Dell using Proprietary RAM Modules

[Redtigercod4]

Summary

 Dell has decided to use proprietary ram modules in their new laptops for DDR5. Renaming it to the CAMM system to save weight and money but also locking you into their platform.

 

Quotes

Quote

 There are reasons for the move, aside from money. This single piece of RAM is looking to replace two SO-DIMM memory slots and looks to save a fair amount of space. It's likely helped the company to make a smaller lighter weight laptop than before, but it's also locked users into its new CAMM system. So no doubt money is a fairly big factor.

 

My thoughts

 Dell hasn't been one for compatible modules when it comes to upgrading the hardware from them but this is a step too far especially with the push to right to repair.

 

Sources

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/dells-new-laptop-features-proprietary-ddr5-module-wont-take-generic-ram/

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Not supprising.

its dell

didnt they force people to use dell certified ram or the system didnt boot?

[Redtigercod4]

Yeah, it had to be on a certified list or it didn't boot.

[Commodus]

It's one thing when Apple puts out an SoC with built-in RAM, because that's key to the chip's performance... but Dell is effectively throwing out one of the reasons to get a Windows laptop without much practical benefit. It wouldn't necessarily stop me from buying, say, an XPS 13 if the system was particularly good... but I could see this costing Dell sales from some people.

[soldier_ph]

Every "normal" Tech Company with a functioning Brain: Let's join the Right to Repair movement and Perhaps even pursue a partnership with iFixit and offer people parts for repair and not pull an Apple and lock everything into our Premium Ecosystem.

 

Meanwhile Dell: Our Products, Our Rules. 

[RejZoR]

Why not just solder the damn thing then? What's the point of some stupid proprietary system if there is no benefit for it anyways apart from size which you can achieve with soldering. Apple's new Macs at least boast with insane bandwidth that no existing RAM can achieve in modular slotted system?

[IPD]

Wasn't Dell also the biggest proponent of RD-RAM?

[Jurrunio]

too big and old to improve with time, that's all Dell showed.

[Kisai]

26 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Why not just solder the damn thing then? What's the point of some stupid proprietary system if there is no benefit for it anyways apart from size which you can achieve with soldering. Apple's new Macs at least boast with insane bandwidth that no existing RAM can achieve in modular slotted system?

Reparability.

 

Just because it's repairable doesn't mean you can source the parts. You'll have to scrap other units, or source them off ebay.

 

At any rate, I think this just goes back to "watch what you wish for" with right to repair, a company may make it "easier" to field repair, but you're on your own if you want the parts. Like try getting the USB-C cables for their WD15/19/19DC docks. You simply can't get them, if you can convince Dell to warranty it, they send you an entire unit. even though the cable is like 1/0th the weight and shipping cost, and you have to send the old one back.

 

That said, this is nothing new for Dell. What we all really desire from Dell and HP is to use standards-compliant parts so that we can maintain the devices for 7 years instead of having to throw them away after 2. Why would I ever buy another Dell if I had to throw away the last one because I couldn't replace a $50 part from a $2000 unit.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

So you need to spend $500 on them upgrading the ram from 16 to 32gb. 

FTFY

[WhitetailAni]

And no one was surprised by that.

[RejZoR]

33 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Reparability.

 

Just because it's repairable doesn't mean you can source the parts. You'll have to scrap other units, or source them off ebay.

 

At any rate, I think this just goes back to "watch what you wish for" with right to repair, a company may make it "easier" to field repair, but you're on your own if you want the parts. Like try getting the USB-C cables for their WD15/19/19DC docks. You simply can't get them, if you can convince Dell to warranty it, they send you an entire unit. even though the cable is like 1/0th the weight and shipping cost, and you have to send the old one back.

 

That said, this is nothing new for Dell. What we all really desire from Dell and HP is to use standards-compliant parts so that we can maintain the devices for 7 years instead of having to throw them away after 2. Why would I ever buy another Dell if I had to throw away the last one because I couldn't replace a $50 part from a $2000 unit.

When was the last time you had to replace a faulty RAM ?

[hishnash]

As long as they use LPDDR5 then there really is no issue with them using thier own socket since you cant buy regular LPDDR5 dims. 

