Laptops with non upgradable RAM. Why?

What would a manufacturer solder in RAM. Surely any cost savings would be tiny?

It’s physically thinner than a removable socket
Might make you buy a more expensive model (as you cant buy the cheapest and max it out with cheap ram from crucial)
Might make you upgrade earlier down the line

Probably because only a tiny percentage of people ever upgrade their RAM now?

It used to be a thing 10+ years ago but I can’t recall the last time RAM was last a limiting factor. Probably when I was running a G4 tower Mac.

probably to cut down on RMAs when people put in ram they got from their mate Dave in the pub at dubious quality. At least some is soldered down support can ask you to remove that Dave RAM and re-test! (most of my laptops 1/2 is soldered 1/2 is socketed).

Packaging. Fitting the chips to the system board uses way less space than a socket, plus PCB module for the same chips.

The *entire* system board for a M1 Macbook Air (CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, WiFi, etc) is about an inch wide and 6″ long, not far off a desktop memory module. Most of the internal volume of those things is battery.

Is there a difference, perhaps, between soldered-in SODIMM modules and onboard RAM? The latter makes a lot of sense as Simon suggests, the former surely just a cash-grab.

Yep. We want thin and light, this is how they do that.

You can still get upgradeable ones though if you want, I am fairly confident in saying that without checking.

The *entire* system board for a M1 Macbook Air (CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, WiFi, etc) is about an inch wide and 6″ long

Yeah, and on M2 actually the CPU GPU and RAM are all on the same chip* so make up a fraction of the footprint of the whole board.

If you want removable RAM, you have to accept a much bigger laptop with less performance that costs more. Most people just don’t care enough. Even as a laptop enthusiast I would struggle to see the benefit. Just order enough when you buy the thing.

* I’m sure someone will be along to argue that it’s not actually the same chip. Which is possibly true depending on your definition since they’re perhaps a millimetre apart.

Should i ever need to buy a computer again, ill buy a Framework out of principal

My super cheap Lenovo has 4gb soldered with a slot as well. I’ll probably add a stick at some point though actually it seems to be running fine…

Probably because only a tiny percentage of people ever upgrade their RAM now?

I think it’s that.  We have about 20 laptops here in this office and although years ago I would have upgraded ram at some point I just haven’t done that in ages now

Also, it’s just more reliable not having a mechanical connection.  When I used to design electronics we would go out of our way to get everything soldered down as it was the mechanical junctions where things went wrong

Cost and size. Speaking to an HP engineer when he last came out to repair a corporate laptop he said most of the engineer’s hate it because it’s caused more issues than it solved.

EDIT:
But consumers want smaller and lighter.

I ask as I’m looking for a new laptop.

I don’t need much pure power but 8gb of ram is the same amount I’ve got in my very old T420 (?).

With Teams,outlook, chrome tabs, word, excel, RDP and a squillion background services – a little more RAM would be nice I reckon. Expecially if I want to get 4+ years out of it.

There was a buy on HotUKDeals. Sub £400, gen 12 Intel i5, 521gb ssd blah… But 8gb soldered ram. Grr…

I deal with a lot of hardware in work. We also loath soldered in, single slot RAM. especially as it’s not always easy to know it’s so, until you open the thing up.

It tends to be a featre at the oppsite ends of the cost spectrum, cheap (and pretty nasty) laptops built as cheaply a possible to sell on eBuyer etc when every penny counts. Some of the crap we bought during the first lockdown would make you laugh if you didn’t cry. I had a batch of nasty ASUS laptops which were largely empty chassis with a tiny, completely unserviable MOBO.

The other end is the ‘must be smaller than the rest’ market, the Dell XPS models that are sold as the smallest, lightest devices on the market are effectively sealed units (they don’t even come with USB-A ports) same goes for most the the Microsoft Surface devices and I think some of the high end HP stuff.

Surely any cost savings would be tiny?

For 1 laptop it’s tiny. For a gazillion laptops the cost saving is significant in terms of both procurement and assembly costs.

Same as why a lot of car manufacturers only put 1 reversing light and 1 fog light in cars.

There was a buy on HotUKDeals. Sub £400, gen 12 Intel i5, 521gb ssd blah… But 8gb soldered ram. Grr…

You get what you pay for, laptops are still in high demand for home working.

TBH, it’s a minefield and a lot of stuff is way overpriced, but you do sometimes get what you pay for. Cheap hardware, even from well-known brands can be a false economy. Currys, eBuyer, Hotdeals etc, they sell as lot of what we’d call occasional laptops. They’re fine for a couple an hour a day of homework, paperwork, shopping etc, but if you use them 8 hours a day, travel a lot with them, they wear out. The chassis are cheap, so they flex and solder points fail, the screens are made of cheese etc etc etc. The drives fail, the PSU fails etc.

Expecially if I want to get 4+ years out of it.

You need to up your budget from £400 then. That’s just a step up from kids birthday present ‘don’t care if it gets trashed’ territory.

Lenovo these days (on the Thinkpad line at least) is soldered for the really thin and light stuff like the X1, soldered plus one socket for most others, and two sockets for the mobile workstation lines.

Makes sense to me, most of the common corporate models can be ordered as 8 or 16GB soldered then for people that need more you just slot a module in.

I added extra RAM and an extra SSD to my new Dell laptop only a few months back – is a pro level machine though….

Expecially if I want to get 4+ years out of it.

My personal laptop is a 2010 Mac Book Pro – still on the original battery (only 1.5 hours now). Just built like a tank!

For *proper* integrated RAM, where the RAM is basically part of the same package as the processor, performance is the sole reason.

RAM that is physically closer to the processor is *vastly* faster than your conventional sticks thanks to physics. When your process and GPU share the same RAM this really does make a huge difference, and is one of the reasons why the M1 macbooks are so performant.

