What is the point of desktop DIMMs anymore?

[StrangerGuy]

...When laptop memory now costs the same or even cheaper for the same speed and capacity plus they also occupy less mobo real estate?

DDR4 should really have desktops and laptops use the same physical format for RAM especially when desktops sales are in the decline and with RAM so cheap there is no good reason to have 2 standards needlessly coexisting to drive up the production cost.

 

[Zap]

There's a lot of things that don't make sense to me. Yes, I've considered the SODIMM versus DIMM. How about ATX cases with so many drive bays? Go to any place with a bunch of gaming/enthusiast computers, such as a big LAN party. See how many ATX towers have less than half the drive bays filled, and are only using one graphics card. Boggles the mind. How about glossy surfaces on devices that you touch? Insane! I have owned two notebook computers that had a lot of glossy surfaces including the wrist rest area... and they came from the factory with micro fiber cloths for wiping. Really? How about NOT making the surface glossy, and then saving the 10¢ on the cloth.

 

[atguy10]

Yes, I agree. DIMM's should be killed off in favor of SO-DIMM's.

They should also make half-height SO-DIMM's to further reduce the physical size.

And they should make all motherboards have at least 2GB of RAM soldered on. This might happen to a certain degree post-Haswell when most CPU's will be BGA.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Both should be killed of in favour of a single 128 or 256bit version

 

[MontyAC]

I like the idea of just using so-dimm's for desktop and portable devices.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

Maybe it's because of heat? Smaller sticks means the chips are crammed closer together, so perhaps that means you can't run them at higher speeds because there's less heat dissipation.

 

[2is]

And they should make all motherboards have at least 2GB of RAM soldered on. This might happen to a certain degree post-Haswell when most CPU's will be BGA.

That would be a mighty bad idea for builders. Not being able to chose your memory speed, being limited on what configurations will give you dual channel operation, having to replace the entire board if your on-board memory starts generating errors, etc.

SO-DIMM idea makes sense to me though. It would probably cut down on manufacturing costs too since they could all be done on the same "assembly line"

 

[lehtv]

...When laptop memory now costs the same or even cheaper for the same speed and capacity plus they also occupy less mobo real estate?

They occupy more mobo real estate, not less. Even though it is physically around half the size of a DIMM, laptop memory takes up more space because on desktops, memory doesn't lie on its side, it sticks out of the board. Now if they made desktop boards with slots for SODIMMs sticking out that'd be different. But I don't see how it would change anything, you'd still have the same ATX and microATX form factors... maybe on mini-ITX it'd be more useful

 

[Shephard]

I like the look of the dimm slot with ram in it. the motherbard would look bare without 4 sticks, or even 2.

 

[cbn]

Maybe it's because of heat? Smaller sticks means the chips are crammed closer together, so perhaps that means you can't run them at higher speeds because there's less heat dissipation.

While browsing Newegg for memory I have indeed noticed the regular DIMMs have a higher speed potential.

In fact, last time I checked I could get a 8 GB DDR3 2400 DIMM kit starting at $55. (Looks like entry level price has increased to $65 --> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&Pagesize=20)


The same performance/price ratio was not available in SO-DIMM.

 

[cbn]

Looking through some of the fastest so-dimms I could find on newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...PC3%2015000%29 ($62.99 to $64.99, CAS 10 and CAS 11, 8 GB 1866 kits at 1.5 volts)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820104357 ($89.99, CAS 12, 8 GB 2133 kit at 1.5 volts)

 

[Mixolydian]

And they should make all motherboards have at least 2GB of RAM soldered on. This might happen to a certain degree post-Haswell when most CPU's will be BGA.

RAM soldered to mobo? The 1990's called....

 

[jolancer]

What is the point of desktop DIMMs anymore?

Money

consolidating and streamlining standards in any industry makes too much sense that it turns back around and makes no sense. till you consider money

 

[dawp]

RAM soldered to mobo? The 1980's called....

fixed, the 90's had 30 pin simms

 

[mikeford]

And the 80's had 16 pin chips, or 14, and sometimes the legs were funny.

If you want to look at the future, look at a high end phone.

I'm actually ok with the current mismash. I can build a low power HTPC, or a water cooled Gamer, or anything in between, cheap.

What I am ready for is higher reliability, and very soon after that I want to stop thinking about what is inside the box, and just expect it to work without attention.

 

[imagoon]

UDIMM is 133.35mm x 30mm giving a hair over 4000mm^2, 8000mm^2 dual sided
SODIMM is 67.6mm x 30 mm gives 2028mm^2 or 4056mm^2 dual sided.

That means the desktop chip at any given time will have double the capacity as the laptop chips. Hence why 16GB DDR3 DIMMs are out and laptops are at 8GB / DDR3 DIMMs.

Also vertical SO-DIMM slots do exist, there isn't a lot of demand for them since the larger DIMM is used in most cases where there is vertical space.

I would guess there isn't any real [fiscal] advantage to using SO-DIMM in place of a UDIMM if space is available.