cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/60592

Modular laptops are few and far between, but the concepts and in-market products that I have seen seem to fall into two general categories: ones that are based around a removable system on module with the CPU and RAM soldered, and ones that are all-out discrete for everything, including socketed CPU, RAM, and if applicable, discrete graphics card. Separately upgradable storage seems the standard and bare minimum for all of them though.

Of these, the SOM concept have the potential to be thinner and lighter but you have to upgrade the entire module at once, while the everything separate concept can obviously allow for separate component upgrades while being thicker and heavier. The everything separate concept is also quite a bit more complex, requires more material, which would be wasted if the user doesn’t upgrade or doesn’t upgrade compute components separately.

If a hypothetical manufacturer that is looking to make more sustainable electronics wanted you to dicide for them, which one would you choose? I think it mainly boils down to whether you think the tradeoff of thinness and lightness is worth having to upgrade the CPU, GPU and RAM as a single module instead of separately. Curious as to what people here think.

  • @CarlyDawson@lemmy.ml
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    13 years ago

    If I could switch out mothboards and cpus and upgrade ram, I would be ok with a thiccpad type scenario. Or the ability to incorporateold ram sticks into new archetectures. Backwards compatibilty.

    The real problem is IP that harms the customer. one cannot switch out cpu, or scale processor power up, or throw an amd onto a non compliant board in the way one can use a screw driver with a non brand screw, or any model monitor with any model laptop using hdmi.

    there is no bread board i can pop 4 last gen intel chips on, to simulate dual cores, for instance.

    a sufficiently resourced company that sought to instead create compensation adapters between any and all such artificial constraints, might find great profit

    • @AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 years ago

      Yeah, I think a benefit of compute modules in today’s tech environment is that it’s self contained and can be made for extremely backward and forward compatibility and let you use whatever compute hardware you want, especially one of the open source standards out there.