LPCAMM2 sockets were supposed to provide all the benefits of soldering while still being a socket. Anyone know the state of adoption?
rasz · 2026-10-24 17:58:15 UTC
the fact no component supplier, not even alibaba sells LPCAMM2 sockets tells you everything you need to know. The only prices I can find are in $30 range per socket
ACCount39 · 2026-10-26 07:28:35 UTC
Honestly, reasonable.
I've been eyeing LPCAMM2 interposers for non-RAM uses - as an off the shelf connector for stacked PCB designs. The conclusion was that it wasn't produced or used at sufficient scale for it to work.
dist-epoch · 2026-10-26 07:44:41 UTC
All of the new NVIDIA data center GPUs use SOCAMM2, quite similar to LPCAMM2.
Connectors are expensive, high-speed ones particularly. $30 is fine, though it makes a giant difference at what quantity that is. Did you look at a single one or 1k?
rasz · 2026-10-26 11:47:53 UTC
No, $30 is not fine :) This isnt a magic connector, its not more complicated than $7 AM5, $6 LGA1851 or $5 LGA1700 all in single quantities, and those prices go way down bulk. Those are all banged out by machines running 24/7 lights out.
No supplier carries those connectors, there are no 1K prices I could find anywhere.
noman-land · 2026-10-25 17:42:07 UTC
The new Framework 13 Pro laptop ships with LPCAMM2.
yeah but there is very little interest in that model compared to ai max line
snvzz · 2026-10-26 07:48:12 UTC
But no ECC support.
mrheosuper · 2026-10-26 07:27:53 UTC
Lenovo uses it on their latest thinkpad t14.
bugake · 2026-10-26 07:55:48 UTC
You can't buy a single LPCAMM2 RAM module on Amazon. eBay has some.
RetroTechie · 2026-10-24 20:29:45 UTC
Bash me all you want, but after CPU, GPU, memory controller & a host of other things integrated in modern System-on-Chips (SoC), I've long held the belief that next logical step would be to integrate RAM.
Optimal: piecemeal. As in: X sockets on a board, each socket takes a chip that adds CPU core(s), GPU cores, and some amount of main RAM. More chips, more powerful computer.
Keyword: socket. Read: replaceable. Bad chip out, good chip in. Slow chip out, faster chip in. Soldered onto board = reliable, but a defect could junk the whole machine.
musicale · 2026-10-24 21:02:14 UTC
> Bash me all you want, but after CPU, GPU, memory controller & a host of other things integrated in modern System-on-Chips (SoC), I've long held the belief that next logical step would be to integrate RAM
Haven't Apple (A-series, M-series) and others been copackaging memory for a while? (SiP or MCM?)
jacquesm · 2026-10-26 06:53:37 UTC
Those aren't socketed though, are they?
bartvbl · 2026-10-26 07:41:33 UTC
Manufacturing processes for RAM and processor cores are not one and the same and use different tradeoffs. It's the main problem in-memory processing is running into, which is akin to what you're describing here. The die space required for the same level of performance makes the idea of on-die RAM intractible. The best they're able to do with RAM optimised manufacturing processes are tiny RISC-V cores that lack most of the feature sets. What apple does with moving the RAM chips on to the package really is the only viable option.
vbezhenar · 2026-10-26 07:44:29 UTC
I'm using laptop with Ultra 7 268V. It already has RAM on chip. I think they call it "processor package". I don't think it's socketed, though.
xxs · 2026-10-26 07:51:10 UTC
RAM uses a different process than the logic nodes you describe. RAM uses tons of capacitors, along with the the transistors.
Then there is the HBM which is an expensive process to mount on the chip.
skew-aberration · 2026-10-26 08:09:38 UTC
RAM on package or on die is common for laptops now.
wtallis · 2026-10-26 18:10:44 UTC
DRAM on die isn't a thing at all. eDRAM was a niche technology for a while but hasn't been relevant to PCs for over a decade.
crote · 2026-10-26 08:33:40 UTC
Considering the current trend is for SoCs to deintegrate: don't count on it.
