5 ms·
HN crowd is treating this as some sort of sorcery. Meanwhile it's just everyday business in China. People send their laptops or graphic cards with soldered RAM
by fg137 2mo ago
HN crowd is treating this as some sort of sorcery.
Meanwhile it's just everyday business in China. People send their laptops or graphic cards with soldered RAM and get the device back with double RAM/vRAM. "Brother Zhang" is one of those who operate such a shop: https://youtu.be/TcRGBeOENLg https://youtu.be/TcRGBeOENLg
Had such services been more available in the US, I would not have needed to sell a laptop that had 8GM RAM and could no longer handle my workflows but was perfect otherwise.
- cubefox 2mo agoI wonder whether (without soldering) replaceable GDDR RAM on graphics cards would really result in such a large speed penalty. System memory often isn't soldered to the main board either, and this doesn't seem to have large performance penalties.
- jve 2mo agoPerhaps it impacts size, manufacturing (automation) and money considerations. I mean now you suddenly need a slot of golden plated pins, you suddenly need a module with said pins and a memory chip soldered. You're introducing so much steps and complexity (thus expense) there for net negative. I know that people like to argue "but I can't upgrade RAM". Yes. But as we see here not impossible. Your car also needs some effort to change some parts and perhaps even more effort compared to resoldering some chips at a shop that knows how-to.
- cubefox 2mo ago> Perhaps it impacts size, manufacturing (automation) and money considerations. I mean now you suddenly need a slot of golden plated pins, you suddenly need a module with said pins and a memory chip soldered. You're introducing so much steps and complexity (thus expense) there for net negative. How is this relevant when the same point applies to system RAM?
- butvacuum 2mo agoDesktop DDR rarely exceedes 64bits(you have to combine more than one dimm). Since RAM is a parallel bus that means 64 conductors that have to be impedance and length controlled. GPUs use >192bit busses, with 512bit in the high performance GPUs. So that's now 512 conductors. 512 conductors that have to be exactly the same length. Make them longer you'll say- now you just lost your high memory clocks to propigation delay and parasitics. Seeing the problem?
- Telaneo 2mo agoThe RAM in your desktop could run at much higher frequencies if it were soldered. The RAM the M5 Macbooks use runs at 9600 mbps. The base spec for DDR5 is 4800, and I rarely see people running at much higher than 6000. There's probably someone who's gotten a 9600 mbps overclock running on their desktop, but it's unatainable for a normal consumer outside of machines with soldered RAM.
- cubefox 2mo agoThis doesn't explain why non-soldered RAM isn't okay for graphics cards when it is still considered perfectly acceptable for desktop computers.
- Telaneo 2mo agoBecause GPUs have had it soldered since the beginning, while desktops have had it slotted since (close to) the beginning. There are some exceptions to that rule, but it mostly holds. Not to mention that the bar of acceptibility is moving. We had RAM in slots in laptops for a long while, but it's (not so) slowly going away. You can still find laptops with SO-DIMMs, but it's not a given anymore.
- Nursie 2mo agoA longer time ago, sound cards used to have expandable RAM too. Go back far enough (486) and cache was off-chip on simms too!
- inigyou 2mo agoYep. Soldered is just the best manufacturing process (besides on-package). Moving things close together simply delivers better outcomes and that will always trump openness concerns.
- theodric 2mo agoI would imagine that something like LPCAMM2 for GDDR is entirely possible and will never, ever be seen because people already accept replacing an entire $10000 GPU to get another 32GB VRAM on the next generation, so why give up that guaranteed revenue stream?
- Retr0id 2mo agoHN crowd is treating this as some sort of sorcery, you can do it at home with a $60 hot air station. The only thing approaching "secret sauce" is the BIOS modding, which varies in difficulty depending on the device. For many devices it's just a case of reconfiguring strap resistors.
- filcuk 2mo agoYeah a $60 hot air station may be enough, assuming you have all the consumables and chips. This isn't something even the average techie will risk trying.
- Retr0id 2mo agoThe average techie is a coward.
- Tade0 2mo agoI've known about this trick earlier, but the people who do it caution that the chance of succeeding is like 50/50.
- Retr0id 2mo agoSounds about right for success odds for a novice, definitely don't start out on an expensive card. Get some low-capacity DIMMs or obsolete GPUs to practice on.
- Tade0 2mo agoI think I'll stick to my area of expertise - replacing "non-replaceable" batteries. Amazing ROI using a $14 soldering iron.
- tuyiown 2mo ago> coward This can be a result of unexpected and costly if not worse, surprises.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]