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In old times there were an option to upgrade ram and storage using stock parts form hardware store, but now everything is soldered.
by nazgu1 2y ago
In old times there were an option to upgrade ram and storage using stock parts form hardware store, but now everything is soldered.
- astrange 2y agoWell you don't need to let that stop you.
- dietr1ch 2y agoAFAIK now the ram gets to be way closer this way (which is why the M series gets to destroy everyone on benchmarks where it can show off that). I think that it'd be cool to have that memory become an L4 cache and still have cheaper ram as a backing store with more capacity to fence off the CPU from the abysmal latencies that SSDs and, satan forbids, HDDs have.
- spwa4 2y agoIntel Lunar Lake is proving this is not necessary.
- angoragoats 2y agoThere is no technical reason that forced Apple to make the RAM soldered. They could have easily made a proprietary but replaceable socket/connector, but chose not to because of the sweet, sweet markups.
- colejohnson66 2y agoLPDDR is not allowed/available in DIMM form.
- angoragoats 2y agoThis is true but not at all relevant to anything I said, as I was not talking about DIMMs.
- phonon 2y agoLPCAMM2 is available.
- angoragoats 2y agoLPCAMM2 is also limited to 2 memory channels, so that won’t work either. There’s a reason I said “proprietary.”
- phonon 2y agoA single LPCAMM2 is a 128 bit total memory channel. The M4 uses a 128 bit memory channel. You can have 2 LPCAMM2 slots for twice as many memory channels, like the M4 Pro.
- angoragoats 2y agoYes, I am aware. M4 Max would need 4 LPCAMM2 modules, and a hypothetical M4 Ultra would need 8. This sounds unrealistic (especially 4 modules in a laptop), which is why I mentioned a proprietary connector instead. There is precedence for this type of thing in the Mac Studio where the SSD NAND chips are on proprietary removable modules.
- NikkiA 2y agoThe RAM speed comes from the 512bit wide bus, not the direct connection. If motherboard makers were to support quad or octa channel interfaces, PCs would be just about as fast.
- dietr1ch 2y agoRAM throughput comes from a wide bus, but I think that nowadays memory access latency is getting pretty important to keep the CPUs working.
- phonon 2y agoA CAMM2 memory based design would likely work just as well.
- pjmlp 2y agoIt is still current times in PC desktop land, and why I keep on Windows/Linux land.
- Saris 2y agoThere still is today; any custom built desktop can be upgraded easily. Most laptops that are more enterprise focused still have RAM and SSD slots, and replaceable batteries too.