.
Better to buy no-name OEM from Taiwan at this point than big American brands.
Re:Who wants a thinner, lighter laptop? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's to make more money on pricing tiers.
8GB model $999
16GB model $1299
32GB model $1599
64GB model $1999
You can buy 64GB yourself for around $100, but will have to pay $1000 extra if you want 64GB baked in.
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Yep, pretty obvious. Another crap product type that I will not buy.
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But why do people want a thinner, lighter laptop?
Why not. Some of us travel with the things and don't have them sitting on our office desk. I really wish my company would buy an Macbook Air or a Surface, but I'm stuck with a bulky Dell.
Lighter, maybe, but you're not going to make enough weight difference by removing SO-DIMM slots to be noticeable.
No. The difference is thickness and total real-estate. You may not want a thin laptop, but I bet you like one with extra battery life. I certainly do, and that could be related to me having just checked in for my flight tomorrow. The board space taken by soldered on RAM is significantly less than that taken by a SODIMM modu
Re: Who wants a thinner, lighter laptop? (Score:2)
Interestingly, I feel the exact opposite about thinner vs lighter. I am strong enough to carry any post 1990s laptop without any hassle. But I do like them to be thin so it fits in bags with all my other shit. Give me a 30 lb laptop that fits in a folder and I'll be fine. As long as it also magically has a good keyboard.
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Give me a 30 lb laptop that fits in a folder and I'll be fine.
I'm pretty sure you'll slice your fingers off when you try to pick it up. :-D
Bad Ram (Score:3)
I've diagnosed more than one laptop by pulling each RAM stick individually, and the problem suddenly goes away. Amazon overnight a new stick, and, Voilà!, fixed. Cheaply and quickly. Personally, I haven't had good luck with the RAM checker programs.
Is there any one single component in a laptop more likely to cause problems than bad RAM?
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Yes
1 - batteries, they will wear out.
2 - ssds, not quite as bad as in the mechanical drive days, but they can still wear out.
Devil and Angel on shoulder (Score:2)
Devil: you have never, in 30 years of laptop ownership, upgraded components or had RAM fail. You like thin and light, as long as performance doesn't suffer. RAM shortage wasn't the reason to change the machine - CPU speed/architecture and display technology improvements were and they really can't easily be upgraded. Last three machines all had the same amount of RAM.
Angel: but things should be repairable and upgradeable, just because.
Angel doesn't stand a chance. Maybe some buyers of vintage gear will one d
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Framework, not Foundation, doh.
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So yes, there are people who upgrade their laptops. But we might be a tiny minority. And given the way we use our laptops, we will run into problems in 2034, when ten year old laptops can't be upgraded anymore. At the time, I am close to retiring age. So right now, I don't
Look this is a money grab (Score:3)
I'm fine with putting the fan on the mobo, can the laptop makers be kind and put a socket on the board? It's like an extra dollar, yeah the design costs more time because the routing and timing are harder. If really appreciate it.
More like profit driven benefits (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the benefits for using something like soldered RAM are benefits for the business not the consumer. For example, in my experience the first thing you will need to upgrade on a computer is the RAM. If the ability to upgrade is removed, it increases the frequency that a consumer has to buy a new machine from the business which in turn increases profits. Perfectly usable laptops will go to landfill much sooner after an OS upgrade or two demands more memory. "What's that? That 12th Gen i7 is now useless because it only shipped with 8GB of RAM?! Oh that's a shame... but hey, we have a 13th Gen i7 with 16GB of RAM for only $2000 for your convenience.
If businesses really want to give the consumer better battery life like they always claim. They could easily put in a slightly bigger battery (or gasp, have a hot swappable battery!), or use a more power efficient screen technology, or a better system cooling for example. I think the amount of power saved by using soldered on RAM compared to a dedicated slot is negligible at best compared to the other changes I mentioned.
Also, can businesses stop with the environmentalist virtue signaling already? With all those stupid marketing campaigns showing how much Apple/Lenovo/Dell care for the planet. If businesses really cared about the environment, they would make their laptops MORE upgradeable, and not less to maximize the useful life of the machine, while minimizing unneeded waste, production and wasting natural resources. Oh, but hey... they are using recycled cardboard now when packaging their laptops... great job.
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Also, can businesses stop with the environmentalist virtue signaling already? With all those stupid marketing campaigns showing how much Apple/Lenovo/Dell care for the planet. If businesses really cared about the environment, they would make their laptops MORE upgradeable, and not less to maximize the useful life of the machine, while minimizing unneeded waste, production and wasting natural resources. Oh, but hey... they are using recycled cardboard now when packaging their laptops... great job.
This kind of greenwashing is terrible. It lulls the consumer into a false sense of security that "something is being done" and therefore they don't need to change any aspect of their lifestyle or purchasing habits.
HP Z-Book Has Upgradeable RAM (Score:2)
Asked and answered (Score:2)
TFT and ATS say it all...
Why Are Laptops Moving to Soldered RAM?
[ie: Increases new laptop sales.]
Thinkpad T480 - Framework (Score:2)
My last "real" laptop was a Thinkpad T480. It was, at the time, the most upgradeable/serviceable machine on the market. RAM, SSD/HD (if you had the right proprietary adapter for M.2) and WiFi (if you didn't run afoul of Lenovo's BIOS "whitelist" restrictions). I'd have continued to use it if I could have bought reputable replacement batteries at a price in that was in the same ballpark as reasonable.
