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I'm hunting for a new laptop just now, and just about everything has at least one DIMM soldered, with many having both soldered. Driving me nuts! Is there a co

I'm hunting for a new laptop just now, and just about everything has at least one DIMM soldered, with many having both soldered. Driving me nuts! Is there a convincing technical reason why everybody is doing this nowadays?

FearlessNebula 6y ago
Force you to choose more RAM from the factory where they charge high margins.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Well, that's not a very convincing technical argument :) Even this wouldn't be so bad if they actually sold configurations with more than 16GB RAM...
Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
To make it thinner. And I 100% blame Apple for this. IMO, Apple is not a tech company, but a fashion company. Or more accurately, they produce technology that's optimized to be fashionable. Thin laptops are more sleek, but to make them thinner will require parts to be soldered to the motherboard, since an actual slot will add 3mm or whatever. Other companies feel like they have to match Apple, and so they follow suit. The thing is, AFAIK, nobody is asking for laptops to be only 0.63 inches (16.1 mm) thick, but that's what people are buying. Apple advertises how thin the MacBook Air is, and the masses go wild over it.
- GordonS 6y ago
  I'm with you on this - the marketing spiel of thinness at the expense of all else drivers me nuts! I do want a thin laptop, and as someone who travelled a lot for work while living with a physically disabling medical condition, lightness is important to me too. But I don't care half a shit if it's 16mm thick instead of 16.1mm, if you've disabled the device to do it!
operator-name 6y ago
Apart from costs and size there's could be good reasons to do this - power, inteferance, placement and cooling. Hardware specialisation (doesn't always but) can reduce energy by allowing for more efficient designs. Just think of the power circuitry required to support all the SODIMM variants. Since soldered ram is smaller it allows greater flexibility in board design - they can be placed to avoid inteferance or to benifit thermals.

FearlessNebula 6y ago

Force you to choose more RAM from the factory where they charge high margins.

GordonS 6y ago
Well, that's not a very convincing technical argument :) Even this wouldn't be so bad if they actually sold configurations with more than 16GB RAM...

Sohcahtoa82 6y ago

To make it thinner. And I 100% blame Apple for this. IMO, Apple is not a tech company, but a fashion company. Or more accurately, they produce technology that's optimized to be fashionable. Thin laptops are more sleek, but to make them thinner will require parts to be soldered to the motherboard, since an actual slot will add 3mm or whatever. Other companies feel like they have to match Apple, and so they follow suit. The thing is, AFAIK, nobody is asking for laptops to be only 0.63 inches (16.1 mm) thick, but that's what people are buying. Apple advertises how thin the MacBook Air is, and the masses go wild over it.

GordonS 6y ago
I'm with you on this - the marketing spiel of thinness at the expense of all else drivers me nuts! I do want a thin laptop, and as someone who travelled a lot for work while living with a physically disabling medical condition, lightness is important to me too. But I don't care half a shit if it's 16mm thick instead of 16.1mm, if you've disabled the device to do it!

operator-name 6y ago

Apart from costs and size there's could be good reasons to do this - power, inteferance, placement and cooling. Hardware specialisation (doesn't always but) can reduce energy by allowing for more efficient designs. Just think of the power circuitry required to support all the SODIMM variants. Since soldered ram is smaller it allows greater flexibility in board design - they can be placed to avoid inteferance or to benifit thermals.