3 ms·

Soldering RAM isn't really done for the sake of latency, it's done to save physical volume and to lower power from the memory PHY not having to fight against a

Soldering RAM isn't really done for the sake of latency, it's done to save physical volume and to lower power from the memory PHY not having to fight against a connector's insertion loss.

CamperBob2 4y ago
Soldering the RAM is good for literally every single use case that doesn't involve the vanishingly-low probability that someone will want to upgrade the RAM in their tablet or phone. Less weight, less cost, better long-term reliability... but one in a hundred thousand nerds get thwarted. Wearing my hardware-dev hat, I'm more than OK with that.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  This is just another case of "We made it hard and annoying to do, so nobody's doing it. Let's remove it entirely.". You need to start from the other direction. How many people are buying new devices every year? What would it take to get them to upgrade their existing devices instead? How do we prevent manufacturers from sabotaging this kind of effort?
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    To be clear, nobody, but nobody, is a bigger right-to-repair advocate than I am. And I walk the talk. I've shipped hardware whose user manual, at my insistence, included schematics. But the last time I upgraded the RAM in a PC to keep from having to buy a new one was in the late 1990s, if I remember correctly. The last time I upgraded the RAM in a portable device -- even a laptop PC, much less a phone -- to keep from having to buy a new one? That would be never... and I'd definitely remember that. Forcing literally billions of users to pay more because a microscopic minority might want to upgrade their RAM is terrible business, and, frankly, terrible engineering. It's never going to happen again; the ship has sailed. Sorry.
    - Nullabillity 4y ago
      > But the last time I upgraded the RAM in a PC to keep from having to buy a new one was in the late 1990s, if I remember correctly. When did you last buy a new PC then? What could have discouraged you from doing so? Those are the questions we need to focus on, not this kind of defeatism. > Forcing literally billions of users to pay more because a microscopic minority might want to upgrade their RAM is terrible business, and, frankly, terrible engineering. It's never going to happen again; the ship has sailed. Sorry. In practice, you might pay a little more initially but a lot less over the long run.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        I generally buy a new PC when I can get a solid 2x speed improvement in all of the applications that matter to me. Same with the OS. They are generally upgraded at the same time, as upgrading an existing Windows installation is always a giant bag of hurt. That's why I'm still running Win7 on a 3 GHz Sandy Bridge from 2011 (and am continually amazed/saddened at how long it's lasted.) It's coming close to the time when it will make sense to upgrade to a Win10 or Win11 box with an i9 or Ryzen 9 and a 4090 GPU. But I'm not quite there yet, and not at all looking forward to it. Phone-wise I'm in exactly the same boat. I still use an iPhone 6, and am still very happy with it. It's coming to the end of its second battery lifetime, runs fewer applications every day, and unfortunately I do need a better camera. So I'll have to upgrade pretty soon. In neither case would a RAM upgrade be the slightest bit useful. I wish it were that simple.
        brokenmachine 4y ago
        >I generally buy a new PC when I can get a solid 2x speed improvement in all of the applications that matter to me. >still running Win7 on a 3 GHz Sandy Bridge from 2011 Let's say it's an i5-2320... even a last-gen i7-12700k is 167% faster on single-core and almost 10x faster for multi-core. You could buy an i7-10700k from 2020 and get double the SC speed. Combined with an NVMe boot drive, that's gonna feel sooo much more responsive. I'd want to hang myself having to wait for an i5-2320 these days. Upgrade it dude, life's too short to live with that.

Soldering RAM isn't really done for the sake of latency, it's done to save physical volume and to lower power from the memory PHY not having to fight against a connector's insertion loss.

CamperBob2 4y ago

Soldering the RAM is good for literally every single use case that doesn't involve the vanishingly-low probability that someone will want to upgrade the RAM in their tablet or phone. Less weight, less cost, better long-term reliability... but one in a hundred thousand nerds get thwarted. Wearing my hardware-dev hat, I'm more than OK with that.

Nullabillity 4y ago
This is just another case of "We made it hard and annoying to do, so nobody's doing it. Let's remove it entirely.". You need to start from the other direction. How many people are buying new devices every year? What would it take to get them to upgrade their existing devices instead? How do we prevent manufacturers from sabotaging this kind of effort?
- CamperBob2 4y ago
  To be clear, nobody, but nobody, is a bigger right-to-repair advocate than I am. And I walk the talk. I've shipped hardware whose user manual, at my insistence, included schematics. But the last time I upgraded the RAM in a PC to keep from having to buy a new one was in the late 1990s, if I remember correctly. The last time I upgraded the RAM in a portable device -- even a laptop PC, much less a phone -- to keep from having to buy a new one? That would be never... and I'd definitely remember that. Forcing literally billions of users to pay more because a microscopic minority might want to upgrade their RAM is terrible business, and, frankly, terrible engineering. It's never going to happen again; the ship has sailed. Sorry.
  - Nullabillity 4y ago
    > But the last time I upgraded the RAM in a PC to keep from having to buy a new one was in the late 1990s, if I remember correctly. When did you last buy a new PC then? What could have discouraged you from doing so? Those are the questions we need to focus on, not this kind of defeatism. > Forcing literally billions of users to pay more because a microscopic minority might want to upgrade their RAM is terrible business, and, frankly, terrible engineering. It's never going to happen again; the ship has sailed. Sorry. In practice, you might pay a little more initially but a lot less over the long run.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      I generally buy a new PC when I can get a solid 2x speed improvement in all of the applications that matter to me. Same with the OS. They are generally upgraded at the same time, as upgrading an existing Windows installation is always a giant bag of hurt. That's why I'm still running Win7 on a 3 GHz Sandy Bridge from 2011 (and am continually amazed/saddened at how long it's lasted.) It's coming close to the time when it will make sense to upgrade to a Win10 or Win11 box with an i9 or Ryzen 9 and a 4090 GPU. But I'm not quite there yet, and not at all looking forward to it. Phone-wise I'm in exactly the same boat. I still use an iPhone 6, and am still very happy with it. It's coming to the end of its second battery lifetime, runs fewer applications every day, and unfortunately I do need a better camera. So I'll have to upgrade pretty soon. In neither case would a RAM upgrade be the slightest bit useful. I wish it were that simple.
      - brokenmachine 4y ago
        >I generally buy a new PC when I can get a solid 2x speed improvement in all of the applications that matter to me. >still running Win7 on a 3 GHz Sandy Bridge from 2011 Let's say it's an i5-2320... even a last-gen i7-12700k is 167% faster on single-core and almost 10x faster for multi-core. You could buy an i7-10700k from 2020 and get double the SC speed. Combined with an NVMe boot drive, that's gonna feel sooo much more responsive. I'd want to hang myself having to wait for an i5-2320 these days. Upgrade it dude, life's too short to live with that.