Dell using Proprietary RAM Modules

[Quackers101]

ifixit to "repairable" to this. thx.

[sub68]

I am currently staring at two dell optiplex's. (which can use any ram)

(990 and 5050)

I know some dells that use proprietary ram but there ACTUAL BUSINESS/ PRO line wow that's scary.

[Blademaster91]

2 hours ago, hishnash said:

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)

I would guess most companies don't upgrade their laptops, but Dell switching to proprietary ram means the laptops which get sold off will end up as e-waste instead of having a much longer life after adding extra ram and a larger SSD.

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

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.

I've bought used Optiplex desktops and Latitude laptops, the older Dell business stuff is nicer than buying a really cheap desktop or laptop, but if Dell charges like $200 for a ram upgrade kit I don't see the point of buying off-lease Dell laptops, as opposed to a Thinkpad or a HP Elitebook.

[GhostRoadieBL]

Oh and anyone claiming thete isn't a sodimm or standard, corsair just launched sodimm ddr5 so dell has no excuses to hide behind.

[Kisai]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

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

Not frequently enough in general. Of all the Dell Precision and Latitude laptops I've dealt with, I had one definite failure (Which was certainly due to thermal damage from trying to use autocad on a latitude) , several "scrap one unit to upgrade another" and like two upgrades to the high end Precision 77x0's to max out the memory and SSD.

 

In an ideal situation desktops and servers would just use the same SODIMM modules as laptops so there wouldn't be two different standards in the first place. The memory on these is exactly the same, just the angle of the slot is different, with the pin density being higher, which requires cooling considerations that don't exist in desktops/servers which could just continue to use vertical slots.

 

At any rate, I'm not sure why Dell bothered. https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/precision-17-7760-laptop_owners-manual2_en-us.pdf , the existing 7760 only has one standard part in it, the RAM. The FRU* GPU is something called "UMA" and removable on this model.

 

The 7670 is neither a 15" or 17" model, which makes me wonder if there is going to not be a 15" model, only a 16" and 17" model. In which case, this might be a "redesign" to a single memory module to make it a FRU* part to allow for 128GB, as existing DDR4 systems still max out at 64GB.

 

FRU*=Field Replacable Unit

 

[Origami Cactus]

Lenovo T14S has 32GB 3200mhz DDR4L soldered ram, no SODIMM in sight, still I don't care. The price jump from 16gb to 32gb was lower than even a 8gb sodimm on ebay, so meh. 

With this Dell you could upgrade the ram if you really wanted to by buying the parts of ebay, so seems fine to me.

[maartendc]

12 hours ago, RejZoR said:

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

On a laptop, never. On desktop, many times.

 

This is kind of a non-story, since like 50% of laptops have soldered RAM anyway that is not upgrade-able or user replaceable.

 

They may as well have soldered it, but I guess this makes repairs slightly easier over going the soldering route. So I guess this is kind of Meh news.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, maartendc said:

On a laptop, never. On desktop, many times.

Damn, ease up on that voltage 

 

1 hour ago, maartendc said:

but I guess this makes repairs slightly easier over going the soldering route

It's actually more about not have to have 50 million different motherboard variants for every possible CPU and ram option etc. Right pain for manufacturing and supply, also repair but that's lower on the OEM pain list than the original manufacturing.

[darknessblade]

14 hours ago, RejZoR said:

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

I Replaced the Ram in my OLD Laptop 3 years after I bought it. I had upgraded it from 6 to 16GB.

 

The laptop is now about 10+ years old, and I have bought a new one.

 

So yeah Replicable ram is Nice if you want to upgrade, which DELL now makes impossible

[Sauron]

12 hours ago, leadeater said:

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.

That's assuming higher capacity compatible modules are actually released in the future, or even that they are still available in stock capacities years from now rather than having to scavenge broken identical laptops for modules. Plus if I'm reading this correctly it's only one slot so you're going to have to toss out the preinstalled module. It's technically better than soldered but only barely and it especially sucks because if they had the room to fit these modules they could just have gone with standard ones.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Sauron said:

That's assuming higher capacity compatible modules are actually released in the future

I was meaning upgrading base spec ones that come on to the used/ex-lease market, see later post after that one for better clarification.

[CephDigital]

If this was LPDDR5 I would be fine with it cause you can't get SODIMM sticks for it so this would actually be an upgrade to soldered RAM. However, this looks like regular DDR5 based on the speed of 4800Mhz so boooooooooooooo... 