[Zodiark1593]

53 minutes ago, Commodus said:

It's one thing when Apple puts out an SoC with built-in RAM, because that's key to the chip's performance... but Dell is effectively throwing out one of the reasons to get a Windows laptop without much practical benefit. It wouldn't necessarily stop me from buying, say, an XPS 13 if the system was particularly good... but I could see this costing Dell sales from some people.

Not sure how much of a loss this is in practice vs the other things Dell does. Dell tends to allow pretty much no control over memory speed, so not only is XMP a non-starter, but oftentimes they artificially limit their memory below rated JEDEC speeds. This leaves just capacity as the only motive to upgrade, in which case it would be a better long term proposition to pay for more up front. 

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

Why not just solder the damn thing then? What's the point of some stupid proprietary system if there is no benefit for it anyways apart from size which you can achieve with soldering. Apple's new Macs at least boast with insane bandwidth that no existing RAM can achieve in modular slotted system?

I expect the reason to not solder is supply chain, if they solder them then that adds yet another viable to the number of combinations they need to consider when making the motherboards.

eg maybe they support 5 different cpu configurations if they then add 4 different ram configurations that means they need to pre-solder 20 different motherboard combinations this is fine if your apple and are very confident that you will easily sell all of these fast enough but if your dell who also sells 100s of other skews of laptop are you confident you can guess today how many i5 32GB models will sell vs i7 16GB? by using socketed memory (even if its not a standard socket) they can assemble to order saving them the need to massively stockpile different configurations and saving them the costly aspect of having a factory solder to order (apple tends to do the latter here but this is costly as you need to keep a production line active for the entire product sales life). 

 

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, soldier_ph said:

Brain: Let's join the Right to Repair movement and Perhaps even pursue a partnership with iFixit and offer people parts for repair

I expect the reason many companies are partnering with iFixit is this gives them the ability to controle what iFixit sell, now that iFixit is the offical source for Samsun, google etc parts this will also mean they can no longer sell third party parts for these devices and likly cant even publish repair guids that have not been approved by the respective vendor.  The partnership looks good in the press and long term means iFixit will have thier hands tied as to what they can say about the products, I would not be surprised if these contracts have very costly termination clauses as well so if iFixit what to break the contract it will cost them an arm and a leg...  right to repair by using iFixit is not about providing parts its about limiting parts. If vendors wanted to provide parts etc they could have worked with vendors like RS Components who more experienced than iFixit when it comes to shipping electronics globally at scale and do not have any media angle that can be suppressed with these contracts.


Apple said that later this year they will also be opening a similar program "selling parts through a partner" I expect they will also use iFixit as this comes with so many benefits for them in the controle it will give them over iFixit's coverage of their products.

for iFixit they don't really have a choice, if they say no and all the big vendors go to someone like RS Components then while iFixit can continue to sell what they currently sell they know that many many users will go to the official source even if that means buying a screen along with the battery (Samsung phones). It would not take long for iFixit to go out of biz if all the major vendors provides parts to a different components vendor iFixit don't make any money from there guides or teardowns they need people to buy parts from them.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Redtigercod4 said:

Yeah, it had to be on a certified list or it didn't boot.

Dell and other OEM's have done this with wifi cards, but an "approved" RAM boot list is just Dell being Dell, make it crap or not replaceable with anything standard, such as their desktop motherboards.

I don't see the point of a proprietary ram slot as you can only get ram upgrades from dell so it might as well be soldered on.

[hishnash]

2 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

I don't see the point of a proprietary ram slot as you can only get ram upgrades from dell so it might as well be soldered on.

Saves dell supply chain logistics, if its soldered then this massively increase the number of different motherboard permutations they need to solder in the factory.

By having the ram socketed then they just need to solder a different motherboard config for each cpu but if you add ram configs to that the number of different configurations that need to be solderded goes through the roof. The effect of this means that if they did soldered and offer a readable number of ram options dell would be forced to keep a production line hot so that they can manufacture to order for uncommon combinations or forced to buy parts at the currently inflated costs risking those motherboards sitting on a shelf for 6months as they got the demand for a given ram/cpu combination wrong. 

Going with a socket means dell can add the ram at final assembly, this is a human assembly to order, they can pre-make all the different cpu configurations then if you order a raw combination of cpu/ram this can be easily accommodated when they box up your order, select the correct charging cable for your region of the world and the correct box etc. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Redtigercod4 said:

There are reasons for the move, aside from money. This single piece of RAM is looking to replace two SO-DIMM memory slots and looks to save a fair amount of space.

