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> LPCAMM2 memory that’s fast, efficient, and easily serviced [0] Today I Learned about LPCAMM2, which is refreshing, seeing soldered-on memory always felt lik

• kristianp 8mo ago
  Looks like the T14 Gen 7 is the first T14 to have a CAMM socket. The previous model has SODIMM DDR5-5600, more power hungry? Prior to that it was the more expensive P1 Gen 7 that had LPCAMM2. Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen. The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article. https://www.pcmag.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-t14-gen-7-hands-on-mwc-2026 https://www.pcmag.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-t14-gen-7-hands-o...
  • accrual 8mo ago
    I'm excited to see a CAMM socket on a Thinkpad. I remember reading about CAMM a few years ago and thinking "wow looks futuristic, when will I start seeing it in hardware I care about?" and that day finally arrived.
• ehnto 8mo ago
  It did worry me though, as I had also never heard of it. Is it highly available like more regular DIMM or SODIMM ram? That is usually my concern with things like the modular ports and replaceable keyboards too. By the time I actually need to replace anything it could be 10 years from now, could I actually source these parts easily? Regardless, that is a excellent problem to have compared to other less repairable laptops. I have been running my current laptop for 10 years, by the time it's unrepairable I might switch to this.
  • idle_zealot 8mo ago
    If this model of laptop is produced in high volume, at minimum it means that dead ones can be used for parts to cobble together a smaller number of functional ones. Well, unless it turns out that a design flaw means a few parts in particular are almost always the first to go...
  • accrual 8mo ago
    > Is it highly available like more regular DIMM or SODIMM ram? I imagine it will be kind of like USB-C. It's new and uncommon for a few years until suddenly everywhere you look has piles of it. Edge connector RAM may one day be looked back on as "old style memory" like SIPP and DIPP is now.
• varispeed 8mo ago
  I thought the issue with the soldered on RAM wasn't the fact that it was soldered, but that manufacturers would use chips that are not easy to source and in some way serialised. So even if you got larger chips, you would still have to figure out other parts to swap that tell the CPU it's 32GB now, not 24GB.
  • doubled112 8mo ago
    Being soldered on is a huge issue to 99% of people and businesses wanting to repair or upgrade something. I don’t have the tools or skills to replace soldered on memory chips when they fail. Nobody at my place of work does. Nobody was doing that type of work in a warranty centre I worked in either. I’d need to buy an entire motherboard which will much more expensive, and likely more time consuming, than swapping a couple of memory modules.
    • bigtex 8mo ago
      In the almost 30 years of using Mac’s at home and various desktop pc’s in the workplace I don’t think I have ever seen ram fail. Replaced plenty of old school failed disk drives however.
      • doubled112 8mo ago
        Lucky. Working in repairs I was only seeing the ones that didn’t work, and I’ve seen failures of just about everything. It probably skews my experience. One time upgrading workstations, 4 of the 20 Corsair kits were sent for RMA. Those aren’t great odds. I would guess that soldering them to the board reduces the points of failure, the slots can and do fail. However, I’ve also seen soldered components coming off as the cause of failures, but it is usually a part that gets hot combined with a design flaw.
      • opan 8mo ago
        Failing RAM is rarer than it seems from posts online. My theory is that it's so easy to test for that everyone says to do it even if it's unlikely to be your problem. It reminds me of people who needlessly recap (replace capacitors) everything in hopes of it fixing a problem, often not even bothering to test each cap or exhausting other options first. IME dirt/corrosion/oxidation (often solved by cleaning) is a much more prevalent problem than bad caps. After that, solder that needs reflowing is still a more common issue than bad caps. That being said, I really did have one bad stick of RAM once in my life, and it really does cause strange seemingly random problems.
• bmenrigh 8mo ago
  Yeah I learning about LPCAMM2 memory was far more interesting than the repairability score.
• orev 8mo ago
  When CAMM was announced, they (Dell) mentioned that one of the reasons for soldered RAM was due to electrical tolerances not being met anymore with regular DIMMs at the speeds they were reaching. CAMM was designed to avoid this, and ensures that each trace has the same length so there aren’t timing issues. I’m no expert but it sounds plausible to me. From a manufacturing perspective, it makes sense that they’d want modular RAM so they can configure them at point of sale instead of having to manufacture multiple motherboards with only RAM sizes being different.
  • trinsic2 8mo ago
    Yeah I read about that too. Makes sense as faster cpus demand faster responses from ram and the timing has to be right. I think it came up with a gamers nexus video on the steam machine.
• aitchnyu 8mo ago
  Can we expect laptops with removable memory modules to stay on top of AI workload benchmark?
• accrual 8mo ago
  I love how the LPCAMM2 slot and module looks on this board, almost futuristic/cyberpunk. Thick outline to mark it on the PCB, arrows pointing to screws, stamped metal heatspreader (reminds me of RDRAM), QR code, angular footprint, big "MEMORY" label affixed. Cool how memory converged on the same grid-of-pins solution as CPUs.