Desolder and solder VRAM rtx 3070 FE

[Tanspotty]

Hey I got an rtx 3070 Founders edition, no longer in warranty that I want to mod. The GPU still works but I've heard that you can desolder and solder new VRAM modules onto the GPU, giving more performance on the table as VRAM isn't enough for some triple A titles. I'm asking for experts so I don't start running into a rabbit hole that burns my money here, Is the 3070 Founders edition a card that you can mod? Like can you increase the VRAM if I was to solder new modules on. 

I am myself trying to find what gddr6 modules I would need but not sure what to be looking at exactly. Preferably modules bigger capacity then the ones on the card itself as I can't find a reference showing the 3070 card having any spare points to solder chips on. 

Simply be, can I mod the GPU?

I don't have the money to fork out buying an entire new card that's even more expensive then the existing card. 

Where do I buy such VRAM modules and what are they called exactly? I know it's gddr6

[Eigenvektor]

16 minutes ago, Tanspotty said:

Where do I buy such VRAM modules and what are they called exactly? I know it's gddr6

They aren't really consumer products, so you're unlikely to find them at any typical retailer. You'll have to search places like Ali Express and similar. Your best bet is probably looking at the existing modules (or someone's teardown), to find their product family and model number. Then try to find modules with double the capacity in the same product family.

 

The thing to be aware of is that doubling VRAM on its own doesn't really improve performance. If your card has too little VRAM for a specific game, that will negatively impact its performance. Increasing the card's VRAM will simply mitigate that negative impact, it doesn't improve performance as such.

 

Games that aren't VRAM limited right now will likely not see any relevant increase in performance unless you go for faster RAM and overclock the GPU core to actually make use of the increase in bandwidth.

 

And yes, it has been done: https://videocardz.com/newz/modded-geforce-rtx-3070-with-16gb-memory-gets-major-1-low-fps-boost

[8tg]

This is in Portuguese so you’ll need to run something to translate the audio if your region doesn’t have captions.

It’s absolutely doable, you’d need to find the higher capacity variants of basically the same memory modules. There isn’t a finite list of them hanging around, and they can be different across the same gpus. 
This commonly requires a bios mod, which isn’t as difficult as it sounds, but is definitely not something to delve into without prior experience.

But then the same can be said for BGA soldering, this isn’t a home soldering job, you need special tools for this. 
 

The 3070 and 3070ti are great candidates for this because they’re cards which are extremely capable otherwise but are heavily limited by their vram. Half the reason I got an A770 to replace my 3070ti was that 8gb of vram wasn’t enough in 4k. 

[OddOod]

57 minutes ago, Tanspotty said:

so I don't start running into a rabbit hole that burns my money here

You're swapping BGA components, welcome to the rabbithole
You can buy individual modules off ebay, but unless you have all the equipment and a not small amount of experience with rework stations, I'd recommend staying far FAR away from this project. If you had a busted card, that would be a different matter entirely, but you have a currently working card.
 

[Mark Kaine]

Just a question,  how do you plan to solder them? a soldiering iron doesn't work here.

 

 

25 minutes ago, OddOod said:

a not small amount of experience with rework stations,

just in theory... why wouldn't a heatgun work though?  or even the good old oven trick? 

[MarkPol88]

@Tanspotty

Contact people from this existing thread:

 

[Winterlight]

Better just sell it add extra self and buy new card because it very high risk that you broke at all your current GPU by trying do this mod.

If it worked for someone it  not mean that works for you even you somehow resoldering successful this VRAM. It very complex task and chance of success actually is very low.

[OddOod]

On 3/29/2024 at 9:14 AM, Mark Kaine said:

just in theory... why wouldn't a heatgun work though?  or even the good old oven trick? 

Yes. In theory it's possible. But again, it's probably not gonna work. Even if it does it's highly likely to reduce the lifespan of the card. 
If you wanna do it because you've got money to burn, blaze ahead. Could be a fun tinker project and a chance to learn. But go into it with the assumption that it won't work.