I’m guessing regular non-LP DDR works fine socketed in desktops because power is nearly a non-issue. Need to burn a few watts to guarantee signal integrity? We’ve got a chonky PSU, so no problem. On mobile devices however every watt matters…
Normal DIMMs work fine but soldered RAM can just be much faster and in general better. It’s not an acceptable compromise on most desktops but for laptops which also has to be smaller and need to worry about stuff like battery life, it matters more.
I still don’t understand, why this is seemingly no problem in any other application.
Desktops, servers and even some chonkier laptops manage to work with regular (SO)DIMMs just fine.
I’m guessing regular non-LP DDR works fine socketed in desktops because power is nearly a non-issue. Need to burn a few watts to guarantee signal integrity? We’ve got a chonky PSU, so no problem. On mobile devices however every watt matters…
Plus the smaller chips (like the CPU) are designed for lower voltage and current. They can’t handle dialing up the power, they’ll melt.
Laptops with sodimm DDR5 not only use much more power, but they’re also slower than LPDDR5.
Ex: the Intel Thinkpad T16 has 5600mhz ram in sodimm form, but with soldered RAM (AMD version) it’s like 6400mhz.
Desktops/servers get around this the best they can by just blasting the power away.
Normal DIMMs work fine but soldered RAM can just be much faster and in general better. It’s not an acceptable compromise on most desktops but for laptops which also has to be smaller and need to worry about stuff like battery life, it matters more.
Sounds like there is a bunch of nuance in this topic!
My understanding is that those are slower (SODIMMs) or are able to use more power (DIMMs) to maintain signal fidelity.