Putting RAM inside the logic die is crazy expensive - just look at how much footprint L3 cache takes up on a modern chip. It'll always make more sense to put it in a separate die, made using RAM-specific processes. With Zen the memory controller and GPU has (once again) moved to a separate die, and with X3D we're now even seeing separate cache dies.
There's of course HBM if you want to consider that "integrated", but the large cost bump, additional manufacturing risks, and loss of flexibility don't make that an attractive proposition unless you really need the extra speed. Regular DDR dies? You gain basically nothing by co-packaging those.
musicale · 2026-10-24 21:16:41 UTC
> I then had to manually transcribe this, which [w]as “fun”.
Can't you select and copy the text in the photo (on most smartphones and PCs at least)?
DauntingPear7 · 2026-10-26 17:45:18 UTC
I can on my iPhone and MacBook
matja · 2026-10-26 19:00:38 UTC
It would be useful if memtest output a QR-code which encodes that string.
pseudohadamard · 2026-10-25 02:27:42 UTC
Since the OP mentions Lenovo, look at their other product lines for ones that still have socketed RAM. I'm currently running an E16 with 40GB RAM, 8GB soldered, 32GB socketed. And aside from that it leaves my previous X1 for dead in terms of performance. Lenovo's replacing the carbon fiber case, the whole reason the X1 line is called "Carbon", with crappy black plastic was the last straw.
nicman23 · 2026-10-26 06:36:41 UTC
i had to move a very very small resistor in the correct place to make a laptop disregard the soldered ram and only use the sodimm
notabotiswear · 2026-10-27 06:45:51 UTC
And lose the performance gains of multi-channel memory access. A minor issue of CPU performance, but devastating for IGPs.
But I suppose when one has to amputate, not being able to run a marathon isn't really a blocking factor...
nicman23 · 2026-10-27 18:23:15 UTC
it was throwing memtest86 errors and the apu only had like 6 vega CUs. it struggled with anything 3d anyways
Neil44 · 2026-10-26 07:01:01 UTC
We used to buy Dells with minimum RAM and add quality third party RAM for way less than Dell wanted for it. They also use ram quantity to leverage other specs we're not bothered about. Of course they are moving to soldered.
bugake · 2026-10-26 07:51:31 UTC
Prebuilt branded PCs have always had inferior quality, compatibility, and expandability problems, all with overpricing.
ethin · 2026-10-26 07:05:52 UTC
Am I the only one who wonders if there is a way to get the kind of performance we want out of non-soldered components/SOC designs? Like from what I've heard, it's a "physics says no" problem, but I'm not sure if that's actually true (not being an expert in this technology) or if it's just the excuse many companies use to justify soldering everything to make serviceability impossible. And it would be really neat if this is actually being looked into by labs right now (possibly with AI's help), since areas like that are where I think (non) LLM AIs might be very useful. Same thing for medicine, materials, etc.
bigstrat2003 · 2026-10-26 07:29:59 UTC
While it's true that you can get better performance out of soldered memory than a socket, that's also not why vendors use it. Desktop computers, with their very much not soldered memory, get great performance after all. The laptop vendors solder the memory because it lets them make more money off selling units with more memory soldered in. That's all.
Animats · 2026-10-26 07:47:36 UTC
It's partly a thickness problem. Sockets add height to boards.
Besides, since RAM isn't getting cheaper for a while, this isn't a big issue now.
askvictor · 2026-10-26 07:52:36 UTC
Are any customers asking for a laptop that is 1 or 2mm thinner?
vladvasiliu · 2026-10-26 08:14:14 UTC
I don't know if they're asking for them, but they sure seem to appreciate them and see them as "better".
