That’s why I don’t buy laptops with soldered RAM.
Oh, that shit is soldered on…
I mean, I did see that on some laptops, but only those cheap things in €150 range (new) which even use eMMC for storage.
Comment on Apple argues in favor of selling Macs with only 8GB of RAM
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Well yeah, they’re enough to meet the minimum use cases so they can upsell most people on expensive RAM upgrades.
That’s why I don’t buy laptops with soldered RAM. That’s getting harder and harder these days, but my needs for a laptop have also gone down. If they solder RAM, there’s nothing you can (realistically) do if you need more, so you’ll pay extra when buying so they can upcharge a lot. If it’s not soldered, you have a decent option to buy RAM afterward, so there’s less value in upselling too much.
So screw you Apple, I’m not buying your products until they’re more repair friendly.
user224@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
It became pretty common even on higher end laptops when they switched to DDR5, but some manufacturers are starting to go back to socketed RAM.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yup, all Apple laptops have soldered RAM for some years now…
scarabic@lemmy.world 6 months ago
These days I don’t realistically expect my RAM requirements to change over the lifetime of the product. And I’m keeping computers longer than ever: 6+ years where it used to be 1 or 2.
People have argued millions of times on the internet that Apple’s products don’t meet people’s needs and are massively overpriced. Meanwhile they just keep selling like crazy and people love them. I think the issue comes from having pricing expectations set over the in race-to-the-bottom world of commoditized Windows/Android trash.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I upgraded my personal laptop a year or so after I got it (started with 8GB, which was fine until I did Docker stuff), and I’m probably going to upgrade my desktop soon (16GB, which has been fine for a few years, but I’m finally running out). My main complaint about my work laptop is RAM (16GB I think; I’d love another 8-16GB), but I cannot upgrade it because it’s soldered, so I have to wait for our normal cycle (4 years; will happen next year). I upgraded my NAS RAM when I upgraded a different PC as well.
I don’t do it very often, but I usually buy what I need when I build/buy the machine and upgrade 3-4 years later. I also often upgrade the CPU before doing a motherboard upgrade, as well as the GPU.
Meanwhile they just keep selling like crazy and people love them. I think the issue comes from having pricing expectations set over the in race-to-the-bottom world of commoditized Windows/Android trash.
I might agree if Apple hardware was actually better than alternatives, but that’s just not the case. Look at Louis Rossmann’s videos, where he routinely goes over common failure cases that are largely due to design defects (e.g. display cable being cut, CPU getting fried due to a common board short, butterfly keyboard issues, etc). As in, defects other laptops in a similar price bracket don’t have.
I’ve had my E-series ThinkPad for 6 years, with no issues whatsoever. The USB-C charge port is getting a little loose, but that’s understandable since it’s been mostly a kids Minecraft device for a couple years now, and kids are hard on computers. I had my T-Mobile series before that for 5-ish years until it finally died due to water damage (a lot of water).
Apple products (at least laptops) are designed for aesthetics first, not longevity. They do generally have pretty good performance though, especially with the new Apple Silicon chips, but they source a lot of their other parts from the same companies that provide parts for the rest of the PC market.
If you stick to the more premium devices, you probably won’t have issues. Buy business class laptops and phones with long software support cycles. For desktops, I recommend buying higher end components (Gold or Platinum power supply, mid-range or better motherboard, etc), or buying from a local DIY shop with a good warranty if buying pre built.
Like anything else, don’t buy the cheapest crap you can, buy something in the middle of the price range for the features you’re looking for.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 6 months ago
That’s why I don’t buy laptops with soldered RAM.
In my opinion disadvantages of user-replaceable RAM far outweigh the advantages. The same goes for discrete GPUs. Apple moved away from this and I expect PC manufacturers to follow Apple’a move in the next decade or so, as they always do.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Here’s how I see the advantages of soldered RAM:
- better performance
- less risk of physical damage
- more energy efficient
- smaller
The risk of physical damage is so incredibly low already, and energy use of RAM is also incredibly low, so neither of those seem important.
So that leaves performance, which I honestly haven’t found good numbers for. If you have this, I’m very interested, but since RAM speed is rarely the bottleneck in a computer (unless you have specific workloads), I’m going to assume it to be a marginal improvement.
So really, I guess “smaller” is the best argument, and I honestly don’t care about another half centimeter of space, it’s really not an issue.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 6 months ago
So that leaves performance, which I honestly haven’t found good numbers for. If you have this, I’m very interested, but since RAM speed is rarely the bottleneck in a computer (unless you have specific workloads), I’m going to assume it to be a marginal improvement.
This is where you’re mistaken. There is one thing that integrated RAM enables that makes a huge difference for performance: unified memory. GPUs code is almost always bandwidth limited, which why on a graphics card the RAM is soldered on and physically close to the GPU itself, because that is needed for the high bandwidth requirements of a GPU.
By having everything in one package, CPU and GPU can share the same memory, which means that you eliminate any overhead of copying data to/from VRAM for GPGPU tasks. But there’s more than that, unified memory doesn’t just apply to the CPU and GPU, but also other accelerators that are part of the SoC. What is becoming increasingly important is AI acceleration. UMA means the neural engine can access the same memory as the CPU and GPU, and also with zero overhead.
This is why user-replaceable RAM and discrete GPUs are going to die out. The overhead and latency of copying all that data back and forth over the relatively slow PCIe bus is just not worth it.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Do you have actual numbers to back that up?
