NaterI'm honestly surprised they aren't just soldering an NVME SSD right to the board at this point. I imagine somewhere there's an OEM doing it already?

Not sure about NVMe soldered to the Motherboard but eMMC is a thing, although slower than a normal SSD.

NaterI'm honestly surprised they aren't just soldering an NVME SSD right to the board at this point. I imagine somewhere there's an OEM doing it already?

Why would they do that? All they would achieve is alienating customers. It would increase the BOM cost of the board significantly and thus increase its sales price significantly. It would either exist in a fixed size (which would leave only those potential customers for which said size is a good fit) or would create multiple SKUs increasing costs across the distribution chain, reducing margins and/or increasing prices further. The same alienating effect would apply in terms of performance - only those for whom the performance is sufficient (not too low, not overkill) would be interested. Given the much, much lower sales volumes of motherboards than SSDs, they also wouldn't be able to price it as well as a standalone SSD, meaning customers would get a better deal looking elsewhere. What would the motherboard maker (and their distributors) do if NAND prices dropped by 20-30% a couple of months after their board was produced? They'd have the choice of either having it sit in inventory, binding up money, or selling it at a significant loss.

There's also the technical issue of performance: soldered-down solutions (unless the motherboard maker wants to take on the cost of developing a bespoke integrated SSD, which definitely isn't cheap) are typically low performance due to either being a single package, or having few DRAM channels and dice, lowering parallelism. This affects both random and sequential performance, so it's a surefire way to make your SSD perceptibly slower, not just measurably.

For the DIY market, this would make no sense whatsoever. For prebuilt desktops, it doesn't really either, as soldered components increase service costs and points of failure (it's cheaper to replace an SSD or a motherboard under warranty than both!). For laptops it's not quite uncommon, though it only really applies to very thin-and-light designs as for anything else the above risk factors and cost increases don't make sense. (Also there isn't much volume/area to be saved using a soldered-down SSD vs. something like an m.2 2242.) Of course there's also Apple, who like to lock their customers in and hate third-party upgrades, and charge enough of a premium for everything to not really care about things like that. They also have the mindshare (and to some extent the type of customer base) to allow them not to care about this.

This is much the same as why nobody would risk launching a motherboard with soldered-down RAM outside of very specialized markets. It just doesn't make sense economically, practically, or for the user.

ValantarWhy would they do that? All they would achieve is alienating customers. It would increase the BOM cost of the board significantly and thus increase its sales price significantly. It would either exist in a fixed size (which would leave only those potential customers for which said size is a good fit) or would create multiple SKUs increasing costs across the distribution chain, reducing margins and/or increasing prices further. The same alienating effect would apply in terms of performance - only those for whom the performance is sufficient (not too low, not overkill) would be interested. Given the much, much lower sales volumes of motherboards than SSDs, they also wouldn't be able to price it as well as a standalone SSD, meaning customers would get a better deal looking elsewhere. What would the motherboard maker (and their distributors) do if NAND prices dropped by 20-30% a couple of months after their board was produced? They'd have the choice of either having it sit in inventory, binding up money, or selling it at a significant loss.

There's also the technical issue of performance: soldered-down solutions (unless the motherboard maker wants to take on the cost of developing a bespoke integrated SSD, which definitely isn't cheap) are typically low performance due to either being a single package, or having few DRAM channels and dice, lowering parallelism. This affects both random and sequential performance, so it's a surefire way to make your SSD perceptibly slower, not just measurably.

For the DIY market, this would make no sense whatsoever. For prebuilt desktops, it doesn't really either, as soldered components increase service costs and points of failure (it's cheaper to replace an SSD or a motherboard under warranty than both!). For laptops it's not quite uncommon, though it only really applies to very thin-and-light designs as for anything else the above risk factors and cost increases don't make sense. (Also there isn't much volume/area to be saved using a soldered-down SSD vs. something like an m.2 2242.) Of course there's also Apple, who like to lock their customers in and hate third-party upgrades, and charge enough of a premium for everything to not really care about things like that. They also have the mindshare (and to some extent the type of customer base) to allow them not to care about this.

This is much the same as why nobody would risk launching a motherboard with soldered-down RAM outside of very specialized markets. It just doesn't make sense economically, practically, or for the user.

Most, if not all I'm guessing, mainboard makers already have SKU's for the SAME chipset in the double digits (Asus has FOURTEEN X570 boards on their page). I don't think they give two shits about distribution chain or increasing SKU's.