At work, the standard issue laptop is some form of HP Elitebook. These have been getting thinner, and people seem to like that. We're not a tech shop, and even the IT dept. is mainly barely-technical project-managers. An 8th gen i5 would be plenty powerful for what they do, but fortunately for them we have to replace the laptops regularly because for some reason we buy them with the least amount of RAM possible (even before the prices exploded).
Anyway, at the start of the year I was fed up with the ridiculous screen quality of the HPs and other annoyances, so I got myself an Lenvo p14 something-or-other. It's almost twice as thick and much heavier than the HPs, and everyone who sees it makes fun of it.
crote · 2026-10-26 08:20:47 UTC
> Besides, since RAM isn't getting cheaper for a while, this isn't a big issue now.
I would argue the exact opposite, actually! My home machine has 32GB of RAM and is already over 7 years old. If it were to die right now I'd ideally go for an upgrade with 64GB so it would be good for another 7 or so. But that's completely unaffordable, and I could survive with 16GB for a year or two, so going for the bare minimum now and upgrading it later is looking very attractive...
dist-epoch · 2026-10-26 07:51:54 UTC
That's not all.
"Smartphone makers glue them because it's cheaper and they can make more money ..." No. It's what the consumers want. Thinner phones, water resistant phones, and thinner laptops.
crote · 2026-10-26 08:13:31 UTC
I can't recall the last time someone mentioned a phone or laptop being too thick as a downside in a review. Thin and light devices have been widely available for well over a decade, even to the point of caricature like the iPhone Air. It just isn't a feature worth caring about anymore.
Water resistant? Those ratings are lies anyways, and nobody is going to bring their expensive smartphone on a diving trip to take pictures - or even take it surfing without a waterproof case. In practice "water resistant" means "won't die from an occasional splash", and that can be achieved perfectly fine by repairable phones.
vladvasiliu · 2026-10-26 08:19:54 UTC
People seem to care about "thin and light" laptops, at least my colleagues do. But since they don't pay for these out of pocket, I can't tell how important it is to them, measured in currency.
Now, I don't know about surfing, but I regularly strap my iphone to my motorbike's handlebars to use as a GPS. No case. I don't particularly enjoy doing this under pouring rain, but it does happen, and the phone gets drenched. However, to the point about people wanting this, yes, I do. I would also love a replaceable battery. My old Galaxy S5 had both features, so saying that waterproofing means non-user-replaceable battery is a lie.
dist-epoch · 2026-10-26 09:09:24 UTC
I'm washing my expensive flagship phone with water and soap every week, for almost a decade now. Never had a problem because of this (except the USB port getting disabled for a few hours until it dries).
jolmg · 2026-10-26 11:42:04 UTC
> I can't recall the last time someone mentioned a phone or laptop being too thick as a downside in a review.
It's the "elephant in the room" sort of thing that doesn't need to be said because it's apparent and viewers know what they want in that regard. It does get acknowledged when reviewers that don't normally review toughbooks, review toughbooks, but it's an acknowledgement rather than a complaint. Why would someone even view a review of a toughbook if they cared so much about thickness?
mrheosuper · 2026-10-26 07:30:17 UTC
If the CPU can be socketed, there is no reason RAM can't be.
xxs · 2026-10-26 07:54:11 UTC
Effectively there are no socketed CPUs for laptops, though, for way more than a decade already. Saying that as I'd fully support modular components, as in desktops.
rvba · 2026-10-26 08:06:17 UTC
Tsinghua Tongfang (and I think Clevo) offers customizable laptops. Resellers might use own branding.
CPU and RAM are socketed. Clevo had socketed graphics cards too
xxs · 2026-10-27 08:24:28 UTC
there are no socketed laptop CPUs x86 in particular. To get a socketed laptop CPU it'd be a desktop one, which are not exactly efficient.
crote · 2026-10-26 08:02:12 UTC
The boards using LPDDR don't have socketed CPUs. Also, every connector is a huge hit to your signal integrity, so one versus two might indeed be a big deal.
