Q about recent HP laptops

[theoldwizard1]

Recently, many HP laptops have stopped using SODIMMs. The memory is soldered down to the board. The same is true for all of the tiny desktop PCs (especially ones with Strix Halo).

My question is specific to HP laptops. It appears that HP built a lot of laptops with only 8MB of memory (yes, Microsoft says it is "adequate" for Windows 11), and now they are "dumping" them at a low prices.

• Are these machine built to use 2 banks of RAM (either 2x4GB or 2x8GB) ?
• For a repair facility with the proper equipment, could they "upgrade" an 8GB machine to 16GB ?

 

[confusis]

Knowing how locked down the bios is on most laptops now, I'd wager that a modified unit would either just be bricked or only address the expected 8 GB.

However, I'd be happy to be proven wrong - my go to laptops for personal use are the Elitebook series from the ex-lease market

 

[Phuncz]

Mind that AMD's Strix Halo and other APU platforms benefit from using high speed memory (Strix Halo has LPDDR5X at 8000MT/s) that is only possible to achieve high speed due to being soldered. It has twice the bandwidth of a Ryzen 9000 series and does it with less power.