Dell XPS13 RAM Upgrade
gregdavill.com
gregdavill.com
Web browser RAM consumption is ridiculous. I recently tried ChromeOS on Intel Compute Stick with 2GB RAM (which is ostensibly a certified device supported until 2027!) and it would run out of memory and freeze within minutes of opening Chrome. Similar story on Linux+Firefox, had to set up swap+zswap to prevent it from running out of memory and locking up.
I remember that Firefox used to host areweslimyet.com for a while, tracking improvements to memory usage, this has been now migrated to TaskCluster and effectively disappeared from public view.
What happened to this effort? Does anyone more knowledgeable know?
Unallocated RAM is bad, but allocating multiple GBs just to display a website is just ineffecient.
Get the 32GB variant: RAM is often the limiting factor for being able to still use an old machine. Now that these get soldered on, better dial it up a notch.
Is it?
I'm seriously asking because usually I crank up the RAM when I buy a new device but I'm not at all sure that's something that has benefited me as far as longevity goes.
Yes it is. CPU cycles are infinite, but RAM is finite so better up-spec on that.
To make things more complicated, I have a Nordic layout and all the parts I can find are US/UK, so realistically I'd also need a new keyboard, front cover and everything else!
Maybe I should try to just design a case for this so I can use it as some sort of home server instead. Seems wasteful to just throw it away
I bought a StarLite Mk 5 [1] to replace the Dell laptop, and regret it so far. Battery life isn't anywhere near promised and since I primarily use the laptop sitting on a couch it's useless because of the magnetic keyboard/being a tablet. It's my own fault for buying it, I should have cancelled the order, and I don't think I can return it even if it's basically brand new unused in the box it came in.
[1] https://no.starlabs.systems/pages/starlite?shpxid=61ecd87f-f...
Side note, you all might like @dosdude1 videos:
https://www.youtube.com/@dosdude1
Lots of Mac SSD upgrades, and some vintage stuff to boot.
Those memory components are now operating at much, much higher frequencies than in the good old days, and need to be mounted closer and closer to the compute units to reduce latency, making soldering them the easiest way for reliably achieving those frequencies and latencies for best performance.
Especially when you look at high end (g)DDR5 frequencies for APUs and what Apple is cooking with the Mx chips. There's no way you can easily get that using DIMM slots, so soldering it is.
Yeah we used to even have memory slots on GPUs back in the '90s, but those days are long gone now and it's not all due to planned obsolescence but simply due to the performance requirements whos goalposts have moved leagues and bounds since then.
Not arguing about the latency but the chips that have been soldered in that article are operating at much, much lower frequencies than some DDR5 DIMMs you can buy to slot on a desktop mainboard supporting an Intel Raptor Lake or Ryzen 7000 series CPU.
Plus, isn't that laptop also thinner than models with slotted RAM? If you're chasing thinness then soldered is the only way to go even if you're not yet limited by frequency/latency.
Apple's latest M3 processors use LPDDR5-6400. There are systems with socketed memory that do DDR5-6400, so I am not sure what you are talking about. In the server space, Intel's latest Xeons support MRDIMMs at 8800MT/s, which is even faster.
The main advantage I am aware of with on package RAM is lower power consumption. Shorter traces means the memory controller PHY uses less power.
Also LPDDR has lower power requirements than DDR
LPDDR5 does use less power than DDR5, but what I was specifically referring to is the claim that Apple gets higher frequencies than you could get with slotted memories. This isnt true.
One compromise I've seen in laptops is to have both soldered ram and a SODIMM socket. Stock config comes with soldered ram giving the end user the ability to add more ram as required.
CAMM2 modules could / _should_ help in returning replaceable modules to laptops and keep the benefits of having the ram mounted closer to the cpu, but at the cost that its (atleast atm) only a single module, so if you were upgrading from (for example) 8gb to 16gb, you would be left with a unused 8gb module and try and sell it on the resale market.
where are you going to put them in an appropriately thin chassis?
Especially not at western levels of wages and commerical space rental costs.
Such services might be economically feasible in places like Taiwan or China where these skills and equipment is abundant at every street corner, but if you have to pay someone in the west where these skills are specialized with high hourly wages, to do all that for your laptop, the cost could be higher than if you would flip your existing machine on the used market and add another couple of hundred bucks on top to buy a new laptop with the exact specs you need.
(Trust me, I'd be learning how to do these repairs if the costs weren't almost doubled by shipping alone in the US.)
At least that’s what the Chinese equipment market indicates to me - not just rework equipment, but very platform specific flash reprogrammers etc.
If this was a service available from repair shops, I could see people making the math and going for it sometimes.
On a specific model, I bet you could get the rework time down to 5 mins per machine in bulk.
And 5 minutes of technician time + the cost of 4 ram chips is much less than the price difference between the 8 and 16G machines.
Obviously to maximize profits, you probably want to change a 4G model to be a fully specced 32G model.
I do occasionally use them on the couch or in bed, but for anything productive... I don't really ever want to work with just a laptop screen (13/15/17 inch - who cares, the form factor sucks for this).
So in that case, the 13 inch machines are great because they're light and portable. Much prefer the 13 inch XPS to the 15 inch XPS. It fits in many more bags and the only real component downgrade is the GPU, which I don't really care about in a work machine anyways.
I also find - surprisingly, they tend to get better battery life, simply because they aren't powering as much screen real-estate (and are doing it without a discrete GPU).
So yes - the 15 inch really is a lot harder to carry (I own both - older gen XPS 15, new gen XPS 13). It weighs literally twice as much and requires a much larger bag.
For the other 20% time when I'm on the go, I want the smallest , sturdiest laptop I can have, with the best battery life . I've got a Dell latitude. Although Linux is just BAAAAAAD wet battery life. I can't stand windows OS though.