I’m going to provide some context – I may be downvoted.
The problem isn’t that the cost of the ram individually, it’s the cost of the entire SKU at scale. Which is what people forget.
The reason you can buy 64gb sticks cheap is for a few reasons – it’s a singular component that has to compete in a single category and also the volume at which it is manufactured at makes this price possible.
Each Apple configuration is mostly unique in the sense that each board design is its own because components are soldered in.
They have a handful of LPDDR5x capacities and mix-and-match them as needed.
Like 1 8GB chip for a M3 with 8GB of RAM, 2 8GB chips for a M3 with 16GB of RAM, 2 12GB chips for a M3 with 24GB of RAM, 3 6GB chips for a M3 Pro with 18GB of RAM, 3 12GB chips for a M3 Pro with 36GB of RAM, etc., etc. with the M3s using 1 or 2 channel RAM, the M3 Pros using 3 channel RAM and the M3 Maxes using 4 channel RAM and the top spec RAM configuration being 4 32GB (128GB total) modules.
In fact the M3 with the 8GB configuration literally has an empty RAM slot on the motherboard they didn’t populate. They likely have three motherboard configurations - dual channel, three channel and four channel motherboards with a M3, M3 Pro or M3 Max respectively.
I’m going to provide some context – I may be downvoted.
The problem isn’t that the cost of the ram individually, it’s the cost of the entire SKU at scale. Which is what people forget.
The reason you can buy 64gb sticks cheap is for a few reasons – it’s a singular component that has to compete in a single category and also the volume at which it is manufactured at makes this price possible.
Each Apple configuration is mostly unique in the sense that each board design is its own because components are soldered in.
They have a handful of LPDDR5x capacities and mix-and-match them as needed.
Like 1 8GB chip for a M3 with 8GB of RAM, 2 8GB chips for a M3 with 16GB of RAM, 2 12GB chips for a M3 with 24GB of RAM, 3 6GB chips for a M3 Pro with 18GB of RAM, 3 12GB chips for a M3 Pro with 36GB of RAM, etc., etc. with the M3s using 1 or 2 channel RAM, the M3 Pros using 3 channel RAM and the M3 Maxes using 4 channel RAM and the top spec RAM configuration being 4 32GB (128GB total) modules.
In fact the M3 with the 8GB configuration literally has an empty RAM slot on the motherboard they didn’t populate. They likely have three motherboard configurations - dual channel, three channel and four channel motherboards with a M3, M3 Pro or M3 Max respectively.