Soldered Rams in laptops trend , are they any good ?

nIGHTmAYOR · 16 Oct 2019

So lately I am coming across a lot of new laptops of the Intel's 8th or 9th generation that comes with a soldered single stick ram that is either 8 or 16 GBs , they usually come with an additional slot for expand-ability .

Now what's with this trend really ? hadn't it been for a while now that rams are being sold in combo packs so to enable dual channel bus on installation mind you most laptops came pre-bundled by these ?

So are these new soldered rams capable of integrating in dual channel mode with any other rams or the manufacturers are just going cheap without thinking ? and why is it even a trend to solder an 8 GB on a 32 GB capable board which would render maximum capacity on upgrade 24 GBs just ?

krzemien · 16 Oct 2019

nIGHTmAYOR said:

(...) and why is it even a trend to solder (...)

Planned obsolescence.

LMiller7 · 16 Oct 2019

The trend toward soldered in RAM is easy to explain. It reduces manufacturing costs.

Laptops are a competitive business. Manufacturers must reduce costs where they can or they don't last. Many haven't. For many buyers their priorities are, price, price, and price, not necessarily in that order. It is an old saying. Maybe too old for some.

The restrictions to expandability is no problem to most buyers. A laptop is an appliance. You buy it, you use it until it no longer meets your needs, then you replace it. Simple as that.

Soldered in RAM is hardly new. The original Apple MAC introduced in 1984 had soldered in RAM with no provision for upgrades. I am sure it wasn't the first.

storageman · 16 Oct 2019

LMiller7 said:

The trend toward soldered in RAM is easy to explain. It reduces manufacturing costs.

Laptops are a competitive business. Manufacturers must reduce costs where they can or they don't last. Many haven't. For many buyers their priorities are, price, price, and price, not necessarily in that order. It is an old saying. Maybe too old for some.

The restrictions to expandability is no problem to most buyers. A laptop is an appliance. You buy it, you use it until it no longer meets your needs, then you replace it. Simple as that.

Soldered in RAM is hardly new. The original Apple MAC introduced in 1984 had soldered in RAM with no provision for upgrades. I am sure it wasn't the first.

Give this man a cigar

Just try to find a laptop that can be upgraded with a second drive ? It's near impossible.

Berton · 16 Oct 2019

storageman said:

Just try to find a laptop that can be upgraded with a second drive ? It's near impossible.

Right, only ones I ever saw were the 17.3" and one that was supposed to be 18", probably back in mid '90s.

sygnus21 · 16 Oct 2019

LMiller7 said:

The trend toward soldered in RAM is easy to explain. It reduces manufacturing costs.

Laptops are a competitive business. Manufacturers must reduce costs where they can or they don't last. Many haven't. For many buyers their priorities are, price, price, and price, not necessarily in that order. It is an old saying. Maybe too old for some.

The restrictions to expandability is no problem to most buyers. A laptop is an appliance. You buy it, you use it until it no longer meets your needs, then you replace it. Simple as that.

Soldered in RAM is hardly new. The original Apple MAC introduced in 1984 had soldered in RAM with no provision for upgrades. I am sure it wasn't the first.

I can summarize further... to prevent you from upgrading and forcing you into buying new.

Berton · 16 Oct 2019

I used to have a Notebook with 1 soldered and 1 empty, the soldered was on the opposite side of the motherboard and not easily reached but overall the machine was a bit thinner than others.

Steve C · 17 Oct 2019

storageman said:

Give this man a cigar

Just try to find a laptop that can be upgraded with a second drive ? It's near impossible.

My new HP ProBook 450 G6 (15.6" display) has a PCIe SSD system drive leaving space for a second SATA 2.5" drive.

I would never buy a bonded / glued together laptop which is hard to upgrade or mend.

nIGHTmAYOR · 17 Oct 2019

krzemien said:

Planned obsolescence.

sygnus21 said:

I can summarize further... to prevent you from upgrading and forcing you into buying new.

Berton said:

I used to have a Notebook with 1 soldered and 1 empty, the soldered was on the opposite side of the motherboard and not easily reached but overall the machine was a bit thinner than others.

Hmmm it's starting to make sense , it's like what Microsoft is doing to Windows 10 , copying from phones ...

So they are starting to adopt the phones vision and slowly transforming laptops into an "As Is" device , they already started with soldered CPUs , batteries , now RAMs and then I gather further on the SSDs are gonna be soldered too with a more slim book in the hand but when limited by storage space or memory you just buy another .

Well to be honest this business module has served phone manufacturers well , now with most people buying a new phone every year adopting that trend is definitely better then selling people devices lasting for a decade (which is how Nokia nearly went out of business) .

Mind you they are starting to realize they have superseded hardware demands significantly , zillions of cores starting from 2.5 Ghz and upwards and super mobile GPUs that even known lazy game companies that never bother optimize their work can't even stress them to 60% utilization mind you loads of tycoons adopting cloud rendering , gaming , application hosting , this is starting to sound like a survival fight as it won't be long before less people are interested in buying .

Wooo the PC business is shaking !

krzemien · 17 Oct 2019

To supplement: My laptop - trusty SONY VAIO - is nearly 6.5 years old now and is still going strong.

(I actually did manage to repair its keyboard two months ago - by replacing top case assembly [of which keyboard was essential part of] which obviously necessitated disassembly and reassembly of the whole thing. Now try to do that with Surface!)