Sadly, you cannot. A set of batteries would have cost more than the machine is worth in any configuration.
So,
FTFY (Score:2)
If there's one thing and one thing only that soldered RAM is indisputably good for, it's saving space.
If there's one thing and one thing only that soldered RAM is indisputably good for, it's increasing profits.
First, memory sockets with their gold-plated contacts represent a not-insignificant cost. Second, inserting the RAM into a socket is an added production step, and for cost reasons manufacturers do everything they can to minimize those added steps. Third, when the user can't upgrade RAM, the computer becomes obsolete sooner, so it gets replaced sooner. Fourth, when people buy a model that has more fact
Why Are Laptops Moving to Soldered RAM? (Score:2)
To make them disposal and irreparable that's why. It used to be called planned obsolescence but today's more fitting terminology is enshitification.
The irony is that Dell created CAMM to solve this. (Score:2)
The article talks about Dell moving to soldered RAM to solve weight and size issues. Dell created the CAMM standard in the first place to solve these very issues. They made the standard available.
But now, after the JEDEC have settled on the CAMM2 standard, Dell are moving to soldered RAM. Seems that there is clearly another reason for the move that Dell just don't want to admit publicly.
They make more money this way. Soldered RAM is cheaper to manufacture, and when people find that a model isn't upgradeable
Abject lies (Score:2)
Framework Managed To Do It (Score:2)
hear me out (Score:2)
Do 90% of people give a shit? OK so its not 1995 in which a laptop would cost 2-3 thousand dollars (which back then was the price of some pretty decent used cars) and technology seemed to move so fast you wanted some future proofing for the next OS or web 2.0 or whatever
no its 2024, in 2023 my 72 year old mother went out and bought her a new laptop it was on clearance cause it was a last years model. Here in Tennessee we have a tax free holiday meant for school supplies but includes computers, so she didn'
Re:Because Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
I came here to say the same thing. Manufacturers and designers are gas lighting us with these "demands" of thinner devices. I'll sacrifice thinness and waterproofing to have removable batteries back and I'd like the headphone jack while they're at it.
Re: (Score:2)
mmm, I don't think laptops are usually waterproof. Maybe some of the MS surface are.
I find most laptops today are still too large and too heavy to be carried around. At this point to be comfortable I still need essentially a back pack. A side bag quite uncomfortable provided typical laptop size and weight.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, weird OS is a problem.
Often tablets have weird hardware which makes booting Linux annoying because of driver support. So if you want full hardware support you have to do one of these frankenstein system where you boot into android and load a Debian userspace atop the android kernel. That's just impractical in most cases.
Last time I looked into an MS surface, the driver support was going to be a problem. Maybe it is better now.
A smaller dell that boots Linux would be much better in practice.
Re: (Score:2)
A month of drinking your Mountain Dew from this bad boy and you'll be in shape lol
https://www.amazon.ca/Stainles... [amazon.ca]
Re: (Score:2)
I am not sure what you mean. You mean soldering the RAM in yourself?
You can't do that, the laptop either comes with a port for DRAM or has DRAM soldered on. A laptop with soldered ram is not a regular laptop where the DRAM happen to have been soldered.
Now it begs the question of whether you could desolder theexisting DRAM and solder some new DRAM. And here my guess is that I wouldn't try. But more importantly the individual cells may not be swappable for larger size without also swapping a controller. Thoug
Re: (Score:2)
No one solders RAM. You pop it out if the socket or nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
SMD soldering requires a microscope and special skills, especially if the part is BGA
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You're not soldering a RAM chip with a $50 soldering iron. You'll need an SMD rework station. And while you could get one from aliexpress for $50 I suspect your RAM chip won't live to tell about it. You'll probably also need other things. Magnifying glasses, a variety of small tools, and ideally a base heater to heat the circuit board while you're reworking the part from the top.
Soldering, even replacing something like a fine pitched BGA part like a RAM chip is not particularly difficult, but it is a learne
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I've got one of those $50 Chinese rework stations, except mine's from Amazon. It works great. An "SMD rework station" is a hairdryer with less fan and more temperature control.
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If you are Louis Rossman, or have a similar level of skills to him, then you can solder new RAM, but you are not doing it with a $50 soldering iron.
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One more vote for "nuh uh" - manual surface-mount component work is not for the faint of heart. And yes, most DRAMs are going to be BGA packages. BGAs are chip packages with balls of solder on the back, which are then typically affixed to a circuit board using an oven.
The real problem is _removing_ the old chips. Get it wrong, and you pull up contact pads. And then the circuit board is essentially destroyed (or can only be saved by even more difficult procedures).
You cannot do this with a soldering iron, pe
Re: (Score:2)
Basically impossible to do without special equipment, a lot of skill and experience and access to components that are typically not sold to end-users. So forget it.
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...and care about superficial and cosmetic shit like "it's lightweight and slim".
That's right, folks: Mobile devices are only smaller and slimmer for cosmetic reasons.
Re: No More Laptops (Score:2)
Someone should make a laptop-formed dumb terminal with Steam Link or something. Sit on your couch and use it to connect to your smart tower.
Re: (Score:2)
every race through Detroit international Airport with a 17 inch ailenware or dell precision equlivliant cause your late for a flight?
I have my work pc at the time was a precision desktop replacement, at damn near 2 inches thick and weighing as much as a OG mac I didn't care that it was portable