New ASUS ROG Ally Details: Soldered RAM, 60 FPS Cyberpunk 2077, And More
We have some new details about the ASUS ROG Ally, thanks to a new set of previews coming from games media who received preview units.
Tech-Critter has confirmed AnandTech’s previous reveal that the 16 GB SO-DIMM RAM has been soldered onto the Ally, so you won’t be able to replace it at all. This compromise was necessary to make the Ally that much smaller.
On the upside, it’s easy to remove the backplate, and access and replace the battery and NVMe SSD storage. However, ASUS says doing so will void the warranty.
This can be a touchy issue. Of course, there is an ongoing debate about right to repair, with regulators targeting Microsoft rival Apple.
We can guess why ASUS has decided to gatekeep the ROG Ally’s internals with a warranty sticker. Much like ASUS’ laptops, the company assembled particular parts that would guarantee a certain degree of performance, that they can’t guarantee otherwise.
Of course, these issues are also what Apple uses to justify their own gatekeeping. However, many third parties can and do independently reverse engineer these devices so that they can repaid these devices as well or better than the manufacturers themselves. Often they are cheaper too. We should also not disregard the odd end user who is good enough to do their own repairs too.
In this case, ASUS may be swayed to change their policies later. But it can be understood why they did all of this in the first place, since they want to make sure the launch of this product category goes well.
On the side, if they do free up replacement barriers, it’s great that batteries and NVMe SSDs are going to be replaceable.
Moving on, Pokde notes that the joysticks have their own daughterboards and are not tied to the Ally’s main motherboard. These
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