I frankly don't understand why RAM for consumers is a thing. I don't know of any other popular consumer good that is routinely built by the consumer out of individual components. You buy cars, phones, refrigerators, amplifiers, et cetera et cetera whole. Why computers are different, in the year of our lord 2025, is a mystery to me. This shouldn't be happening, and I am saying this as a hardware enthusiast who builds his own computers since Windows 3.1 days.
PCs are one of the few things we build ourselves because it's one of the few goods that have standardized and commoditized parts.
If there was a large degree of interchangeability between engines, transmissions, bodies, dashboards (etc) the auto enthusiast community would for sure be building cars from scratch out of parts. But realistically the pieces are tightly coupled and you can't pick and chose.
It's the same with coffee machines - if there were interchangable pumps and boilers and group heads etc, I bet building your own coffee machine would be the norm in a certain crowed.
And to be clear there's good technical, aesthetic, regulatory and business why most large machine's are made of interchangeable parts. I'm not saying car and espresso machine manufacturers have done something nefarious. Just that PCs happen to be free of a major constraint.
Bicycles are an odd duck where this is concerned -- you go to a department store (no, actually don't) or a bike shop and buy a whole bike as a single assembly. But because there are standards, as others have pointed out re: computers, it's very feasible to just buy all the parts individually and piece together the bike that you want (which is what I do). Honestly, working in a hot (or cold, it is Minnesota, after all) garage, sometimes I question my sanity when I'm assembling these things...but the ability to fine-tune what you want and not be beholden to the standards of some marketing department or the cost-cutting assholes that run private equity funds is quite nice.
Ultimately, I'd love it if there were enough standards out there where I could spec out a car, and have it built up from parts...or just buy a stock one, if that's what I wanted. I feel that way about a lot of products that I interact with -- appliances usually have shitty UX, car software is usually garbage, and I'd love it if I didn't have to rely on DJI for a drone (good luck getting them in the U.S. anymore, anyway).
I think that with any product there's a subset of people who are like, "Eh, good enough," and willing to buy whatever the big manufacturers are pushing, but there's a smaller subset that wants to really dial-in something that fits their needs.
I might not have built my car myself; but have made several after market upgrades to it. My current car features an after-market head unit and tire pressure sensors that I installed myself.
Computers are just the most obvious example because they are expensive, easy to assemble, and have a high markup (which can be obscured on Tim's like now, as there is a larger lag time for component price increases to effect them).
Just like car people buy off the shelf cars the customize them, many of us will buy off the shelf computers and upgrade their RAM, SSD, GPU, or CPU. Maybe all 4, or more. For desktops that aren't Macs, I usually buy used and plan on bring my own SSD and GPU at a minimum. For laptops (again that aren't Macs), I also tend to buy used and plan on upgrading the RAM or SSD or both.
At the time PC's came to market, High Fidelity music systems still were built from components such as preamps, amplifiers, turntables, FM tuners, tape decks, CD players, and speakers.
A PC was similarly a collection of base unit, monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse, and other components connected via interface cards plugged into a standard bus. Memory was also originally on cards plugged into the bus.
It's not any different. You can buy a whole prebuilt PC like you can a car or a fridge and most people do.
You can also go out a buy car parts and fridge parts to replace things that break in either of those.
I can go out and buy a new steroe, new muffler, new seats, etc. for my car and replace them, just like parts in a desktop.
The only brand currently on the market with > 96Gb DDR5 SODIMM memory modules which currently is a set of 128Gb (2x64) DDR5 SODIMMs is Crucial. At least here in the EU.
So if you're on the market for a current gen laptop or laptop based mini pc (e.g. AMD Strix Point - HX 370 and friends) containing a pretty fast AI capable iGPU with system shared memory (e.g. the Radeon 890M which is part of Strix Point), meaning you can allocate at most 50% of system memory = ~64Gb to the video card, you better stock up soon.
Damn … Crucial P3 plus and P5 plus support Opal 2.0 full disk encryption. This leaves Samsung standing nearly alone in the consumer market, except for some smaller names.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 29.7 ms ] threadIf there was a large degree of interchangeability between engines, transmissions, bodies, dashboards (etc) the auto enthusiast community would for sure be building cars from scratch out of parts. But realistically the pieces are tightly coupled and you can't pick and chose.
It's the same with coffee machines - if there were interchangable pumps and boilers and group heads etc, I bet building your own coffee machine would be the norm in a certain crowed.
And to be clear there's good technical, aesthetic, regulatory and business why most large machine's are made of interchangeable parts. I'm not saying car and espresso machine manufacturers have done something nefarious. Just that PCs happen to be free of a major constraint.
Ultimately, I'd love it if there were enough standards out there where I could spec out a car, and have it built up from parts...or just buy a stock one, if that's what I wanted. I feel that way about a lot of products that I interact with -- appliances usually have shitty UX, car software is usually garbage, and I'd love it if I didn't have to rely on DJI for a drone (good luck getting them in the U.S. anymore, anyway).
I think that with any product there's a subset of people who are like, "Eh, good enough," and willing to buy whatever the big manufacturers are pushing, but there's a smaller subset that wants to really dial-in something that fits their needs.
Computers are just the most obvious example because they are expensive, easy to assemble, and have a high markup (which can be obscured on Tim's like now, as there is a larger lag time for component price increases to effect them).
A PC was similarly a collection of base unit, monitor, printer, keyboard, mouse, and other components connected via interface cards plugged into a standard bus. Memory was also originally on cards plugged into the bus.
I can go out and buy a new steroe, new muffler, new seats, etc. for my car and replace them, just like parts in a desktop.
So if you're on the market for a current gen laptop or laptop based mini pc (e.g. AMD Strix Point - HX 370 and friends) containing a pretty fast AI capable iGPU with system shared memory (e.g. the Radeon 890M which is part of Strix Point), meaning you can allocate at most 50% of system memory = ~64Gb to the video card, you better stock up soon.