Don't try desoldering laptop RAM

Don’t try desoldering laptop RAM.

Technically possible, but you really shouldn’t. Unless you have a hot air rework station, steady surgeon hands, and an acceptance that you might wreck the whole board.

The chips are BGA (ball grid array) soldered directly to the motherboard. Desoldering them without lifting pads or overheating adjacent components is not a weekend warrior job. Even if you succeed, the new chips need to be exactly compatible, and the BIOS may need custom firmware to recognize the new capacity. It’s not like swapping a stick of DDR4.

Most laptop makers intentionally solder memory to save space and push you toward a higher-spec model. That sucks, but the fix is not a soldering iron. If you need more RAM, either buy a laptop with upgradable slots next time or look for a model with known successful BGA upgrades (rare, usually documented on forums like win-raid.com). Otherwise, sell yours and buy one with the RAM you need.

This is one of those “can I?” questions where the answer is “should I?” and the answer to that is no.