Isn’t RAM soldered on the SoC just plain better than farther away slotted technology? (Except for upgrading). I would have expected the ram slots to be on the

Isn’t RAM soldered on the SoC just plain better than farther away slotted technology? (Except for upgrading). I would have expected the ram slots to be on the other side of the motherboard, on the opposite side of the CPU pins to shorten the traces even more. Why do they have to be side by side?