And yeah, it can be, but that's how you end up with the far slower regular DDR. Fast, repairable, cheap: pick (at most) two.
mrheosuper · 2026-10-26 08:28:37 UTC
No, even in multiple RAM channel Server, the CPU is still socketed. That means all the data is going through a socket before reaching the CPU.
I agree there is draw back when using socket(mostly size), but performance is not the big issue.
MRDIMM RAM can reach even higher Transfer rate than LPDDR5, yet still socktable.
LeoPanthera · 2026-10-26 07:08:50 UTC
I'm stunned that "mapping out" blocks of bad RAM is a thing you can do. It reminds me of the old days when hard disks had to be "low-level formatted" first (ask your parents, kids) and it would ask you for a list of bad sectors to map out. Sometimes hard disks would even come with a list of known bad ones printed on the top.
Joel_Mckay · 2026-10-26 10:24:56 UTC
"Bad" ram re-mapping is handy for equipment that has special areas of memory shared with hardware like accelerator ASIC, other cpu, or unknown features. Also useful in extreme environment contexts, where the chips may get heavily damaged while in use.
>hard disks would even come with a list of known bad ones printed on the top.
HDD still do, but the flash on the controller quietly handles sector sparing, and remapping. This is why one can't just swap unmodified controller PCB anymore for data-recovery without secret vendor software. =3
joey_spaztard · 2026-10-26 17:38:50 UTC
Also hard drives, from about the last fifteen years, have calibration data for the specific individual heads that read and write the data to/from the platter.
Some, not all, harddrives have an eeprom that can be transplanted to a different pcb when trying to do data recovery on a drive with a faulty circuit board.
Joel_Mckay · 2026-10-26 17:56:27 UTC
>harddrives have an eeprom that can be transplanted to a different pcb
It is not that simple, as the identical part number may have a lot# with slightly different PCB/chips/firmware. If folks have done forensic recovery, than they get a rather quick education about the constant changes to retail HDD design. =3
joey_spaztard · 2026-10-26 11:34:29 UTC
'Ask your grandparents' would be more accurate. Sales of models of hard drive that could be low level formatted had almost entirely ended by the year 1992. Primitive PC's that only ran DOS and had 20MB or 40MB hard drives were considered obsolete over thirty years ago, when windows 3.11 onwards existed.
glimshe · 2026-10-26 12:15:01 UTC
Hey! I was there and my kid is still a teenager.
I was programming already in the mid 80s and helping my dad figure out 20MB "Winchesters" in the late 80s/early 90s.
bradknowles · 2026-10-27 03:53:00 UTC
In the summer of 1989, I had completed all my work for my BS-CS degree, and was waiting for the University to give me a diploma. I took a summer internship at Imprimis (later bought by Seagate), and I was honored to work with the Manufacturing Engineers for the Wren IV through Wren VII hard drive lines.
The Wren VII was the first consumer-grade SCSI hard drive with a capacity of 1GB or more — at 5.25” full height. The company had done a commercial-grade SAS drive based on the same chassis the year before. You had to be super careful with those magnets — they could cut off a finger, if you weren’t looking. And they were virtually impossible to remove from a fridge, once applied.
My job was to write a software system that could be used to monitor quality control issues in the manufacturing line, towards a goal of continual process improvement. I didn’t manage to get the whole management system built before I left, but I did get the full toolkit built, and the management system was intended to be a relatively simple layer on top of the toolkit.
Fun times!
M95D · 2026-10-26 12:17:32 UTC
I had a Seagate Cheetah ~70GB 10'000 rpm SCSI HDD from around 2002 that could be low-level formatted. I could even change physical sector size.
wtallis · 2026-10-26 17:40:45 UTC
Did the drive give you more sectors when you used a smaller sector size and fewer sectors when you used a larger sector size? If the number of sectors didn't change, it probably didn't actually do a low-level format and instead just toggled whether the drive firmware would skip over the extra bytes as if they didn't exist.
