6 ms·
I've never done anything beyond amateur electronics, so sorry if I'm way off base here, but it at least seems intuitively plausible to me that soldering the com
by mumblemumble 5y ago
I've never done anything beyond amateur electronics, so sorry if I'm way off base here, but it at least seems intuitively plausible to me that soldering the components to the board allows them to work reliably at lower power. With a pin and socket connection, you've got to try and be at least reasonably resistant to corrosion or other sources of less-than-perfect connection.
That said, I don't know that RAM chips are the hill I want to die on, anyway. Could we get to a better place if we dispensed with the whole, "just the one big motherboard," design, and looked to the old backplane-style physical layouts? Then you could have a module that contains the CPU and RAM and suchlike all in a single package, and move other things that may not want to be quite as tightly integrated off to another package.
- mikepurvis 5y agoUp until relatively recently, a lot of laptops and even phones would put the connectors on separate PCBs connected by a ribbon, so that damaging those wouldn't mean a $500 motherboard replacement. I definitely remember ordering a replacement headphone socket board for an old MacBook and just putting it in myself, and I've done similar with, eg, the connector port board on a PS4 controller. But I guess this is one of the hazards of Apple having their AppleCare programme— they can do the math and calculate that saving a dollar on the cost of making and mounting and connecting that extra component still makes them money even if they have to eat the occasional full motherboard in the first three years of ownership.
- ribit 5y agoIf I am not mistaken the ports on recent Apple machines are on a separate, easily replaceable board.
- sgerenser 5y agoDoesn’t appear to be the case on the 16” MBP: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Teardown/128106 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+16-Inch+2019+Tea...
- davweb 5y agoLooking at this photo from that page it appears that they are: https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/uavG2A3vFrVmwv6J.huge https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/uavG2A3vFrVmwv6J.hug... You can see the ports still in place after the motherboard has been removed.
- sgerenser 5y agoInteresting, didn’t notice that. It looked like the logic board went all the way to the edges.
- mikepurvis 5y agoSeems like this stuff maybe comes and goes— like here's a repair guide for a 2010-vintage MBP which definitely shows all the connectors being right on the logic board: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Logic+Board's+Power+Input+Circuit+Repai/38688#s15095 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Logic+Board...
- yencabulator 5y agoNot just for the easier replacement, but also to avoid translating the mechanical stresses directly to the motherboard. The separate PCB can mount in a way that lets it move a little.
- hkt 5y agoThis sounds conspicuously like an Intel NUC, I think?
- greyhair 5y agoPart of it comes down to signal drive strength. If you design to a socketed DIMM package, you actually have two trace domains, the CPU to the socket, and the socket to the RAM chips. For that to be reliable, you have to adhere to standards for DIMM (or SODIMM) so that multiple manufacturers can build compliant interchangeable parts. If you solder the chips down to the main board directly, you only have once domain for the traces, CPU directly to RAM. At that point you can tweak the design for several goals, speed, power, etc.. And you can tune the drive strength on the signalling the same. That is how you end up with more efficient soldered designs over socketed designs.