And yeah, it'd be something OEM's would do, just like they do w/ soldered RAM. If there weren't advantages for them, they wouldn't do that either.

NaterMost, if not all I'm guessing, mainboard makers already have SKU's for the SAME chipset in the double digits (Asus has FOURTEEN X570 boards on their page). I don't think they give two shits about distribution chain or increasing SKU's.

And yeah, it'd be something OEM's would do, just like they do w/ soldered RAM. If there weren't advantages for them, they wouldn't do that either.

Really? Each of those SKUs have different selling points, even if a lot of them are very similar. Now imagine multiplying that number by 3x to get, say, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB SKUs for each. It would be a logistical nightmare, most distributors would at best take on one SKU, and the rest would sit in a warehouse collecting dust and losing money.

As for soldered RAM: again, they only do that in places where it has distinct advantages, in particular space savings. RAM is also far easier to implement than an SSD - it's essentially just traces, chips and power delivery. No controllers, no firmware, no controller-to-NAND interfaces, etc. If soldered RAM was advantageous beyond that you'd see it in pre-built desktops everywhere.

ValantarReally? Each of those SKUs have different selling points, even if a lot of them are very similar. Now imagine multiplying that number by 3x to get, say, 512GB, 1TB and 2TB SKUs for each. It would be a logistical nightmare, most distributors would at best take on one SKU, and the rest would sit in a warehouse collecting dust and losing money.

As for soldered RAM: again, they only do that in places where it has distinct advantages, in particular space savings. RAM is also far easier to implement than an SSD - it's essentially just traces, chips and power delivery. No controllers, no firmware, no controller-to-NAND interfaces, etc. If soldered RAM was advantageous beyond that you'd see it in pre-built desktops everywhere.

And you've come full circle to the post I was responding to...going M.2 NVME to reduce clutter.

I picture someone like a Wal*Mart or a government/school systems buying 1000's and 1000's of these:
www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/desktops-all-in-one-pcs/optiplex-3080-micro/spd/optiplex-3080-micro/s010o3080mffus

That m.2 heatpipe makes no sense, under 40C the drive will die faster.

NaterAnd you've come full circle to the post I was responding to...going M.2 NVME to reduce clutter.

I picture someone like a Wal*Mart or a government/school systems buying 1000's and 1000's of these:
www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/desktops-all-in-one-pcs/optiplex-3080-micro/spd/optiplex-3080-micro/s010o3080mffus

But does replacing an m.2 with a soldered-on SSD reduce clutter? I would say no. It has no cables, no external attachments, just sits there. As for the SFF prebuilt you linked, there's still plenty of room for an m.2 in there, which means adding a soldered-on SSD would increase the BOM and service costs with zero real benefits.

Jism

A yet completely useless, gimmick. SSD's need to run hot; at least within the 60 to 70 degrees mark for best performance.

Uh what? On my model the throttle point is 65C, so this clearly is NOT universally true.

lexluthermiesterWhile the technical achievement is impressive, how practical is a drive like this for users? Even elite gamers don't really need a drive this fast. And with all that voltage and heat, one must question the longevity and durability of such a drive..

What voltage and heat? That's the joke. There isn't enough to justify this heatsink. The drive is average there

ValantarBut does replacing an m.2 with a soldered-on SSD reduce clutter? I would say no. It has no cables, no external attachments, just sits there. As for the SFF prebuilt you linked, there's still plenty of room for an m.2 in there, which means adding a soldered-on SSD would increase the BOM and service costs with zero real benefits.

Neither does RAM, there's cases where it gets soldered on. They put GPU's right inside the CPU. Why not put the OS storage there too? I'd imagine there's speed & latency benefits to be had. OEM's could actually REDUCE inventory. One baseline PC to rule them all. You're going to throw at LEAST 128GB in there anyways?

I'm not arguing that enthusiast mainboards come with soldered on SSD's, I'm just saying I think there's something there to be had with the economics, speed, latency, etc.

Why did Sony hardwire the PS5 SSD?

NaterNeither does RAM, there's cases where it gets soldered on. They put GPU's right inside the CPU. Why not put the OS storage there too? I'd imagine there's speed & latency benefits to be had. OEM's could actually REDUCE inventory. One baseline PC to rule them all. You're going to throw at LEAST 128GB in there anyways?

I'm not arguing that enthusiast mainboards come with soldered on SSD's, I'm just saying I think there's something there to be had with the economics, speed, latency, etc.

Why did Sony hardwire the PS5 SSD?