M95D · 2026-10-27 07:18:17 UTC
Yes, it did, and the total capacity changed too. With 4K (larger) sectors I got a few GB more space.
kjs3 · 2026-10-26 12:33:14 UTC
PATA & SATA drives don't have low level format, but SCSI did long after 1992.
ygjb · 2026-10-27 13:15:14 UTC
Listen here whippersnapper.
Oh shit.
Damn. I don't have grandkids yet but ok.
I didn't come to HN to confront my own mortality and age ;P
Those aren't museum artefacts, it's just retro.
Get off my lawn.
CTOSian · 2026-10-27 12:00:22 UTC
mind 'low-level' was once a procedure via the debug.exe
bobowzki · 2026-10-26 07:14:21 UTC
Well that was good to learn!
swiftcoder · 2026-10-26 07:22:30 UTC
It it possible to desolder and replace the offending RAM if one were sufficiently motivated? I've seen folks doing that to soldered SSDs in MacBooks
ACCount39 · 2026-10-26 07:33:33 UTC
It is - anything short of HBM can be replaced that way.
The issue, of course, is just how much time, effort and skill is required to do it.
It might become a viable commercial process outside third world countries if RAM prices spike even more - or if someone finds a way to teach an off the shelf $1000 robot arm advanced autonomous microsoldering.
Then there's the problem of forcing the device itself to recognize the new RAM. It's a device-specific trick. RAM sticks have a little tag chip that tells a PC "how much RAM this stick has", but RAM chips themselves don't - so the device has to infer its RAM capacity from elsewhere. Like strap resistors on the board. Which you have to find and adjust for the new RAM capacity. That, or fix the RAM values in firmware, which is also device-specific.
skissane · 2026-10-26 07:44:35 UTC
> RAM sticks have a little tag chip that tells a PC "how much RAM this stick has", but RAM chips themselves don't - so the device has to infer its RAM capacity from elsewhere
I'm surprised that in 2026 this is still true.
You could easily fit a little microcontroller on the die of each RAM chip which reports its make/model/manufacturing date, capacity and capabilities, can be triggered to run self-tests, etc. If they aren't doing that yet, I'm surprised that they aren't.
misnome · 2026-10-26 07:55:14 UTC
Why bother with the expense if you are permanently soldering it in anyway?
skissane · 2026-10-26 08:05:16 UTC
Well, it turns out they actually are bothering – while in DDR thru DDR4, the mode registers are write-only, LPDDR2 onwards have an MRR (Mode Register Read) command, which the CPU/chipset can use to inspect the manufacturer and capacity; and DDR5 has copied the same facility from LPDDR.
u8080 · 2026-10-26 08:35:15 UTC
Upgrading my RAM firmware when
euroderf · 2026-10-27 05:28:50 UTC
> or if someone finds a way to teach an off the shelf $1000 robot arm advanced autonomous microsoldering.
This sounds like an ideal application test case for precision industrial robotics, and I hafta wonder why we haven't seen an example posted here at HN.
eqvinox · 2026-10-26 07:37:31 UTC
If you live in Shenzhen, it's a subway trip away. Good repair services elsewhere can do it too. Either way any warranty you have is probably getting called into question after that, even if that's supposed to be illegal in some places (e.g. the US - they're supposed to prove that your modification/repair is what caused the warranty fault, but in practice…).
swiftcoder · 2026-10-26 08:14:16 UTC
> Either way any warranty you have is probably getting called into question after that
I'm assuming if it were still under warranty, dead RAM chip would be enough to get a free repair/replacement from the manufacturer
eqvinox · 2026-10-26 12:20:20 UTC
Right; I was thinking about upgrades, sorry.
vbezhenar · 2026-10-26 07:41:53 UTC
Of course it is possible. Unless you're dealing with manufacturer who actively works against that, like Raspberry Pi.
immmmmm · 2026-10-26 07:46:05 UTC
On YT there’s dosdude soldering ram on M series SoCs
Good BGA experience and a steady hand seems required
xxs · 2026-10-26 07:46:58 UTC
Yes, of course. It says - ball grid (array) in the article. Doing it by hand, e.g. with just hot air is proper hard. It's not hard with specialized equipment (that cost way more than the laptop, itself). Sourcing the chips is not easy either.
