If you look at the 48GB sodimms, they are pretty much completely filled with the highest density ram chips you can currently get.
We are going to need denser ram chips before we can have bigger sodimms but that’ll happen eventually. We are still pretty early in the DDR5 cycle.
The DDR4 standard topped out at 32 GB per stick for unbuffered RAM. Larger sticks were possible with registered memory, though that’s normally only seen on the full size DIMMs rather than SODIMMs because the big sticks can hold a lot more RAM chips.
The DDR5 standard is designed to accommodate larger RAM modules. The limiting factor on laptop memory now is not the standard, but how many chips can be squeezed onto the little SODIMM, and on the fact that an unbuffered memory module can only support a limited number of RAM chips. Unlike previous standards, DDR5 is designed to allow for modules that don’t have a power-of-two size. We’ll certainly see even larger SODIMM sticks in the future; they will probably work in the Ryzen-based Framework laptops, but we’ll have to wait and see.
@bud thank you for reporting back on this! i’m having trouble finding a supplier for that kit right now (newegg and i have had some disagreements in the past that preclude future business), but i’m very glad to hear the board supports that much ram!
Crucial has since started offering a 96GB kit (CT2K48G56C46S5) if that is easier to find. No idea if it works, but it seems that others are having decent luck with Crucial kits in general (5600 MHz anyway).
oh hey that is easy to source. i’m a little more trepidatious with grabbing a kit someone else hasn’t tested, but i’m going to think real hard about this while i arrange funds for my framework.
edit: i notice the knowledge base has this:
Note: We do not currently have XMP memory support on the Framework Laptop. We recommend using DRAM that natively runs at DDR4-3200 speeds. While XMP memory should safely fall back to a slower speed, we have seen customer reports of some XMP memory modules from HyperX and other brands not booting, especially when used in Channel 0.
and looking at a post in the q&a from micron on the amazon listing for the part you linked:
We would like to inform you that Crucial DDR5 RAM’s are JEDEC RAM’s and need XMP profile to be enabled from BIOS to get advertised speed.
that’s concerning. has the xmp situation changed since that kb article, or in particular with the amd board?
I’m not a RAM expert but that article is definitely out of date because the AMD Framework requires DDR5, not DDR4. Not sure about the XMP stuff though, so I see why you might want to go with the Mushkin.
looking at other threads, it seems like xmp is still a problem. unfortunate. i might just have to shrug and settle for a 2x32 kit. truth be told i don’t NEED 96 total capacity, as 64 is enough for my workloads, it would just be nice.
well now that the thread has gotten rather abbreviated, and i find that my last post from november is a little bit outdated, i should revise that my intent has been firmed to get the 2x48 crucial kit for my upcoming machine, since it’s been demonstrated to work adequately well for both FW13 and FW16 amd boards.
Yeah, I’m still tossing up between the 2x 48GB which are CL46, or getting a 2x 32GB which can be obtained with CL40 if you select the right brand. But I suspect I wouldn’t notice any real significant performance difference in real world situations. The price difference also seems to be reasonably minimal.
in my case, i don’t think i’d be able to measure the difference between those two on a raw performance standpoint.
i am, however, able to pretty concretely perceive the overhead of spinning up an entire vm on a regular basis that i’d much rather just leave idling until i need it.