[Lightwreather]

1 hour ago, darknessblade said:

So yeah Replicable ram is Nice if you want to upgrade, which DELL now makes impossible

Not quite, it IS replaceable. It's just that you'd have to pay for Dell's inflated pricing (which you know they will absolutely do)

[decolon]

3 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Not quite, it IS replaceable. It's just that you'd have to pay for Dell's inflated pricing (which you know they will absolutely do)

Dell does charge like $50 extra to turn on XMP in BIOS lol

[DavidKalinowski]

I'm sure some said this, but I'm being lazy and don't want to read. The reason they wont solder them on, is because, this way they can sell you more RAM later. It makes them more money. (theoretically) I'm sure if it becomes a large enough market, micron/crucial will make kits for it. but they will probably cost as much or more than what dell sells them at directly. I hope this flops and they just don't do it for more than one generation.

[DeScruff]

On 4/19/2022 at 4:38 PM, RejZoR said:

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

Within the past year.... Twice?
Its not as common as it used to be in like ~2008 where I swear it happened all the time. - Likely due it running warmer.
The fact that there are POST codes specifically for memory issues, and that Memtest86 is still thing (and is part of many Linux distributions) should at least be evidence that faulty memory is still a thing.

[RejZoR]

10 minutes ago, DeScruff said:

Within the past year.... Twice?
Its not as common as it used to be in like ~2008 where I swear it happened all the time. - Likely due it running warmer.
The fact that there are POST codes specifically for memory issues, and that Memtest86 is still thing (and is part of many Linux distributions) should at least be evidence that faulty memory is still a thing.

In 23 years, just once and even that were OCZ memory sticks that got rekt by X58 system that overvolted RAM during overclocking without me knowing it. When I realized it was doing it, sticks were already damaged apparently. So, not even normal conditions. Given how most laptops can't even be overclocked I'd say it's entirely a non issue.

[DeScruff]

49 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

In 23 years, just once and even that were OCZ memory sticks that got rekt by X58 system that overvolted RAM during overclocking without me knowing it. When I realized it was doing it, sticks were already damaged apparently. So, not even normal conditions. Given how most laptops can't even be overclocked I'd say it's entirely a non issue.

>_>
I forgot to mention... I was talking about Laptops. - Most bad RAM Ive replaced has been from laptops.
I suspect its caused by overheating, and people using their laptop on their bed, or blocking the vents when they put it on their lap.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, DeScruff said:

>_>
I forgot to mention... I was talking about Laptops. - Most bad RAM Ive replaced has been from laptops.
I suspect its caused by overheating, and people using their laptop on their bed, or blocking the vents when they put it on their lap.

That is what tends to kill RAM in laptops, because the RAM chips are laying parallel with the motherboard PCB and often right behind the plastic housing.

 

In desktop's you have to kind of go out of your way to kill them.

 

But these are Precision 7x70 units, which are generally hated for being heavy, and the 7710/20/30/40/50's all have the RAM right underneath the keyboard on one side and on the exposed motherboard on the other side. It's very difficult to thermally kill the RAM on them. Kill the GPU though? Pretty easy.

[sounds]

Nah, this is the dark side of Dell. Dell Project Lunar this is not.

 

https://youtu.be/Go5tLO6ipxw?t=114

[CTR640]

"Their product, their rules"

'Their platform, their rules"

[GhostRoadieBL]

following WANshow points, I'm still against this. SoDimm already exists as a standard for DDR5, making their laptop 3/8" thicker to accommodate SODIMM (and increase the cooling on the gpu and cpu) This is an obvious bad call akin to thunderbolt and lightning connectors when non-licensed options are available and OPEN for everyone to manufacture.

If this becomes the intel spec (like thunderbolt) and Dell charges upfront or behind the scenes just to be allowed the option to make the modules? will AMD get this new spec, will ARM based systems get it? What are we losing in the idea laptops must be so thin as to not allow basic repairability or accessible upgrades without proprietary modules?

[Arika]

1 hour ago, GhostRoadieBL said:

If this becomes the intel spec (like thunderbolt) and Dell charges upfront or behind the scenes just to be allowed the option to make the modules? will AMD get this new spec, will ARM based systems get it?

If it's done through JEDEC (which it is), then everyone will have access to it.

[sof006]

Dell added to list of manufacturers to not buy from

[GhostRoadieBL]

10 hours ago, Arika S said:

If it's done through JEDEC (which it is), then everyone will have access to it.

JEDEC already has standards for SODIMM DDR5 (SO-024A standard and JESD79-5A) that's why this is not ideal for the industry and consumers. Adding another standard or replacement of the existing standard causes exactly what I was talking about with Dell/intel potentially forcing the rest of the industry to do things their way, which forces redesign of current r&d (AMD running LPDDR5 and SODIMM) to match a new standard specific competitive companies are pushing.

 

If this showed up when DDR5 was announced I'm all for it, new module with a new standard. This is 2years later well past the development and adoption phase of DDR5 standards and manufacturing being mature. Dell/Intel have been planning this for a long time or found a convenient solution to creating a proprietary product and now seeking JEDEC registration.