At a time when GeForce RTX video cards 3000 are scarce available and the few models on the market cost an arm and a leg, the Russian youtuber VIK-on has decided to remedy this situation trying to upgrade a GeForce RTX 2070 . Well, we don’t really know if that’s the real motivation, but we like to think that’s how it went. What did he do? No, no overclocking, too easy , but a true open heart surgery for double the card’s GDDR6 memory, taking it from 8 to 16 GB.

The idea was born taking inspiration from the documentation of a GeForce RTX 2080 which mentions the possibility of mounting Samsung memory chips from 16 gigabit (2 GB). Incidentally, there is no RTX 2080 with so much VRAM on the market. In the video VIK-on shows how he succeeded in the feat : he carefully removed the eight GDDR6 memory chips Micron’s 8 gigabit (1GB) to install solutions from 16 gigabit (2 GB) by Samsung, purchased on AlieExpress at 200 dollars.

That sounds easy, but we’re not talking about LEGO bricks: replacing memory chips is an extremely complex process, which first requires you to use a air desoldering iron to remove the original chips , taking care to preserve the contacts on the PCB to solder the new chips . In this specific case, the youtuber had to move some resistors to the rear of the PCB to make room for the new chips. It was then necessary to set a series of “jumpers” on the PCB to allow recognition of the new memory.

The process, successful , allowed the card to show the desktop without problems, as evidenced by GPU-Z, even if in practice the RTX 2070 modified performed worse than the RTX 2070 original in 3DMark TimeSpy, totaling in the graphic test a score of 6176 points against 9107. The modified card also crashed with Furmark, demonstrating how despite the technical effort something is missing for the full success of the mod and proper functioning on every occasion.

What the youtuber did is undoubtedly remarkable and, at the same time, it shows us how the TU GPU 106 was practically ready to interface with double the memory without requiring new firmware. However, Nvidia has shown, even with the current RTX 3000, to be a bit reluctant to equip the cards video with a lot of VRAM – except some top-of-the-range models. Perhaps things will change in the future thanks to the “contribution” of rival AMD that historically does not skimp on VRAM, as demonstrated also with the new RX 6000.