Asus is finally dropping soldered RAM from its Zephyrus M16 series but not on the Zephyrus G14

Asus will be moving away from the awkward soldered and removable hybrid approach on some Zephyrus models moving forward. The new Zephyrus M16 models will instead have 2x SODIMM slots for more freedom in end-user upgradeability.

Open up a gaming laptop to upgrade its RAM and you’ll either find the modules to be soldered or removable. On the Asus Zephyrus lineup, however, most of the models sport both soldered and removeable RAM. The hybrid approach means there is usually just 1x SODIMM slot for expansion whereas most other gaming laptops have at least 2x SODIMM slots. For CES 2023, Asus has confirmed that certain Zephyrus models will use the more traditional 2x SODIMM configuration.

The recently announced Zephyrus M16 will replace the older 2022 models with brand new chassis designs and motherboards to accompany the 13th gen Intel CPUs and mobile Nvidia Ada Lovelace GPUs. The revised motherboards have given Asus the opportunity to rethink its RAM approach for the better as any RAM upgrades will no longer be bottlenecked by potentially slower soldered RAM modules. This was unfortunately the case in 2021 where certain Zephyrus SKUs were shipping with slow 8 GB soldered DIMMs due to supply constraints.

The smaller 2023 Zephyrus G14, however, will continue to use the hybrid soldered and unsoldered RAM approach for now. Size constraints likely played a factor here as even the competing Razer Blade 14 relies solely on soldered RAM with no end-user upgradeability.

The 2023 Zephyrus G14 and M16 will begin shipping later this quarter alongside a handful of other models including the latest VivoBook 16X and ROG Strix.

Allen Ngo – Lead Editor U.S. – 5004 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2011

After graduating with a B.S. in environmental hydrodynamics from the University of California, I studied reactor physics to become licensed by the U.S. NRC to operate nuclear reactors. There’s a striking level of appreciation you gain for everyday consumer electronics after working with modern nuclear reactivity systems astonishingly powered by computers from the 80s. When I’m not managing day-to-day activities and US review articles on Notebookcheck, you can catch me following the eSports scene and the latest gaming news.

Allen Ngo, 2023-01-11 (Update: 2023-01-11)