Anyone offer 3rd party 8GB Ram upgrades?

[RealEvil]

Hi,

I have the 13" Ultimate. I now have to run 1 or 2 large VMs (I got a new contract where I need to supply my own computer). The VM(s) are Windows Server 2008 which normally need 8GB Ram on a core i7 with SSD to run well! If I could give them 6GB then they might run OK (they don't run great with the 2.5GB I assign them now...).

Has anyone heard of a 3rd Party that offer 8GB Ram upgrades? I appreciate that they would need the machine and re-solder etc....

I live in the UK.

Neil

 

[57004]

Hi,

I have the 13" Ultimate. I now have to run 1 or 2 large VMs (I got a new contract where I need to supply my own computer). The VM(s) are Windows Server 2008 which normally need 8GB Ram on a core i7 with SSD to run well! If I could give them 6GB then they might run OK (they don't run great with the 2.5GB I assign them now...).

Has anyone heard of a 3rd Party that offer 8GB Ram upgrades? I appreciate that they would need the machine and re-solder etc....

I live in the UK.

Neil

Those memory chips are BGA's, that means they don't have little legs on the sides like older surface-mount IC's, they have solder balls underneath that get melted in an oven, on top of little metal islands on the circuit board. So they can't be soldered by hand and a lot of patience, because the connections are underneath the chips.

The thing is that the MBA's motherboard has components on both sides, so if you just put the whole thing back in a reflow oven, all the components on the other side will fall off. I imagine Apple having some kind of bracket to hold them in place during the initial soldering.

I know there's hot air soldering guns available that blow a stream of hot air for rework purposes, but the risk of 'tombstoning' (blowing tiny resistors over so they stand up sideways and don't make an electrical connection) is very high, especially with the extremely small pitch in the MBA.

Even if this could be done it would require custom tools / ovens and the risk of damaging the motherboard would still be huge. I can't imagine any company willing to take that risk.

 

[ranjitb]

It's not going to happen coz for current gen MBA the RAM is soldered directly to the mother-board so no RAM upgrades are possible.

The only thing you can upgrade is the SSD drive.

 

[Boston007]

If you wanted more RAM you should have bought a MBP. Sorry