The best I’ve found is benchmarks of Apple silicon vs Intel+dGPU, but that’s an apples to oranges comparison. And if I’m not mistaken, Apple made other changes like a larger bus to the memory chips, which again makes comparisons difficult.
I’ve heard about potential benefits, but without something tangible, I’m going to have to assume it’s not the main driver here.
__dev@lemmy.world 6 months ago
“unified memory” is an Apple marketing term for what everyone’s been doing for well over a decade. Every single integrated GPU in existence shares memory between the CPU and GPU; that’s how they work. It has nothing to do with soldering the RAM.
You’re right about the bandwidth though, current socketed RAM standards have severe bandwidth limitations which directly limit the performance of integrated GPUs. This again has little to do with being socketed though: LPCAMM supports up to 9.6GT/s, considerably faster than what ships with the latest macs.
This is why user-replaceable RAM and discrete GPUs are going to die out. The overhead and latency of copying all that data back and forth over the relatively slow PCIe bus is just not worth it.
The only way discrete GPUs can possibly be outcompeted is if DDR starts competing with GDDR and/or HBM in terms of bandwidth, and there’s zero indication of that ever happening. Apple needs to puts a whole 128GB of LPDDR in their system to be comparable (in bandwidth) to literally 10 year old dedicated GPUs - the 780ti had over 300GB/s of memory bandwidth with a measly 3GB of capacity. DDR is simply not a good choice GPUs.
dojan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
What kind of disadvantages do you see?
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 6 months ago
Limited RAM, even a 4090 only has 24GB and slow transfers to/from VRAM. The GPU can only operate on data in VRAM, so anything you need it to work on you need to copy over the relatively slow PCIe bus to the GPU. Then once it’s done you need to copy the results back over the PCIe bus to system RAM for the CPU to be able to access it. This considerably slows down GPGPU tasks.
dojan@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ah yeah, I see. That’s definitely a downside if you work with something where that becomes a factor.
akilou@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I had a extra stick of RAM available the other day so I went to open my wife’s Lenovo to see if it’d take it and the damn thing is screwed shut with the smallest torx screws I’ve ever seen, smaller than what I have. I was so annoyed
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Torx is legitimately useful for small screws, because it’s more resistant to stripping than Phillips.
Now, if they start using Torx security bits or some oddball shapes, then they’re just being obnoxious. But there are not-trying-to-obstruct-the-customer reasons not to use Phillips.
generichate1546@lemmynsfw.com 6 months ago
IFixit kit is a great toolset from the site that has every type of bit in it.
NekkoDroid@programming.dev 6 months ago
Got myself an IFixit Mako a while ago, really nice even if I mostly just use the philips head ones
seth@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Does it have triangle bits? Nintendo uses some really unusual driver shapes.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The real question is why you don’t have a complete precision screwdriver set
akilou@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I thought I did! Until I got the smallest one out and it just spun on top of the screw
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I bought the E495 because the T495 had soldered RAM and one RAM slot, while the E495 had both RAM slots replacable. Adding more RAM didn’t need any special tools. Newer E-series and T-series both have one RAM slot and some soldered RAM. I’m guessing you’re talking about one of the consumer lines, like the Yoga series or something?
That said, Lenovo (well, Motorola in this case, but Lenovo owns Motorola) puts all kinds of restrictions to your rights if you unlock the bootloader of their phones (PDF version of the agreement). That, plus going down the path of soldering RAM gives me serious concerns about the direction they’re heading, so I can’t really recommend their products anymore.
If I ever need a new laptop, I’ll probably get a Framework.
tal@lemmy.today 6 months ago
I keep looking at the Frameworks, because I’m happy with the philosophy, but the problem is that the parts that they went to a lot of trouble to make user-replaceable are the parts that I don’t really care about.
They let you stick a fancy video card on the thing. I’d rather have battery life – I play games on a desktop. If they’d stick a battery there, that might be interesting.
They let you choose the keyboard. I’m pretty happy with current laptop keyboards, don’t really need a numpad, and even if you want one, it’s available. I’ve got no use for the LED inserts that you can stick on the thing if you don’t want keyboard there.
They let you choose among sound ported Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, and various types of USB. Maybe I could see putting in more USB-C then some other vendors have. But the stuff I really want is:
A 100Wh battery. Either built-in, or give me a bay where I can put more internal battery.
A touchpad with three mechanical buttons, like the Synaptics ones that the Thinkpads have.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yeah, ThinkPad used to allow either a CD drive or an extra battery in their T-series. They stopped offering the extra battery and started soldering RAM, so I got the cheaper E-series (might as well save cash if I can get what I want).
I think there’s a market there. Have an option for a hot-swap battery to bring on trips and use the GPU at home. Serious travelers could even bring a spare battery to keep working for longer.
Yes please! And give me the ThinkPad nipple as well. :) If they had those, I’d not bother with even looking at Lenovo. The middle button is so essential to my normal workflow that any other laptop (including my fancy MacBook for work) feels crappy.
I’m guessing the things they made modular are just the low hanging fruit. It’s pretty easy to make a USB-C to whatever port, it’s a bit harder to make a pluggable battery in a slot that can also support a GPU.
Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The document mentions a lot of US laws. I wonder if they try the same over in the EU.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I’m guessing it wouldn’t hold. But I’m in the US, so I’ll just avoid their phones going forward, and will probably avoid their laptops and whatnot as well just due to a lack of trust.
akilou@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Yeah, it’s a Yoga