this is exactly what I was thinking as well
I agree, LPCAMM2 is ideal, you get the best of both worlds.
the only problem it has right now is how new it is. it seems like it may take a while for it to catch up the the level of manufacturing the other two options are currently at. I hope I’m proven wrong, and we get it inside a framework laptop sometime soon. it would benefit both soc architectures quite a bit.
tbh I just really want polished ARM linux laptop, and soldered lpddr ram seems a crucial tradeoff that needs to be made in order to get there soon
ps: it won’t let me edit the poll anymore, guessing its a time-based thing
I would say, that adopting LPCAMM2 right now is a very risky move, even someone reckless as I would not have done it. Basically nobody make them, they are absurdly expensive ($300+ for 32GB?!), and frankly .. yeah.
Dell charge $552 for 32GB of 4800 CAMM (not LP). They charge basically half that for SODIMM.
I don’t think it’s that risky - you can buy right now between 4.80 and 5.30 / GB. More expensive than sodimms? Absolutely. But with memory form factor changes like this you actually need adopters to drive production up and prices down. Otherwise you get stuck in a feedback loop of
It’s expensive > so it doesn’t get used > so manufacturers don’t scale > so it’s expensive
If FW was launching a platform based on it, they’d have plenty of time to work with micron and samsung in the lead up to release to ensure they at least had supply to sell.
And consider that right now they’re launching a desktop where they’re charging 6.25/GB for ram (32 > 64 is obfuscated because it’s forcibly tied to sip upgrade but 64 > 128 is a $400 option). Current lpcamm prices don’t look so bad in comparison.
You just build stock in run up to launch so it’s at least available, then you rely on increasing demand to drive production.
E: to be clear, I’m not saying it’s not valid to prefer price over performance - it’s a trade off and people have different priorities. That’s why polls like this make sense, to take a pulse as it were of which way the customer base leans.
Not on Amazon. Not on Newegg. Not on Microcenter.
In fact Asus or MSi showed CAMM2 boards (ATX), with like 8000MT and stuff. But they didnt even offer it for sale, due to the supply – sure the stuff exist, but it’s so new and so rare that it’s expensive to make (economy of scale). And it’s difficult to get. Because its so new, neither demand nor capacity exist.
I’m sure if yoh WANT you can get them on Mouser Digikey etc. Just like you can get OEM 120mm fans from Sunon Foxconn Panasonic (or any computer component) from them. But why, and also that’s not really consumer.
AVC, PMT, Delta …
My local microcenter actually has 32GB in stock at $156 and 64GB at $315, but I wouldn’t use that since not everyone is near one.
The real answer is FW would order supply during board development so they could for sure sell to customers if they were to go that route, which again would be a critical piece to drive down prices and increase availability. Right now it’s what, a few Lenovo Thinkpad models that use it? Of course it’s scarce and expensive. DRAM products need volume.
FW can do something we can’t do - they can go to micron and say “we want to buy 1000 units.”
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I think you drastically overestimate how much FW sells, or underestimate what kind of volume it takes.
Erm, a few Lenovo Thinkpad models should be moving dramatically more volume.
Are they still using socketed RAM in 2025?
SOME are, but rare.
that’s pretty rad. Who’s (manufacturer) one? And where (in states)?
So can Asus. Or Gigabyte. Or Corsair. or Dell/Lenovo/Hp/GPD/LG/Fujitsu/freakin Epson or any other company making consumer electronics. But none of them are brave enough to make the first step. Dell sort of did, but we all know what Dell does best.
You would think someone like MSi or Gigabyte have enough establishment to burn a little bit of money on some unsuccessful one-off, like they did for CES. Apparently not. But then, it’s Gigabyte, our most beloved (and hated) company. Known for absurd submerged servers, half height 4060, and exploding power supplies. And our Multiple Serious Issues (MSI) for their dying laptops, but also the only blower 4090 maker.
Or Asrock, that make a IPMI add-in card. Or that m.2 VGA graphics card. But also melty AM5 boards that cook X3Ds.
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Manufacturer is crucial, and it’s the one in MA.
Of course. In fact, if they were to commit to doing across a large range of models, a lot of the above would be in even better position to do so given their size.
I don’t know that I’d expect them to, though - none of them have really made upgradability or replaceable ram a core part of their identity the way FW does (generally, the desktop being an exception - and apparently they actually asked about lpcamm2 for the desktop and AMD said it couldn’t be done for signal integrity reasons on the 256 bit bus, which would have required 2x modules and possibly a… creative layout.)