As for the videos and the Macs, you can see the same people (likely) soldering RAM as well.
bozdemir · 2026-10-26 07:45:01 UTC
Like the exact case with phone batteries that are not easily changable by the owner, soldered rams are evil...
bugake · 2026-10-26 07:46:10 UTC
The race to make laptops thinner is pointless. I wish I could buy a thicker laptop that is more robust, repairable, expandable, and has better cooling, with the extra space filled with batteries.
groomlake · 2026-10-26 07:59:48 UTC
Framework?
chii · 2026-10-26 08:07:09 UTC
Framework does exactly what the GP claims to want.
Unfortunately, not many people making those claims _actually_ want them by revealed preferences. They overwhelmingly want the lower price laptops with similar performance specs.
mft_ · 2026-10-26 08:53:26 UTC
Or… there’s a level of value that people will assign to the repairability offered by Framework, but the current cost is too high?
I like and support what Framework offers. But when I last bought a laptop (a couple of years ago now) the FW13 was almost double the price of a similarly-specc’d and thinner/lighter Asus. (From €1000 to ~€18-1900).
I’d probably pay a ~40% premium for FW, all else being equal, but 80-90% is just too much: it just doesn’t make sense to whatever value-assessment algorithms I’ve developed over time.
codedokode · 2026-10-26 09:01:09 UTC
13 inch screen is a toy usable only for browsing social media and not for real work.
BoxwoodSeed · 2026-10-26 09:18:54 UTC
You don't use your laptop as just a thin client connecting to a more powerful machine over the Internet?
codedokode · 2026-10-26 09:20:43 UTC
No, I do not. How does this solve the small screen size problem?
BoxwoodSeed · 2026-10-26 15:44:52 UTC
I read it as being not powerful enough and didn't parse the size issue properly. What exactly is the problem? I'm regularly using 12" laptops and don't see much wrong with it. Just changes the workflow a bit, as I normally use a 52" screen.
It's not ideal, but then working on a laptop never is.
codedokode · 2026-10-28 00:27:20 UTC
The problem is too few lines of code and controls can fit on a small screen. How many lines of code fit on your 12 inch screen? On my screen there are 40 lines and some space for window headers and top bar.
arccy · 2026-10-26 09:26:56 UTC
yeah real programmers only use the biggest screens, the bestest cpus, and discrete graphics
ghaff · 2026-10-26 09:40:11 UTC
Companies have standardized on, mostly, 13” laptops with whatever accessories. But, honestly, for some people who never leave their desk, a desktop of some sort is probably a better choice— though just connecting to a server works too.
codedokode · 2026-10-26 10:17:02 UTC
"bestest" CPU is not required, but with 13 inch screen you have to either make everything tiny and strain your eyes, or have only 10-15 lines of code in the screen. Also, modern websites and apps use gigantic font size and you will have like 3 paragraphs of text in one screen.
kstrauser · 2026-10-26 14:03:49 UTC
Are you coding in Word or something? 36 point Times New Roman?
RunSet · 2026-10-26 12:52:13 UTC
Thereby all but ensuring the software they write will be sluggish on end users' computers- and "Runs fine on my machine." shall be their mantra.
ghaff · 2026-10-26 09:33:16 UTC
13 seems to have emerged as the generally best compromise for using at your desk and traveling. Even a 15” is still small relative to an external monitor and is getting large to fly with.
swiftcoder · 2026-10-26 10:00:37 UTC
That's a take, for sure. I use a 14" as my daily driver. Sure, I plug it into a big monitor when I'm at my desk, but it's perfectly usable standalone.