... to save space for what? A few millimeters of space?

How does that actually result in, for example, bigger battery with literally just a few millimeters of space?

 

Or is it just for looks?

 

*sigh* Unsurprising for a company known for decades of forcing proprietary components down our throats.

[Blademaster91]

34 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

When was the last time you had to replace a faulty RAM ?

I've had bad ram a few times, and once it was weird enough memtest said the ram was fine,but the system still had issues with freezing, replaced the ram and it worked.

And standard replaceable RAM allows a business to keep their laptops in use longer, or you can order a lower spec'ed laptop because the RAM can just be upgraded later, rather than spending $400-500 more on the higher end laptop with more soldered on ram.

16 minutes ago, hishnash said:

I expect the reason to not solder is supply chain, if they solder them then that adds yet another viable to the number of combinations they need to consider when making the motherboards.

So Dell will probably profit from this a lot by pushing people to buy the more expensive laptop with more RAM.

16 minutes ago, hishnash said:

eg maybe they support 5 different cpu configurations if they then add 4 different ram configurations that means they need to pre-solder 20 different motherboard combinations this is fine if your apple and are very confident that you will easily sell all of these fast enough but if your dell who also sells 100s of other skews of laptop are you confident you can guess today how many i5 32GB models will sell vs i7 16GB? by using socketed memory (even if its not a standard socket) they can assemble to order saving them the need to massively stockpile different configurations and saving them the costly aspect of having a factory solder to order (apple tends to do the latter here but this is costly as you need to keep a production line active for the entire product sales life). 

The article on this topic is for Dell's precision laptops, they sell those in 100's or 1000's to large companies, and i'm sure Dell would rather sell more i7 16GB models than i5 with 32GB models, this is cost cutting for Dell, even though there was probably a ton of money spent on a proprietary slot. And it has no benefit for the consumer or business buying these laptops as they will either have to pay a lot more for ram upgrades from dell or throw the laptops away sooner.

[hishnash]

4 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

And it has no benefit for the consumer or business buying these laptops as they will either have to pay a lot more for ram upgrades from dell or throw the laptops away sooner.

I think very few companies ever bother with ram upgrades, in my experienced when a laptop no-longer meets the needs of its user it will either be consumed within the company and given to a different users who does not have such high memory needs or it will be old enough (3 to 4 years) for the company to consider it for refresh and sell it off.  

The entire upgradable memory stuff is for prosumers not companies at least in the laptop space (workstation desktops is a different market but that is such a small % of the computers a comvpnaie will buy)

[BabaGanuche]

36 minutes ago, hishnash said:

The entire upgradable memory stuff is for prosumers not companies at least in the laptop space

My work would beg to differ. I have had RAM added to my last three work provided laptops. They buy the same model for both engineers and non engineers and just upgrade the RAM for the engineers who need it.

[leadeater]

Choice between this and soldered... this. At least it can be replaced, so hopefully not some looming time bomb for the ex-lease buyers that like to upgrade these laptops, like myself.

[hishnash]

1 hour ago, BabaGanuche said:

My work would beg to differ. I have had RAM added to my last three work provided laptops. They buy the same model for both engineers and non engineers and just upgrade the RAM for the engineers who need it.

This is upgraded memory at purchase time that is a saving money move/single bulk order don't need to talk to users move. I'm referring to upgrading memory after having had the laptop for 2 years.
 

27 minutes ago, leadeater said:

so hopefully not some looming time bomb for the ex-lease buyers that like to upgrade these laptops, like myself.

That is assuming dell continue to sell modules after they move on to the next design and no longer make these laptops, I don't expect them to make enough of these for a third party to make modules.

 

[leadeater]

9 minutes ago, hishnash said:

That is assuming dell continue to sell modules after they move on to the next design and no longer make these laptops, I don't expect them to make enough of these for a third party to make modules.

Nah there will be tons on ebay, so long as swaps aren't blocked for no reason upgrading will be no problem so long as you don't need to go above the maximum Dell originally supported.

 

Parts have never been a problem for these mass OEM laptops, even super odd ball parts. They come from surplus supply and released warranty service parts that are no longer required.