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Soldered down RAM has real technical advantages. LPDDRx variants of RAM aren't available on DIMMs for this reason. All that modularity means you have ~100 very

Soldered down RAM has real technical advantages. LPDDRx variants of RAM aren't available on DIMMs for this reason. All that modularity means you have ~100 very high speed digital signals running across a board and several connectors. That takes power, due to the physics involved. It doesn't matter for computers plugged into a wall or for gamer laptops, but it matters in the mid and ultraportable segment if you want decent battery life. Soldering RAM down right next to the CPU or on top of it (as is done in SoC style laptops) lets you use narrower, faster buses at lower voltage swing and lower power (LPDDR4X operates at half the I/O voltage of DDR4). Now soldered down SSDs, yeah, unless you're building a thin phone with no space for a connector, there's no excuse for that. PCIe works perfectly fine across a connector.

titzer 5y ago
What is the contribution of the bus to overall power consumption vs the CPU and DRAM chips themselves, let alone the screen? I find it hard to believe that that is really an important design consideration leading to soldered-in RAM. I had a Lenovo Stinkpad Carbon X1. The soldered-in RAM started to fail, causing memory corruption. That machine is now a brick, and I am still pissed off about it. Modular RAM is fixable RAM.
ghaff 5y ago
Yes to this. Me: I want a easily upgradable, swappable computer. Also me: I want a fast 2 pound laptop with great battery life. That said, I had to put a new battery in a 17" gaming laptop a while back. It's a huge machine and there was zero excuse for the battery not be easily swappable.
chx 5y ago
But then you have Lenovo who only ships 32GB with the latest X1 Carbon if you also choose an i7 CPU...
Const-me 5y ago
> it matters in the mid and ultraportable segment if you want decent battery life. Memory buses consume very little power compared to the rest of the components. Even memory itself doesn’t consume much, except VRAM in high-end GPUs but that’s an order of magnitude faster than system RAM in most computers. Battery impact of soldered versus socketed RAM is negligible. For instance, HP ProBook 445 G7 and G8 have two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, yet the battery life is up to 14 hours. Computers with soldered RAM are slightly cheaper to manufacture (less parts). Also, it’s not user-upgradeable, users are likely to replace the complete computer after a few years. Memory and disk requirements of software grows quickly over time: https://techtalk.pcmatic.com/research-charts-memory/ https://techtalk.pcmatic.com/research-charts-memory/ These two factors create incentives for computer manufacturers to solder the RAM, despite that’s not in the interests of users, and the environment.
- sitkack 5y ago
  To you an titzer, as much as I don't like non-modular RAM, what I am advocating for goes even beyond this. Allow the soldered on ram to be upgradable, or put vacant spots for more ram to be added later. Allow HBMs to be stacked, or sell a machine with the HBM not attached and I can source one myself. There absolutely could be a socketed standard for memory. But in general I am arguing for a more upgradable philosophy and manufacturers should be obligated to adhere to that philosophy. The technicals will always be changing, it isn't really a technical problem at all.
  - hedora 5y ago
    We already have standard pinouts, etc for DRAM. However, desoldering and resoldering in new chips is error prone, requires special equipment, is labor intensive and can damage nearby capacitors, etc. Anyway, if you want, nothing (except economics) is stopping you from upgrading your soldered DRAM.

titzer 5y ago

What is the contribution of the bus to overall power consumption vs the CPU and DRAM chips themselves, let alone the screen? I find it hard to believe that that is really an important design consideration leading to soldered-in RAM. I had a Lenovo Stinkpad Carbon X1. The soldered-in RAM started to fail, causing memory corruption. That machine is now a brick, and I am still pissed off about it. Modular RAM is fixable RAM.

ghaff 5y ago

Yes to this. Me: I want a easily upgradable, swappable computer. Also me: I want a fast 2 pound laptop with great battery life. That said, I had to put a new battery in a 17" gaming laptop a while back. It's a huge machine and there was zero excuse for the battery not be easily swappable.

chx 5y ago

But then you have Lenovo who only ships 32GB with the latest X1 Carbon if you also choose an i7 CPU...

Const-me 5y ago

> it matters in the mid and ultraportable segment if you want decent battery life. Memory buses consume very little power compared to the rest of the components. Even memory itself doesn’t consume much, except VRAM in high-end GPUs but that’s an order of magnitude faster than system RAM in most computers. Battery impact of soldered versus socketed RAM is negligible. For instance, HP ProBook 445 G7 and G8 have two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, yet the battery life is up to 14 hours. Computers with soldered RAM are slightly cheaper to manufacture (less parts). Also, it’s not user-upgradeable, users are likely to replace the complete computer after a few years. Memory and disk requirements of software grows quickly over time: https://techtalk.pcmatic.com/research-charts-memory/ https://techtalk.pcmatic.com/research-charts-memory/ These two factors create incentives for computer manufacturers to solder the RAM, despite that’s not in the interests of users, and the environment.

sitkack 5y ago
To you an titzer, as much as I don't like non-modular RAM, what I am advocating for goes even beyond this. Allow the soldered on ram to be upgradable, or put vacant spots for more ram to be added later. Allow HBMs to be stacked, or sell a machine with the HBM not attached and I can source one myself. There absolutely could be a socketed standard for memory. But in general I am arguing for a more upgradable philosophy and manufacturers should be obligated to adhere to that philosophy. The technicals will always be changing, it isn't really a technical problem at all.
- hedora 5y ago
  We already have standard pinouts, etc for DRAM. However, desoldering and resoldering in new chips is error prone, requires special equipment, is labor intensive and can damage nearby capacitors, etc. Anyway, if you want, nothing (except economics) is stopping you from upgrading your soldered DRAM.