Big manufacturers are already getting the benefits of lppdr5x over ddr5 because they simply use soldered ram, and I don’t know how enticing user replaceable ram is to them from a business perspective.
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User replaceable RAM probably isn’t very enticing. There’s got to be a way for them to make more money. Unfortunately, they can charge the same or more for soldered and it probably costs about the same or less to manufacture. Not to mention that if the RAM goes bad on a soldered system you just have to buy a new one if it’s out of warranty. So, more money for them. However, if people stop buying them then there’s incentive to make products more people will buy.
I know they started dropping soldered RAM in many, many models, years ago now. And it’s simply shameful.
But there are a bunch that still offer real replaceable RAM. The 2025 AMD T14 Gen6, officially offers a max of 128 GB DDR5 5600MHz (2 slots), wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series. 2025 Intel L14 Gen6, (2 slots DDR5). 2025 AMD E14 Gen6 (2 slot DDR5), and Intel version too. Though E series is not considered real Thinkpads by some, probably rightfully so. P14s Gen 6 (AMD), P16v Gen 2 (Intel), probably more. Lenovo’s spec pages, psref.lenovo.com, is pretty easy to use, as urls are just the model, gen, CPU brand + “?tab=spec”. And there is a “compare” option, for any 2 models.
For LPCAMM2 we have the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7, officially 64GB LPDDR5x-7500 (1 dual-channel slot). I don’t know if there are more.
The fun part is that even if they have slots, people who would buy the spec would just … buy the spec anyway. The slots are really only useful for nerds, and those wanting to repurpose the machine for 2nd hand purposes.
The majority of people who buy Dell Inspirons (which has two RAM slots) wont go with a 4GB because it has slots. They will just get 16.
Very surprised when I opened up my Dell and it has two stick of 8GB. I cant even bring my own memory. (which is two stick of 8GB).
The lack of slots are more due to device thickness, and maybe cost. I say maybe, because the ultra-budget, all-plastic Inspiron (with a 1135G7, a very epic chip; Model 3511 for those wondering), come with the two slots.
For like $400, its quite enticing. But of course it died within a year, the plastic chassis made the board flex so much, the m.2 connector died. That Intel SSD is pretty good, fastest one of the bunch I’ve got, with some wild latency numbers. 98% health, as well.
Apparently most device manufacturer are quite obsessed with thickness. otherwise they will straight up not care about putting “only 15mm thick” on the marketing. I dont know it’s “we think you care and thus we market this” or it’s a “we heard you care about this, so we market this”.
A very important factor of sockted RAM is to prevent
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I agree. Allowing the user to pick who they get it from entices competition and lower prices.
I also believe that for a vast majority of users:
I don’t remember if I posted it in here or if I was just thinking about posting it, but I noticed that I typically don’t upgrade or add additional RAM to my systems. I tend to buy what I need or over spec. Pretty much every time I’ve upgraded a system I’ve needed to get new RAM because of the technology changes from my previous one. Example: my newest desktop I needed new RAM because my old desktop had DDR3 and my new (current desktop) has DDR4. If I were to upgrade my desktop again it would be the same thing (DDR4 to DDR5). I had to buy new RAM for my Framework for the same reason when I got a new laptop (old laptop had older, incompatable RAM). I feel like there’s a lot of users like that where by the time they need an upgrade they end up getting a new system.
This makes me ok with soldered RAM, but I’d personally prefer user upgradable for allowing users choice.
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There are two/three cases for me:
- I bought a Hp netbook and shoved in memory because .. 4GB is like, nononono.
- I upgraded memory on ancient X230Ts I bought used.
- Framework 16. I would have bought 16GB and upgraded to 32GB if the Framework don’t have a “bring your own” option.
I will say, decoupling give memory a lot more competition. But then, this all boil down to manufacturer’s unreasonable cost for memory. If the difference between, say, a 16GB Dell main board and a 32GB main board is $50, nobody will care about the 16. But it’s not $50. It’s $300 or something, and tied to a arbitary better SSD or CPU.
Which kinda is the case with the Framework Desktop, but they have to upgrade the chip due to memory width. So it’s just that expensive.
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They don’t - the 385 has the same 256 bit wide memory bus as the 395, and technically supports up to 128GB. They’re doing the same thing everyone else does with soldered ram products, and probably for a lot of the same reasons.
Every SOC / memory combination becomes a separate SKU you have to track, store, and maintain supply of. It’s just logistically difficult and expensive to offer a lot of different combinations when memory is soldered.
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