You’ll note that it’s impossible to buy a graphics card with upgradable RAM modules. This is because the sticks are too slow.

https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1542529665449226240 has some interesting explainers.

The chassis are cheap, so they flex and solder points fail,

I never thought about this at all. Good one. I assumed metal body was for w*nk factor only.

If you want removable RAM, you have to accept a much bigger laptop with less performance that costs more.

🐮💩

As said integrated RAM covers both ends of the field, what’s true for one part of your statement isn’t the case for others.

I don’t need much pure power but 8gb of ram is the same amount I’ve got in my very old T420 (?).

8GB is still a decent amount and probably fine for what you’re describing. I went OTT and fitted 8BG alongside the 4GB soldered chip in my Lenovo because I could (it ran like crap before but admittedly I fitted an SSD at the same time) but could easily get by with 8GB total.

and is one of the reasons why the M1 macbooks are so performant.

You are Sean Kelly and I claim my £5.

Also the combined chipset uses less power (so greater battery life) and produces less heat (so the MacBook Air for example is fanless and there is less CPU throttling to manage heat).

Expecially if I want to get 4+ years out of it.

Yeah, er, £400 not so much, especially if daily all day use is desired, for many reasons as mentioned above. Corporate laptop for that kind of use, probably three to four times that cost.

I’m using a 16Gb machine that’s now three years old – and still feeling solid despite being commuted with and moved around the office most every working day, but, purchase price was circa £1200. The company now considers that laptop end-of-life and I’m about to be given a different one…

But, £1/day, or, ~12.5p/hour, in other numbers.

You need to up your budget from £400 then. That’s just a step up from kids birthday present ‘don’t care if it gets trashed’ territory.

There’s always refurb corporate laptops on Amazon. My Dad recently bought one for that kind of money, it looks like the ones I get from work and is good as new.

Might make you upgrade earlier down the line

There is a time traveller hiding amongst us!

8GB is what’s in all our work laptops – it’s enough. TBH, faulty laptops either get binned or sent for repair if new enough, but there are never upgrades, takes too much time.

Double your budget, buy a “Refurbished” (basically new but the box says refurbished) base model M1 Macbook Air from Apple and job done. I adore mine, it’s just freaking awesome! Ignore the fact it has “only” 8GB of RAM, it’ll easily handle what you want and the battery lasts for literal days. Worth their weight in gold.

I’d say a much better vfm buy than a refurb mac is a refurb lenovo t-series. I have apple hardware for work (currently on a m1 max/32gb macbook pro – no memory upgrades available there!) but just bought a t480 from itzoo for £250 for the family. Its had 3 years sat on someone’s wfh desk but my experience of them is they just last forever (its replacing a ~12 year old t430), even with kids around who knock it onto the floor every so often

Expecially if I want to get 4+ years out of it.

2012 base model MacBook (upgraded from spinning disc to SSD) still running happily and not noticeably different to newer machines in our household. SSD is fast enough that disc-swap memory isn’t the massive handicap it used to be (which one of the reasons upgrading to SSD makes a machine feel so much quicker). And Apple still fit the same amount of RAM to their machines as they were years ago – presumably because for the majority of users, in the majority of situations, it’s not the limiting factor.

If you want removable RAM, you have to accept a much bigger laptop with less performance that costs more.
🐮💩

Perhaps what I said applies more to high-end laptops. But you’ve just said that the cheap laptops with soldered RAM are, er, cheap. And presumably lower performance (or at least performance/£).

The chassis are cheap, so they flex and solder points fail,

I never thought about this at all. Good one. I assumed metal body was for w*nk factor only.

There is that too… most of our high end laptops go to ‘bosses’ who want something flash.

There’s a sweet spot with laptops. Dell Vostro 3000 series is pretty much entry level, but they’re pretty robust, we see 4-5 years out of them. Asus make complete and utter crap at the bottom level, but I chose one for my ‘out of office’ device because I could get a high end ASUS for the same sort of money as mid-range Dell. I also went for an i3 rather than 5/7 because everyone I do on it is cloud based or at worse Office Apps, and they draw less power then the bigger CPUs so longer battery life. HP stuff is dodgy, they make so many models for retailers that are utter dross, but their core products are good.

That’s the other consideration, a lot of the stuff you seen in Currys or discount online sellers is like outlet quality clothes, they look okay and have the badge, but they’re not the same. We had a client who against advice bought a few dozen HP laptops from Currys, i5/8GB/256SSD standard issue stuff, they were falling apart within a year.

Worth their weight in gold.

Handy, given that’s exactly Apple’s pricing model.

(its replacing a ~12 year old t430),

T430 is probably ~2012 vintage? My T420 is 2011 (and still going strong).

Surely any cost savings would be tiny?

For 1 laptop it’s tiny. For a gazillion laptops the cost saving is significant in terms of both procurement and assembly costs.

Same with any mass produced “device”.

Attaching two things together with 3 crap screws and a moulded in location tab that snaps the first time you take it apart instead of 4 decent screws with properly formed holes and location features probably saves tuppence ha’penny a unit, but factory x uses this method across 500000 units for dell, 750000 units for HP and a million units for apple and then the numbers really really add up fast.

I’ve spent over £100000 on a single cost reduction program that saved about 8p a unit. Since we went to volume with that particular part number/process change, we’ve made nearly 6 million units using those exact parts and also carried the change over into a dozen or so other similar assemblies (so much lower cost to implement). It’s probably netted the company two or three million quid.

Earl
I never thought about this at all. Good one. I assumed metal body was for w*nk factor only.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking metal=better

There are plenty of shite metal chassis about, e.g. Acer Swift and plenty of excellent plastic ones e.g. Lenovo Legion