Star Labs Systems, a UK-based Linux hardware startup, has finally launched the StarFighter laptop — a high-performance laptop built with premium materials and designed primarily to run a Linux operating system.
Painful price point. Thats about as much as my current desktop PC, all peripherials included.
Unfortunately, the StarFighter uses soldered RAM, so users cannot upgrade it down the road
And like that, any interest I had in that system is gone.
In 2026, it’s unforgivable for any system to have soldered components. I’m not about to spend premium pricing(in this case it’s almost $1900 USD starting) on a system that if a ramstick dies I have to replace the entire main board.
Especially when Framework exists, and to a lesser extent, Valve’s hardware.
yeah, like I always thought that the framework was a little steep on pricing(Although compared to this…) , but at least you get the ability of cold swapping parts out.
While I’m with you, there is one advantage: RAM can work on higher speeds when soldered and few actually upgrade it when not soldered.
If they use CAMM that’s no longer the case.
I agree with that. My issue isn’t upgrading it, It’s a laptop. It’s unlikely I would upgrade it anyway just because of the compact design. My issue is strictly the repairing/replacing a damaged component point of view. Soldered components easily turns a repair job from “does this person have access to YouTube?” to a “do I still know a shop that’s willing to still use a soldering iron?”
Surface mount rework station
Yep, true, soldering really kills reparability for most.
I understand, but I had to trash a great laptop because the soldered ram died. Never again.
Yeah. That’s really bad.
If you took it to a place that does board repair place I’m sure they’d replace it for you.
In Australia there’s a company called microtec engineering.
We send crane to boards and displays etc to them for repairs.
10k for a new component or 2k to freight repair and return.
And often a life saver on machines that are so old the manufacturer has discontinued parts.
We had that repaired last year by them.
Yeah, thats true but framework solved this with LPCAMM2 modules, which have much higher write speeds that sodimm. And just because “few actually upgrade it” doesnt mean all ram should be soldered, as having unsoldered ram caters to a completely different consumer market.
Didn’t they go with soldered RAM with their desktop PC, though?
They did but there was no alternative for the “AI Max”, it has much higher requirements for bandwith than traditional CPU RAM. They were investigating the possibility for LPCAMM2 or LPCAMM for that system but it was not feasible to maintain that bandwith while retaining data integrity. For the Desktop it was the right choice. It was designed for local inference applications and there the memory bandwidth is absolutely crucial.
For the new Framework 13 Pro however with an Intel based SOC they have now successfully implemented LPCAMM2.
I think so, because that was during the peak of the ram shortage, and LPCAMM2 was barely produced then.
