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RAM on RMBP *really* not upgradeable?

gentlefury said:
You are correct it is a non-issue..you would not perceive it....but it is still true, regardless of how minor it may be. People are so into white sheet specs that are imperceptible, but this notion is crazy.
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Yes, you would never notice and any increase would be extremely miniscule. As such, being soldered isn't an advantage by any means and the only motivation behind Apple going soldered is space reasons.

Not sure why you are trying to argue a point that has no benefit at all in application, as demonstrated by your response to my first post.
 
gentlefury said:
Are you really another person arguing that latency is not an issue???

Soldering to the logic board means it has a direct path to the CPU...standard connections have to travel across more copper to get to the CPU, plus there is the possibility of getting dust or corrosion in the connectors in the DIMM slots!
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gentlefury said:
You are correct it is a non-issue..you would not perceive it....but it is still true, regardless of how minor it may be. People are so into white sheet specs that are imperceptible, but this notion is crazy.
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I think the Principal in Billy Madison might have the right response for this.
 
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gentlefury said:
You are correct it is a non-issue..you would not perceive it....but it is still true, regardless of how minor it may be. People are so into white sheet specs that are imperceptible, but this notion is crazy.
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If you look at the picture of the rMBP Motherboard, the second row of memory chips are about the same distance from the CPU as the pluggable dimms on the Regular MBP.

Some of our large servers have 64 pluggable dimm slots (1TB of memory using 16gb dimms). I would not lose sleep over the two dimm slots in a regular MBP?
 
lazer155 said:
You could unsolder and resolder the ram in fairly easily with a smd solder rework station/kit. The issue is that there isn't a place to buy plain ram chips by themselves (chips not already soldered onto a logic board). So even if you get the 8gb one off there is no way to get a 16gb chip unless you get a logic board that has a 16gb one on it and take it off there. That wouldn't make sense though because logic boards are so expensive. Basically to upgrade the ram yourself it's too expensive. The only way you could ever get the 16gb chip is if you buy an entire logic board but by that point you may as well just replace your whole logic board since you have a new one rather than pulling the ram off it and soldering it into your old 8gb one.
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This is the closest to the truth answer I've read so far. The ram soldering/desoldering is very doable, it's what I do for a living, but I'm not sure it would be easy to get my hands on the upgraded ram and doubt it would be a cost effecient upgrade.
 
The rMBP has 32 Hynix H5TC2G83CFR 2Gbit DDR3 RAM chips on the 8GB model. There are 16 chips on the top side of the motherboard and another 16 chips soldered to the back side. You would have to unsolder and remove all 32 chips and replace them with 32 x 4Gbit chips to upgrade memory to 16GB. Mission (nearly) Impossible.....
 

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iFixit.com has a nicely documented teardown. I can't see anyone offering to replace RAM on one of these for all the aforementioned reasons. Just the teardown to get to it is iffy. Crikey, it's hard to even get someone to replace a hard drive in an iMac.

At the end of the day the price diff between new rMBP+RAM and the old, used rMBP would be lower than the repair cost.

And the repair cost is probably lower than the premium charged by someone here reading these posts and offering you their slightly used BTO 16GB :D
 
stevenlangley1 said:
Unless of course you are trained in Micro/Miniature Solder Repair (which I am) and have access to one of these (which I do) and use it daily.

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How long do you think it would take you and how much would you charge? (Not that I'm interested in having this done now, just wondering if it is something that could be doable down the road for $200 or less)
 
Interesting comment from Steve Jobs in 2009:

"Even the MacBook Pro was originally touted as an accessible, repairable machine — at Macworld in 2009, Steve Jobs said, “Our pro customers want accessibility: [...] to add memory, to add cards, to add drives.” That’s part of what I love about my MacBook Pro. I’ve upgraded my RAM, and I even replaced my optical drive with an 80GB SSD......

article goes on to say:
"The Retina MacBook is the least repairable laptop we’ve ever taken apart: Unlike the previous model, the display is fused to the glass, which means replacing the LCD requires buying an expensive display assembly. The RAM is now soldered to the logic board — making future memory upgrades impossible. And the battery is glued to the case, requiring customers to mail their laptop to Apple every so often for a $200 replacement."

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/opinion-apple-retina-displa/
 
gentlefury said:
You are correct it is a non-issue..you would not perceive it....but it is still true, regardless of how minor it may be. People are so into white sheet specs that are imperceptible, but this notion is crazy.
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I think people just like to debate between technical and practical. It's easy to get wrapped up in the technical... Technically, you won't get the same gas milage and performance out of your vehicle with a passenger inside, but it's such a small difference, and could be swayed by a million different variables, you have to look at the practical. There's no doubt, and factually true, the shorter the distance for the energy to travel and a lack of DIMM connectors is superior for performance. In a practical world, and for what would more then likely be 99.9999999% of users, there is absolutely no difference in performance.

And as a side note, it's nice to have an actual conversation about something like this, without things turning crazy and silly. :)
 
macbook123 said:
How long do you think it would take you and how much would you charge? (Not that I'm interested in having this done now, just wondering if it is something that could be doable down the road for $200 or less)
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I'd have to get my hands on a motherboard to determine the time frame, but I'd guess probably two hours removal and replacement.

If I were to charge for this it'd probably run $200. However I generally don't touch people's high priced electronics unless they're already broken. Don't want to break what's still working. As well I don't like taking money for repairs since I'm using company equipment to do the repairs.
 
gentlefury said:
Are you really another person arguing that latency is not an issue???