Why Sony hardwired the PS5 SSD is an excellent question. At least on the surface, there are many arguments against it. My guess: Likely because they went for an entirely bespoke solution with more channels than would fit on a standard m.2 drive (12 channels rather than 8 on high-end m.2 drives), requiring them to design their own larger PCB anyhow. Thus this design process entirely swallows up the extra costs of integrating the drive - the costs were already a given, long before a form factor was decided on. Their use of a bespoke controller further underscores this - they had to take on this cost no matter what, so integrating it saved them the few cents that an m.2 connector costs, and saved them making two PCBs (as long as there was space on the motherboard). There's no volume savings to be had if you're buying a part that can only be used in your specific product, after all, so with entirely bespoke solutions this logic goes away - but they are also really expensive. It's still another point of failure for the motherboard, but I guess they judged the chance of outright SSD failures to be low enough to not matter much. It still removes their opportunity for harvesting and refurbishing SSDs off RMA'd motherboards though. (They could technically be desoldered, but that is essentially never done.)

As for RAM: can you show me a single system that isn't extremely space-constrained (i.e. wouldn't fit SODIMMs without compromising on something crucial, like battery or cooling) that has soldered-on RAM? And again: soldering on RAM to a motherboard is much simpler than creating a fully integrated on-PCB SSD. There are BGA single-package SSDs that are used in some tablets and really tiny PCs. But those are also quite low performance. Beyond that, RAM is much easier to add directly to a PCB than an SSD would be. An OEM could no doubt just buy a reference PCB design from, say, Phison and integrate it into their motherboard designs, but that's still far more complex than just wiring up an m.2 port, and it requires PCB space that is often not available on current cramped motherboards.

As for integrating OS storage on-die in a CPU - sure, that would be amazing in terms of latency, but it would massively increase die sizes, and thus balloon CPU costs. You'd also still need a heap of NAND in there to achieve decent parallelism and thus overall performance - a single die, even coupled directly to the CPU with near zero latency, would be terribly slow. NAND is also generally produced on different nodes than logic, and require different optimizations and production techniques. A monolithic die containing both a lot of high-performance logic and a decent amount of NAND (128GB or more) would be immensely complex to manufacture, yields would likely be terrible, there's a high chance the CPU/GPU would perform worse than if it was made on a bespoke logic-only process.

An MCM solution would be better and easier, but leaves the question of fitting it within a reasonable package size - for example, no current BGA SSD could fit in the space used by one CCX in a Zen 2/3 CPU, though of course an unpackaged version would be smaller - and if there aren't more valuable things that could be added in for the same cost, such as more cache. With upcoming 3D stacking tech it's likely we'll see MCM CPUs with active interposer layers consisting of lots of cache, and they could feasibly also add NAND there, though there is still the question of whether this would be worth the cost (interposers are typically made on cheap, old nodes (45-65nm), while current NAND is made on flash-optimized 10-12nm nodes). There's also the question of whether a NAND-optimized node is suited for the things needed in an active interposer such as TSVs. And there's still the fact that an SSD (unlike RAM) needs multiple types of components (well, RAM needs RAM + power circuitry): the controller, NAND, DRAM (if you want good performance) and power circuitry. That means it isn't as simple as just sticking a few more chips onto your PCB or package. For CPU integrations the same is somewhat true for RAM due to density/capacity (you wouldn't be able to fit the 8 DRAM chips found on most DIMMs into a CPU package either), but there you have other solutions like HBM which stacks these on top of each other for higher density. No such solution exists for flash, and it would likely be prohibitively expensive if someone were to make it.

So again, there's very little reason for integrating SSDs onto motherboards (or into CPUs), and for the few extremely space constrained cases where it does matter, most OEMs are happy to accept the compromises of current BGA offerings. But there's no reason even low-end motherboards would integrate this - at a significant added cost - rather than just stick an m.2 socket on there and either leave it to the builder to fill, or if they are the system builder, stick whatever SSD they want for the relevant system configuration in there.

R-T-BWhat voltage and heat? That's the joke. There isn't enough to justify this heatsink. The drive is average there

Oh yes there is. It's no joke. It depends on the model of NVMe drive, but most are driven hard on voltage and clocks to render performance and that produces a ton of heat that must be vented.

bonehead123hAHAHAHA, I was about to say the same thing, although the drive itself with the fins looks nice :)

As soon as my eyes hit it, just sitting here by myself, I said outloud: "Jeeeezus" haha.