anyone tried to de-solder the builtin ram ?

anyone tried removing the builtin 512mb ram that is soldered into the aspire one ?
and just put in a single 2gb stick ?

or is there a way to bypass the builtin ram (short it or something)
and put a 2gb into the other slot ?

 

I don't think it is possible unless if you had one of those super machines that make motherboards, then I'd say it might be possible. with normal soldering tools, it is impossible.

 

I would say you'd have a higher chance to succeed by shorting it and sticking in a 2Gb, rather to desolder it completely.

I never tried it, and never will unless proven possible.

 

I remember someone saying, that the chipset only supports maximum of 1 GB per slot, which is very much likely since Intel lists the chipsets maximum supported RAM to be 2 GB. So by desoldering the built-in RAM, you will #1 most propably break your motherboard and #2 still can't get 2 GB stick to work.

 

I would say you really dont need more than 1.5Gb ram either.
This is due to the slow SSD (or hd), as well as the crippled cpu and chipset.

You could use a fast flash card for readyboost in vista, you could upgrade the SSD to a 1.8" ZIF hd (if you have the SSD one) and you can upgrade ram to 1.5Gb.

I would say then you have max perfromance you can get out of this small pc.. Except some small tuning if overclocking.

 

not to mention that the more ram you have, the less battery life you'll have.

512 is perfect for the linux version. if you're using 512 with XP, you might look into the stripped down versions of XP. There is XPLite, but there is also another one for gaming. I forget what it's called. I used it a while back, and it runs nicely on less ram.

If you really do want to put the 2gigs in, google DIY SMT soldering. hackedgadgets.com has a tut on it.

 

Well first I'd like to say 1,5GB is plenty and good enough for 99% of all possible applications for this little fella. But if you really want to desolder the ram a hot air jet desoldering station is what you want. If you don't have that in your basement (doh) then it's very possible to use a standard hot air pistol (not sure about the english word for this, in Swedish it's: varmluftspistol ) that costs basically nothing.

 

Wrong. More RAM means pagefiles are used less frequently. Less frequent access to HDD = more battery life.

 

Good point. But RAM does use power, and it would be interesting to find out if anybody has ever done any testing on this. At some point (1GB? 1.5GB?) adding more RAM surely would eat more battery power than it saves from the HD?

 

Swapping out the 512mb module with a 1Gb stick will not increase power consumption, and it's essential if you install Vista on the AAO. I really don't think it's worth the effort to desolder the onboard RAM, unless the goal is to replace it with DDR2 667, which is what the Wind, 1000h and S10 have.

 

"Swapping out the 512mb module with a 1Gb stick will not increase power consumption, and it's essential if you install Vista on the AAO. I really don't think it's worth the effort to desolder the onboard RAM, unless the goal is to replace it with DDR2 667, which is what the Wind, 1000h and S10 have."

It wouldn't make sense if you desolder the onboard ram and replace it with DDR2 667. Since the atom has 533mhz FSB and the chipset only support ddr2 400/533mhz ram, using 667mhz Ram is the same as the 533mhz ram as it'll be downclocked to 533mhz automatically.

There's no adjustable Memory:FSB ratio. Even if you can adjust it, 5:4 memory ratio will kill your memory performance.

 

i thought that 1.5gb was the most it can handle?

 

If there were two free slots, 1gb in each slot should be OK.

But de-soldering - it's not really a viable option for most folk.

 

well i just upgraded my to the 1.5gb
and noticed my hard drive linux model, the ddr ram chips are actually built into the mainboard, so desoldering these is a def no.

 

LOL... I thought in the beginning, you were trying to find a way to change out the DDR2 ram chips on the PCB.

 

Same for all models.

 

Did Acer released a new model of AAO to Bestbuy.com or did they make a mistake? On their website, they said the AAO150 3cell, 120GBHDD, windows Xp, allow memory upgrade to 2 GB.

 

It's possible that they've released a motherboard with 1GB soldered onboard with an empty SODIMM slot that can be expanded by an additional 1GB.