I used to use an 11" as my daily driver (and that was before retina-resolutions were a thing). It wasn't ideal, but it was fine for development work.
Comments
I've been eyeing LPCAMM2 interposers for non-RAM uses - as an off the shelf connector for stacked PCB designs. The conclusion was that it wasn't produced or used at sufficient scale for it to work.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/business/tech-science/20260420/...
No supplier carries those connectors, there are no 1K prices I could find anywhere.
https://frame.work/blog/framework-laptop-13-pro-deep-dive-lp...
Optimal: piecemeal. As in: X sockets on a board, each socket takes a chip that adds CPU core(s), GPU cores, and some amount of main RAM. More chips, more powerful computer.
Keyword: socket. Read: replaceable. Bad chip out, good chip in. Slow chip out, faster chip in. Soldered onto board = reliable, but a defect could junk the whole machine.
Haven't Apple (A-series, M-series) and others been copackaging memory for a while? (SiP or MCM?)
Then there is the HBM which is an expensive process to mount on the chip.
Putting RAM inside the logic die is crazy expensive - just look at how much footprint L3 cache takes up on a modern chip. It'll always make more sense to put it in a separate die, made using RAM-specific processes. With Zen the memory controller and GPU has (once again) moved to a separate die, and with X3D we're now even seeing separate cache dies.
There's of course HBM if you want to consider that "integrated", but the large cost bump, additional manufacturing risks, and loss of flexibility don't make that an attractive proposition unless you really need the extra speed. Regular DDR dies? You gain basically nothing by co-packaging those.
Can't you select and copy the text in the photo (on most smartphones and PCs at least)?
But I suppose when one has to amputate, not being able to run a marathon isn't really a blocking factor...
Besides, since RAM isn't getting cheaper for a while, this isn't a big issue now.
At work, the standard issue laptop is some form of HP Elitebook. These have been getting thinner, and people seem to like that. We're not a tech shop, and even the IT dept. is mainly barely-technical project-managers. An 8th gen i5 would be plenty powerful for what they do, but fortunately for them we have to replace the laptops regularly because for some reason we buy them with the least amount of RAM possible (even before the prices exploded).
Anyway, at the start of the year I was fed up with the ridiculous screen quality of the HPs and other annoyances, so I got myself an Lenvo p14 something-or-other. It's almost twice as thick and much heavier than the HPs, and everyone who sees it makes fun of it.
I would argue the exact opposite, actually! My home machine has 32GB of RAM and is already over 7 years old. If it were to die right now I'd ideally go for an upgrade with 64GB so it would be good for another 7 or so. But that's completely unaffordable, and I could survive with 16GB for a year or two, so going for the bare minimum now and upgrading it later is looking very attractive...
"Smartphone makers glue them because it's cheaper and they can make more money ..." No. It's what the consumers want. Thinner phones, water resistant phones, and thinner laptops.
Water resistant? Those ratings are lies anyways, and nobody is going to bring their expensive smartphone on a diving trip to take pictures - or even take it surfing without a waterproof case. In practice "water resistant" means "won't die from an occasional splash", and that can be achieved perfectly fine by repairable phones.
Now, I don't know about surfing, but I regularly strap my iphone to my motorbike's handlebars to use as a GPS. No case. I don't particularly enjoy doing this under pouring rain, but it does happen, and the phone gets drenched. However, to the point about people wanting this, yes, I do. I would also love a replaceable battery. My old Galaxy S5 had both features, so saying that waterproofing means non-user-replaceable battery is a lie.
