Apple Macbook Pro 16GB RAM Limit - The Truth
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,354 words · ~6 min read
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Apple's new Macbook Pro an interesting device for sure but we've seen the
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criticisms that between the lack of an SD card reader its extremely limited
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hardware specs considering who it's purportedly aimed at and an IO setup
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that will leave the vast majority of people either reaching for adapters or
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buying new cables altogether it just doesn't seem geared
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towards professionals at all and on the latest WAN Show we actually threw our
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two cents into the pile every 13in MacBook Pro has no dedicated GPU
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I'm sold no one will ever need more than 8 gigs of RAM they don't even have dual
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they don't even have quad core processors no one needs more than two
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cores Apple didn't bother to respond to our comments directly I guess Tim Cook
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doesn't watch the WAN Show for some reason but one issue has apparently
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generated so much discussion that Apple's Phil Schiller made an official
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statement to the verge defending their decision to limit the MacBook Pro to 16
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GB of RAM they claim that putting more than 16 gigs of fast RAM into a notebook
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design at this time would require a memory system that consumes much more
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power and wouldn't be efficient enough for a laptop but how much battery does
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RAM use is this a valid defense let's
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investigate
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cooler Masters masterc case maker 5 features their free form modular system
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allowing you to customize adjust and upgrade make it yours at the link below
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Apple will have to forgive me when I immediately raised an eyebrow like
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Dwayne The Rock Johnson although I can't do it nearly as well when they announced
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that not only would their base configurations max out at 16 gigs but
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that you wouldn't be able to upgrade it later on consumer stuff I find thisp
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type of locking down less offensive but
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they're doing a lot of stuff that just seems to be designed to make their
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Hardware less repairable and more disposable I mean MacBook Pro batteries
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are glued to the case and this situation
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is no different with the memory it's soldered onto the logic board Apple's
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official explanation was that a memory system with more than 16 gigs of RAM
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would draw too much power from the laptop like I said earlier but is that
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really true is 32 GB really too much for
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a mobile platform to handle well especially considering many MacBook Pro
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buyers are professional content creators or Chrome users who might actually make
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use of all of that memory to find out we looked at the power consumption of
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different memory configurations not just in a laptop but in a desktop as well
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just to dive a little bit deeper our Benchmark on all tests was 5 minutes of
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the memory stress test only in Ida 64
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extreme for our first test we use 8 gig 6 of Corsair Vengeance lpx ddr4 on our
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usual test bench in 816 and 32 GB
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configurations there is a 20 wat Delta in our highest and lowest amounts of RAM
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but was this due to more gigabytes or more RAM sticks so we put our two sticks
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of corser lpx against four sticks of AD data xpg ddr4 since the a data sticks
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were only 4 gigs a piece both setups
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came in at a total of 6 GB of RAM the
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four sticks drew a little bit more power but not much more as there was only a 5
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watt difference we also looked at how different RAM voltages affected power
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consumption putting up two sticks of our 1.2 volt corser lpx against two sticks
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of 1.35 volt Corsair Dominator as with
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our other tests we made sure to turn on XMP profiles to make sure they were
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actually drawing the voltages indicated on the box the 11 watt differ was
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definitely more than we were expecting all in all the differences between our
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different RAM setups for desktop weren't
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insignificant so is there really something to Apple's claim time to dig
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deeper so we switched over to an Acer Predator 15 laptop as it uses the same
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Sky likee Architecture CPU type and ddr4 RAM as our desktop test bench and then
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we paired it with crucial and apacer so dims that is laptop memory obviously we
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would have liked to have test tested this on one of the new Macbook Pros
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themselves but thanks to its completely non-s swappable RAM this wasn't really
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an option after testing one and two sticks of both 8 and 16 GB modules the
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difference in battery drain was almost negligible the difference between one
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stick of 8 gigs and two of 16 remember that's a total of 32 GB was only 105 M
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hours in each scenario the memory stress test drained about 4% of the Predator's
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battery so there was no massive spike in discharge rate when we upped our system
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to 32 gigs now admittedly this isn't an
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Apples to Apples comparison as all the laptops laying around were ddr4 gaming
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Windows-based models but thanks to JX
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standards one ddr4 low power chip is less different from another than you
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might think which leaves us to wonder if raw power consumption of more chips
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wasn't the issue what exactly did apple mean when they said more than 16 GB of
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memory wouldn't be efficient enough for
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a notebook Linus's theor is that using up more PCB space for memory chips could
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have eaten into the internal space that Apple preferred to use for a bigger
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battery johon thinks that's bull and speculates that it's a planned
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obsolescence move as for me I'm not sure
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what I do know is that the truth is out there and you should leave a comment
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down below with your opinion as well and also by the way hi Louis I'm assuming
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you're watching this one and I'd love to hear what your opinion is too so let me
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thanks for watching guys this video is suck you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like
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button or check out where to buy the stuff that we featured in this video on
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Amazon like laptops that have 32 gigs of
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RAM also Link in the description is our merch store so you can buy cool stuff
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although I think this sweater is like sold out and not in our merch store and
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stuff but you know there might be another drop of those someday someone's
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going to kill me cuz that's not actually going to happen but anyways don't worry
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about it also check out the community Forum which is linked down below and now
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that you're done doing all that you're probably wondering what to watch next so check out this video which is teran's
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EV3 review that part's
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important