4 ms·
Just a note: the compact size and low power draw necessitate soldered RAM (LPDDR). I know it’s easy to dislike that trend, but if you’re really looking to save
by dangus 3y ago
Just a note: the compact size and low power draw necessitate soldered RAM (LPDDR). I know it’s easy to dislike that trend, but if you’re really looking to save power, socketed RAM basically wastes power.
Luckily for all of us, the need for constantly increasing system memory has slowed greatly over the past 10-15 years and the reliability of memory chips is very good.
- ilikenwf 3y agoI went "mobile workstation" this time around and so I have sockets again, migrating from a desktop and my dead ultrabook... I can live with having ~1hr battery life (which I can push further anyway) with the way I operate and work... Everyone I guess has different priorities. My company went remote so I don't have to be in an office or flying around all the time anymore, so I need less battery power.
- ctoth 3y agoYou seem to know what you're talking about, What is the actual power draw difference of socketed (LPDDR) vs soldered (SO-DIMM) RAM? As someone with 128GB in my main workstation and 64 in my laptop this soldered RAM trend makes me so sad. RAM is the cheapest way to improve your compute experience and using massive amounts is how I've otherwise been able to make old machines feel nice to use. I have a Lenovo T580 from 2018 and with 64GB it's a fantastic machine 5 years later, but I doubt a machine I buy now will be anywhere as good in 5 years as I won't be able to supercharge its memory to what 2028 would consider obscene for a laptop.
- dangus 3y agoMore metal (larger pins) = more electrical resistance. Plus, there’s a physical air gap on a socketed chip. The original LPDDR spec was able to drop voltage from 2.5V to 1.8V.
- davidhyde 3y agoI've been reading up on LPDDR here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPDDR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LPDDR) but alas it did not have the answers to the power consumption questions I have. Maybe someone here will know: I am primarily concerned with power consumption when the laptop is asleep and ram is NOT persisted to disk (no hibernation). On a Linux setup in sleep mode, will there be a power consumption difference if you have 32GB vs 16GB of LPDDR but only use say 8GB of memory? If so will it typically dominate the sleep power consumption?
- pearsche 3y agoI wish more people were aware that (seemingly now) mid and high end laptops with soldered ram actually have LPDDR RAM, which is faster and uses less power than conventional RAM. It isn't upgradable, but at least it offers those things. That said, there are laptop makers that do solder conventional, could-be-upgradable RAM (like Lenovo, on my ideapad...).
- riku_iki 3y ago> socketed RAM basically wastes power. the question is how much power compared to screen and cpu? If its like 4%, then I prefer not to have it.