It's the "elephant in the room" sort of thing that doesn't need to be said because it's apparent and viewers know what they want in that regard. It does get acknowledged when reviewers that don't normally review toughbooks, review toughbooks, but it's an acknowledgement rather than a complaint. Why would someone even view a review of a toughbook if they cared so much about thickness?
CPU and RAM are socketed. Clevo had socketed graphics cards too
And yeah, it can be, but that's how you end up with the far slower regular DDR. Fast, repairable, cheap: pick (at most) two.
I agree there is draw back when using socket(mostly size), but performance is not the big issue.
MRDIMM RAM can reach even higher Transfer rate than LPDDR5, yet still socktable.
>hard disks would even come with a list of known bad ones printed on the top.
HDD still do, but the flash on the controller quietly handles sector sparing, and remapping. This is why one can't just swap unmodified controller PCB anymore for data-recovery without secret vendor software. =3
Some, not all, harddrives have an eeprom that can be transplanted to a different pcb when trying to do data recovery on a drive with a faulty circuit board.
It is not that simple, as the identical part number may have a lot# with slightly different PCB/chips/firmware. If folks have done forensic recovery, than they get a rather quick education about the constant changes to retail HDD design. =3
I was programming already in the mid 80s and helping my dad figure out 20MB "Winchesters" in the late 80s/early 90s.
The Wren VII was the first consumer-grade SCSI hard drive with a capacity of 1GB or more — at 5.25” full height. The company had done a commercial-grade SAS drive based on the same chassis the year before. You had to be super careful with those magnets — they could cut off a finger, if you weren’t looking. And they were virtually impossible to remove from a fridge, once applied.
My job was to write a software system that could be used to monitor quality control issues in the manufacturing line, towards a goal of continual process improvement. I didn’t manage to get the whole management system built before I left, but I did get the full toolkit built, and the management system was intended to be a relatively simple layer on top of the toolkit.
Fun times!
Oh shit.
Damn. I don't have grandkids yet but ok.
I didn't come to HN to confront my own mortality and age ;P
Those aren't museum artefacts, it's just retro.
Get off my lawn.
The issue, of course, is just how much time, effort and skill is required to do it.
It might become a viable commercial process outside third world countries if RAM prices spike even more - or if someone finds a way to teach an off the shelf $1000 robot arm advanced autonomous microsoldering.
Then there's the problem of forcing the device itself to recognize the new RAM. It's a device-specific trick. RAM sticks have a little tag chip that tells a PC "how much RAM this stick has", but RAM chips themselves don't - so the device has to infer its RAM capacity from elsewhere. Like strap resistors on the board. Which you have to find and adjust for the new RAM capacity. That, or fix the RAM values in firmware, which is also device-specific.
I'm surprised that in 2026 this is still true.
You could easily fit a little microcontroller on the die of each RAM chip which reports its make/model/manufacturing date, capacity and capabilities, can be triggered to run self-tests, etc. If they aren't doing that yet, I'm surprised that they aren't.
This sounds like an ideal application test case for precision industrial robotics, and I hafta wonder why we haven't seen an example posted here at HN.
I'm assuming if it were still under warranty, dead RAM chip would be enough to get a free repair/replacement from the manufacturer
Good BGA experience and a steady hand seems required
As for the videos and the Macs, you can see the same people (likely) soldering RAM as well.
Unfortunately, not many people making those claims _actually_ want them by revealed preferences. They overwhelmingly want the lower price laptops with similar performance specs.
I like and support what Framework offers. But when I last bought a laptop (a couple of years ago now) the FW13 was almost double the price of a similarly-specc’d and thinner/lighter Asus. (From €1000 to ~€18-1900).
I’d probably pay a ~40% premium for FW, all else being equal, but 80-90% is just too much: it just doesn’t make sense to whatever value-assessment algorithms I’ve developed over time.
It's not ideal, but then working on a laptop never is.
I used to use an 11" as my daily driver (and that was before retina-resolutions were a thing). It wasn't ideal, but it was fine for development work.