Soldering to the logic board means it has a direct path to the CPU...standard connections have to travel across more copper to get to the CPU, plus there is the possibility of getting dust or corrosion in the connectors in the DIMM slots!
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Last time I checked, EM propagation in copper was still around speed of light. You are right that soldered RAM is more reliable than slotted RAM (due to absence of mechanical connectors). But faster? Hell no. Any miniscule speed advantage you get through few centimeters shorter path is completely nullified by the latency of the RAM itself.

P.S. By your logic mini-ITX boards should be faster than full ATX in benchmarks. This clearly does not happen.
 
stevenlangley1 said:
This is the closest to the truth answer I've read so far. The ram soldering/desoldering is very doable, it's what I do for a living, but I'm not sure it would be easy to get my hands on the upgraded ram and doubt it would be a cost effecient upgrade.
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You remove SMCs by hand for a living?
 
Daremo said:
Technically, you won't get the same gas milage and performance out of your vehicle with a passenger inside, but it's such a small difference, and could be swayed by a million different variables, you have to look at the practical.
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You do get measurably better traction in snow though, if you keep them tied up in the trunk. :p
 
I honestly don't see how having the ram soldered to the logic board can be portrayed as a positive. This seems a bit like an overreach. I don't know anyone who would chose to have non-replaceable, non-upgradeable ram in a computer. It is unquestionably a negative, in my opinion, and to call it anything else is to fool one's self. It is a terrible compromise. But the Retina is so very thin, I don't see how they could have included ram slots unless they put them side by side. Or maybe they could have not made the Retina so thin, but hey, form over function right?
 
Aodhan said:
I honestly don't see how having the ram soldered to the logic board can be portrayed as a positive.
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At least they added a description at the CTO screen at this point.

Every MacBook Pro with Retina display comes with 8GB of 1600MHz memory. Please note that the memory is built into the computer, so if you think you may need more memory in the future, it is important to upgrade at the time of purchase.

The more memory your computer has, the more apps you can run simultaneously and the better performance you get from your computer. MacBook Pro with Retina display uses one of the fastest memory technologies available today — 1600MHz Double Data Rate Low Voltage (DDR3L), synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) — ensuring that the Intel Core i7 processor is constantly fed with data without wasting clock cycles.
How much memory is right for you?

* With 8GB of memory standard, you can multitask with ease and run memory-intensive applications without compromising performance. This allows you to work on complex tasks such as editing photos and video, creating illustrations, and building complex presentations.
* Max out the memory in your MacBook Pro with 16GB to allow your professional applications like Aperture and Final Cut Pro to run at peak performance.

Note that every MacBook Pro with Retina display comes with 8GB of memory built into the computer. If you think you may need 16GB of memory in the future, it is important to upgrade at the time of purchase, because memory cannot be upgraded later in this model.
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stevenlangley1 said:
Unless of course you are trained in Micro/Miniature Solder Repair (which I am) and have access to one of these (which I do) and use it daily.

Image
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Exactly! With an smd rework station like that, it's very possible. I have a system similar to that as I also work on micro circuit boards. There is no way that you would ever be able to remove the ram if you did not have a rework setup. A good soldering station makes a world of difference.


macbook123 said:
How long do you think it would take you and how much would you charge? (Not that I'm interested in having this done now, just wondering if it is something that could be doable down the road for $200 or less)
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It honestly wouldn't be worth upgrading down the road. The amount you would pay for installation plus the actual ram chips would very likely be much more than the 250 apple charges. Reworking surface mounted chips is time consuming. Even if you did it yourself, unless you already had an smd station, it would not be worth it as those soldering stations cost easily several hundred to a few thousand dollars.
 
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gentlefury said:
Are you really another person arguing that latency is not an issue???

Soldering to the logic board means it has a direct path to the CPU...
Click to expand...

While theoretically you could make RAM that interfaces with the logic board directly have less latency than RAM that interfaces with the logic board through a DIMM slot simply because of the millimeters of extra wiring that a DIMM slot requires, with each electron traveling at relativistic speeds, the amount of productivity lost for all users of every non-Retina MacBook Pro ever combined because their RAM is not soldered to the motherboard is probably less than the time we've spent pondering this question.

Also, 32GB anyone? It's a stacked package so not sure it would fit ;) http://www.skhynix.com/products/com...nfo.serialNo=H5TC8G83MMR&posMap=computingDDR3

EDIT: Looks like it's significantly wider and very slightly taller. But it looks like it might fit - there's even extra room around the chips. Anyone want to try?
 
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macbook123 said:
How long do you think it would take you and how much would you charge? (Not that I'm interested in having this done now, just wondering if it is something that could be doable down the road for $200 or less)
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wow you really want more RAM don't you
 
stevenlangley1 said:
Unless of course you are trained in Micro/Miniature Solder Repair (which I am) and have access to one of these (which I do) and use it daily.

Image
Click to expand...

Great! So it IS possible to upgrade the ram on a rMBP, provided you:

1) Are certified in micro/mini solder repair and already own the specialized equipment

2) Know somebody local who is certified, has the equipment, and is willing to work for free

3) You are able to get the correct RAM chips to install



It couldn't be easier!
 
"You are right that soldered RAM is more reliable than slotted RAM (due to absence of mechanical connectors)."

This may be true, but in the past 20 years and dozens of Macs, I've had one (or maybe two) RAM issues, and those were over 10 years ago. Slotted RAM is extremely reliable.

I suspect Apple soldered the RAM for the (tiny) size savings, and the (not so tiny) revenue increase from forcing people to buy RAM from them at the time of computer purchase.
 
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