Desktop ATX motherboards with SO-DIMM memory slots? It's not as silly as it sounds.

pcgamer.com:

Sometimes, engineers have some free time on their hands. There are many examples of 'skunkworks' projects, including an Asus RTX 4060 Ti with an onboard SSD slot, motherboards with rear-side connectors, and going back a little further, an ASRock X299 HEDT ITX motherboard, to name just a few memorable examples.

The latter board included SO-DIMM (small outline dual in-line memory module) slots as a way to save space due to the large size of the LGA 2066 socket. It's not the only example of a desktop motherboard with SO-DIMM slots. Asus cooked one up in its labs, and it was spotted by wxnod at X/Twitter, who posted a picture of an Asus ROG Maximus XIII Hero with SO-DIMM memory slots.

In another picture posted by wxnod, the Z590 system features a Kingston Fury BIOS landing image, indicating the board is a test vehicle for testing Kingston SO-DIMM memory. It's certainly easier to test memory on a desktop motherboard with a comprehensive BIOS full of adjustable options than it is on a laptop with a threadbare BIOS.

But while ATX motherboards with SO-DIMM memory slots are unlikely to see a widespread retail release, I believe there is a use case for them, or at least some kind of compact memory standard. It's all about saving PCB space.

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Unless you start doing some clever double stacking of M.2 drives, the realistic limit for an ATX board is five slots. That's enough for most users, but by using SO-DIMM memory instead of full-size DIMM slots, you create a bit of PCB space that could be utilized for an additional M.2 slot, or some other controller.

Of course, that's easier said than done. SO-DIMM memory has never been an enthusiast oriented solution. Its primary use case is in laptops and NUC-type systems, and currently available SO-DIMMs cannot match the 8000MHz+ speeds of the best DDR5 memory, because such speeds are unsupported (and unnecessary) in laptop form factors.

SO-DIMM memory will likely