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The Curse of Soldered RAM

What HN thinks

Everyone wants repairable laptops until they see the price tag and the extra two millimetres.

Soldering is about profit
Many argue vendors solder RAM mainly to upsell memory tiers and drive obsolescence, not for thinness or performance.
Physics and power justify it
Others note LPDDR is about low power, sockets hurt signal integrity and add height, and consumers do buy thin, cheap machines.
LPCAMM2 as middle ground
LPCAMM2 promises socketed low-power RAM, but adoption is thin and parts are scarce and pricey.

Consensus: Most agree soldered RAM hurts repairability and that desoldering is possible but impractical for ordinary users; there is no consensus on whether the tradeoff is justified.

Recommended in the comments

Framework Laptop 13 Pro ↗ (product): Offers the repairable, upgradeable laptop people say they want, with socketed LPDDR.
Lenovo ThinkPad E16 (product): Still lets you add socketed memory alongside soldered RAM.

Summarised by Claude from the comment thread 8 hours ago.

Points: 93
Comments: 98
Best rank: #5
Posted: 2026-10-24 by gsky
Category: Hardware

soldered-ram memtest86 linux-kernel fedora grub lenovo-x1-carbon btrfs

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