GPU Socket Replacement

MarbleHornets · March 6, 2019

(This is more of a thought experiment than something I'm actually going to invest time and money into, though I might try if it seems possible just for the fun sometime in the future)

So I happened to stumble upon a website selling graphic cards with their GPU removed extremely cheap. It appears that the rest of the card is in pretty good shape, with everything I can tell still in order and the GPU's appears to be desoddered too so no other visible changes or damage to the cards. So my question is if it is possible to take a GPU from another card and put it onto another without having large, precises machinery that the manufactures use to assemble them? Also, would you have to replace the GPU with a direct copy of another or how much wiggle room do you have with it? (AKA, could you for instance take an ASUS 1060 GPU and put it onto an MSI card, or can you take a GPU from a 3GB card and put it into a 6GB) Like I stated earlier, this is more a theory project I'm curious about, so I'm reaching out to some people that have more knowledge than me.

Mira Yurizaki · March 6, 2019

If you have BGA reflow equipment, you can put a GPU from one card onto another.

As far as replacement goes, I'm leaning on that it has to be the same GPU model, down to the full GPU model name itself. There are two different flavors of the GTX 1060 3GB: GP104-140-A1 and GP106-300-A1. I'm not sure what's exactly different, but without access to data sheets and such, I can't make assumptions that one can be a drop-in replacement for the other.

Firewrath9 · March 6, 2019

1 minute ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

If you have BGA reflow equipment, you can put a GPU from one card onto another.

As far as replacement goes, I'm leaning on that it has to be the same GPU model, down to the full GPU model name itself. There are two different flavors of the GTX 1060 3GB: GP104-140-A1 and GP106-300-A1. I'm not sure what's exactly different, but without access to data sheets and such, I can't make assumptions that one can be a drop-in replacement for the other.

GP104 is the GP104 die (2560 CUDA cores, AKA a 1080), thats horribly damaged (55% or less broken) with 55% disabled, and a GP106 is a 1280 cuda core die, with 10% disabled. The GP104 is 2x the size of the GP106, so they wouldn't fit.

Mira Yurizaki · March 6, 2019

Just now, Firewrath9 said:

GP104 is the GP104 die (2560 CUDA cores, AKA a 1080), thats horribly damaged (55% or less broken) with 55% disabled, and a GP106 is a 1280 cuda core die, with 10% disabled. The GP104 is 2x the size of the GP106, so they wouldn't fit.

The GPU die itself doesn't matter, it's the package. Theoretically speaking the pinout requirements on the package could be the same since both variants use a 192-bit memory bus and have the same TDP, so same power requirements.