Soldered RAM upgrades void more than you think.

Usually, the entire laptop warranty.

Once you break out a soldering iron on a machine with RAM soldered to the motherboard, that’s a modification to the main board. Most manufacturers treat any unauthorized soldering as voiding the entire warranty—not just the RAM slot or the motherboard. Their logic: physical damage to one part can affect the whole system, and they don’t want to cover a busted screen if you botched the RAM reflow.

There are rare exceptions with boutique laptop makers who allow socketed RAM upgrades and might have more flexible policies, but for the big names (Dell, Lenovo, HP, Apple), soldered RAM is a warranty death sentence for the whole laptop. If you send it in for a keyboard replacement, they’ll likely inspect it and deny everything.

If you need more RAM, buy the configuration upfront or pick a laptop with replaceable DIMMs. The savings aren’t worth the risk.