I saw a laptop that I really like, the ASUS ZenBook 14" OLED Laptop, Ryzen 7-8840HS, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, but its got soldered memory, I was wondering if anyone knew of an easy way to find laptops that can easily have the memory upgraded?
Basically I want 32GB of ram but I don't want to pay the $1000 premium for it.
I'm particularly looking for something powerful but with the best integrated AMD graphics to save on weight.
Thats the other frustrating part. Even at the lenovo website, only some laptops can upgrade to 32GB, it seems artificially limited so you have to buy a more expensive laptop.
Some specsheets will say if its soldered but they don't always mention if its one slot or two slots either.
it seems artificially limited so you have to buy a more expensive laptop.
Welcome to modern tech. Give the customer as little as possible for the highest price you can, and make it as unserviceable as possible so you can scam them again as soon as possible.
Also check out these recent videos about their repair scam before thinking about buying Asus.
Unfortunately, that's going to be a bit hard since soldered RAM can reach much higher clock rates, which is exactly what you want for good iGPU performance. Not to mention they use less power too.
Looks like the Dell Inspiron 14 7445 does have SODIMM slots.
a Free Memory Slot
If it is free then you are the product…
Don't know much about ASUS laptops, but I've found that even with their not-so-premium and pedestrian laptops they tend to have soldered memory, usually as a result of cost-cutting and not because they're trying to reduce z-height of components or using particularly fast LPDDR4 / DDR5 memory that requires the memory to be located right next to the CPU.
With lenovo, they publish spec sheets on their website and these are some of the models I know that has user accessible SODIMM.
Lenovo ThinkPad L-series
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_L…
Lenovo Thinkpad E-series
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_E…
Thinkbook 14 G6
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkBook/ThinkBook…
The LOQ gaming laptops also have SODIMM
https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/LOQ/LOQ_15IRH8/LOQ_…
I can get some pretty good builds with those but Lenovo doesn't do OLED on any of their laptops but their Yoga it seems and even then, most of their laptops don't have the higher end AMD CPU's with the 780M integrated graphics.
I would actually go out of my way to avoid OLED on a laptop haha
The Asus OLED Laptop screen looks great so I'm hoping to get something similar.
Dead set on team red or any highend iGPU would do? I've read that the iGPU in Core Ultra 7 155U/155H is quite competitive to 780M, and with the latest ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 they have reverted to having 2x SODIMM slots that can take up to 64GB of DDR5.
I'm not completely dead set, Intel have improved their iGPU a lot, the recent benchmarks seem to have shown the 780M being just enoug better to be passable for my needs, which is a multi purpose lightweight laptop.
I guess the reality is if I can save $200 or more, Intel is going to be better value so you make a good point.
Unfortunately none of the Lenovo models listed for sale on their site has all of: xx40 CPU, no dGPU, and SODIMM RAM. You'll notice that the ones in your list are all xx30 or xx25. The most current Thinkpad E-series models are Gen 6 with xx35.
Remains to be seen what they do with a possible E14 Gen 7 w/ xx40. I do hope they keep the SODIMM slots.
e: I see the T14 Gen 4 is AMD xx40 but with LPDDR5X (soldered). That's unfortunate.
Minimal options for socket ram slots on notebooks now days - truly pi55es me off.
Can you do a BTO (built to order) on the same model from the website and maybe pay an extra $250 or something…
Otherwise, as a option, look at an alternative thats similar that you can BTO. Hopefully it wont cost $1k more for the option.
you reckon LPCAMM is gonna take off or hwhat
It'll be like the OP's problem with how much RAM he can fit. Buyers won't be asked what they want, or have any choice about what they can buy.
Me, I just want an ITX motherboard with SODIMMs on it. DIMMs use so much board real estate, leaving so little everything else has to be squeezed in, making the board more expensive to make and buy. Don't know why they don't just use the much smaller laptop RAM. Yes, I know its normally layed flat using a lot of board area in laptops, but they don't have to do that. I have a mini-PC with laptop RAM mounted vertically like desktop RAM. If there's only a limited amount of board area, I'd prefer it to be used by, say, a second M.2 slot rather than long desktop RAM sticks.
A laptop that I upgraded had an empty RAM slot under the keyboard.
Interesting hiding spot.
I know it's a weird suggestion, but I bought Leader 446 ultrabook some time ago, and it's one of the best laptops I've ever owned.
It has two RAM and two SSD slots. The first thing I did was installing 32 GB of memory and adding 2TB drive.
Ryzen 7 5700U, very light, very quiet. Can easily handle all my tasks (I'm a programmer) and even some light gaming.
It's basically Clevo brand, so the quality is pretty good. If you find one with a good discount, it should be a sweet deal.
Any of the Asus ExpertBooks should be at least one slot free.
Find every laptop that has "best integrated AMD graphics" available in Australia and then look up the spec sheet.
For the ASUS ZenBook 14" OLED Laptop the specs say
So doesn't look like you can even buy it with 32gb on board. Which is very strange indeed.