During AMD's latest earnings call that covers the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su gave a small update on Valve's Steam Machine.
To be honest, I expected RAM prices would push back the release date. But AMD would know more about than I would.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was soldered on because it shares the RAM with the GPU. That’s pretty common these days, and GPUs want both high performance RAM and low latency. There are solutions to significantly lower the trace lengths between expandable RAM and the CPU/GPU, but the standard never took off.
Have you seen how it looks without the casing? this thing is filled to the brim, whatever space was left has been filled with cooling, it would be complicated to place a standard d6 in there - the whole system is built around the cooling that goes through the middle. but the ram isn’t soldered and i think it’s even placed so you can upgrade it without dismantling the whole thing.
I dunno. There’s probably plenty of examples where companies soldered RAM instead of installing SODIMM slots, even when they had space. I agree that it makes sense, but sense isn’t always a factor when a company starts crunching the production cost numbers.
Is it upgradeable? I assumed it would be soldered in.
Maybe we’ll see, “Some soldering required,” instead 😂
They explicitly said it has user upgradeable ram. The graphics card is soldered on though. Its basically gaming laptop hardware.
It is, using SODIMMs (Laptop form factor)
Cool, I tried to find the info, but obviously didn’t find that detail. It makes sense, all things considered
Given the proclivities of Valve and their hardware so far, i woud expect the gabecube to not have soldered ram.
Why would it be soldered? It’s not like it’s in a laptop with space constraints.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was soldered on because it shares the RAM with the GPU. That’s pretty common these days, and GPUs want both high performance RAM and low latency. There are solutions to significantly lower the trace lengths between expandable RAM and the CPU/GPU, but the standard never took off.
Have you seen how it looks without the casing? this thing is filled to the brim, whatever space was left has been filled with cooling, it would be complicated to place a standard d6 in there - the whole system is built around the cooling that goes through the middle. but the ram isn’t soldered and i think it’s even placed so you can upgrade it without dismantling the whole thing.
I dunno. There’s probably plenty of examples where companies soldered RAM instead of installing SODIMM slots, even when they had space. I agree that it makes sense, but sense isn’t always a factor when a company starts crunching the production cost numbers.
Considering how repairable the steam deck is, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is upgradable