Yeah soldered RAM is upgradable, if you:
-Are skilled in hot air rework
-Have the tools for proper hot air rework
-Know how to reconfigure the board to accept the new capacity and configuration
-Know what replacement chips should be compatible with your specific system
-Have the ability to purchase compatible chips of a higher capacity

…on second thought, maybe soldered memory is fucking dumb

I think it’s very telling that Valve originally stated that soldered memory was a requirement for ‘signal integrity’ or something along those lines for the Steam Box, and with their latest update, they’ve said it’s now modular.

So either the ‘requirement’ was bullshit, or the product is worse off because of this change.

I seriously believe the former to be the answer.

Also… what the hell happened to CAMM modules? I thought they were supposed to be the answer to modular super high-speed memory?

@maddy Soldered RAM can be both a real requirement of a design optimized for certain priorities, and socketed RAM might be a better product even without changing priorities, if for no other reason than that the environment changed. (And the environment very much is changing.)

This requires adding sockets, design rework (maybe even additional layers), increased margin requirements, etc., but it also decouples board assembly from product assembly, adding supply chain agility and maybe decreasing costs. This can make it a better product even if the manufacturer does not value serviceability.

@willglynn Gosh I hope socketed RAM becomes the norm again with all that’s going on in the supply chain. I’m so sick of seeing old computers with good specs, limited by their soldered 8GB of RAM that would otherwise be just fine as a modern machine after some upgrades.

@maddy DosDude1 RAM upgrade videos are still a super interesting watch because each board even has its own little challenges and gotchas. In no way should soldered RAM be considered “replaceable”, it’s a serious skill.

@LightTheUnicorn Oh, totally!
I love DosDude1’s videos.

@maddy Worth noting: socketed memory is outright impossible for some designs.

Apple's M1 Ultra processor (2022) has a 1024-bit memory interface, consisting of 16x128-bit memory channels. AMD's upcoming Zen 6 EPYC and Intel's upcoming Xeon 7 Diamond Rapids processors will bring a similar capability when they launch (2026?), requiring palm-sized processors, sockets with 6000+ pins, and motherboards with ridiculous layer counts.

Silicon interconnects can be way denser than PCB interconnects, which are in turn way denser than sockets. Apple leaned into this and got silly performance years ahead in part *because* the processor and its memory dies were integrated using advanced packaging techniques.

@willglynn Oh, for sure. I know some of the newer Intel Core Ultra CPUs have the RAM on the substrate, and my understanding is that expanding that is simply not an option.

I understand there are some designs where it is practically required, but I think in most consumer machines (like the stuff you can find at Best Buy that isn’t particularly thin or powerful), it’s really unnecessary.

@willglynn @maddy It would be possible with a serial RAM interface like OMI (which is used on POWER10).

I actually think a serial RAM interface could be a good thing, if it had free firmware. The problem is there’s only one implementation of OMI and it requires proprietary firmware.