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HN crowd is treating this as some sort of sorcery.
Meanwhile it's just everyday business in China. People send their laptops or graphic cards with soldered RAM and get the device back with double RAM/vRAM. "Brother Zhang" is one of those who operate such a shop: https://youtu.be/TcRGBeOENLg
Had such services been more available in the US, I would not have needed to sell a laptop that had 8GM RAM and could no longer handle my workflows but was perfect otherwise.
HN crowd is treating this as some sort of sorcery, you can do it at home with a $60 hot air station.
The only thing approaching "secret sauce" is the BIOS modding, which varies in difficulty depending on the device. For many devices it's just a case of reconfiguring strap resistors.
I have watched more than a few videos where someone tries to upgrade soldered RAM at home, only ending up sending the laptop to the same repair shop they hoped to skip after a failed experiment.
Unless you can put money on your words and provide some sort of guarantee, nobody is going to take that.
Yeah a $60 hot air station may be enough, assuming you have all the consumables and chips.
This isn't something even the average techie will risk trying.
You can definitely do it by yourself(after all, the tech worker is just a person like us). But it will definitely cost more than $60.
Hot air station, stencil, stencil frame. preheater, etc. Even board view sometime need to be purchased.
I wonder whether (without soldering) replaceable GDDR RAM on graphics cards would really result in such a large speed penalty. System memory often isn't soldered to the main board either, and this doesn't seem to have large performance penalties.
When trying to book an upgrade:
"Please note: All Upgrades have been put on hold due to the double cost of Memory Modules. The option to upgrade the supported GPUs has been disabled on the booking page."
Bummer. I have a box full of 2080s that are leftovers from a previous foray.
What would it cost to have you ship me one?
I recognized the name of the company from the YouTube videos they have posted. It is likely a legitimate business, but as they are in a region I am not in, I can't speak to their actual performance or reliability. Here is their YouTube page:
https://youtube.com/@graphicscardrepairs-tk7ql?si=OIO98TbmAs...
This seems to be a company in the UAE. I've noticed in general that the far (and middle) East have far more miscellaneous repair services companies than the West, and also more information online about it (albeit not in English.)
Yeah. Even a smaller town will have a random repair shop where a guy will replace phone screens, solder in a replacement power supply, and he seemingly has some kind of connection that can get him all these parts from Shenzhen. A comparable sized town in America won't have anything comparable other than a Dollar General selling phone chargers.
We're all too busy running in circles trying to pay rent and not get sued, while they're doing productive stuff.
It helps that most chip documentation is written in Chinese now. For obvious reasons.
As far as I can tell, it's mostly just cost of labour vs cost of buying a new device.
Watching professional repair shop youtube channels is one way to get a feel for the economics of it - it's usually only worth their time if it's a quick fix on an expensive product or a complex data-recovery attempt where the customer is paying much more than the cost of the device itself, because they value the data on it.
This used to be a common thing even in Portugal, until we started going down the throw away working electronics mindset, and yes we're to blame as well, consumers drive the market.
How do they handle the signature requirement for the VBIOS? I could perform such a mod, but the requirement for a signed VBIOS puts me off.
What if timings are wrong, such as with this attempt: https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/projekt-rtx3070-um...
I guess that's not what they do, as they do not warn of a specific software configuration. Maybe this is why it is only compatible with 2080Ti GPUs?
They specify that the BIOS needs to be patched.
Damn I have one of these and it is still good shit. It's the best one I think, the Asus ROG OC edition sitting in a razer core x external GPU. I want this but does it make sense? I'm guessing it doesn't make sense as I'd have to send it there.
I'd prefer some instructions on how to do this myself.
This seems to have been going on for a while, Toms Hardware have articles on these cards going back a couple of years -
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/chinese-work...
It looks like for a while this was a way to work around the US tech bans in China. And cards with this mod pre-applied seem to be on ebay for about $500, which is cheaper than used 3090s from what I can see.
The procedure:
Here I am still rocking my 980 TI with 6GB :)
Honestly, I have a 2080ti that I use to play and I can tell you the math isn't there to upgrade it. It's much easier to just find a 3090/4090/5090 and keep pace with the software and hardware simultaneously.
The 2080 is really getting long in the tooth. You're probably better off buying a 3090/3090Ti with 24GB, if you can find one.
I have a 3090Ti, And it is still plenty performant for all the stuff I do. Especially considering modern pricing, I don't see me swapping for anything newer for a long time to come.
You can also get 3080 with 20G from China.
Is this like Runescape free armour trimming? You send your gpu, and get it back with 2x memory?
In Japan, these 22GB 2080 Tis have been showing up on flea-market apps for months now, and I suspect many of them may be coming from China. I’ve been wondering whether buyers realize they’re modified cards, not factory models.
There is an unusual number of nvidia GPUs being sold on ebay from china that has higher than usual memory.
One can only assume its modified cards, using the same technique mentioned by other commentators here.
Hopping on VastAI or Runpod (GPU renting websites) it is easy to spot a bunch of these cards. In terms of AI performance though it doesn't seem to be that good.
Ohhhh wow thats my card! The upgraded ones seem so be around 300 usd on Chinese apps. Is that worth it?
I wonder what the benchmarks are after the upgrade for that beast of a GPU.
I mean you could just use this, right?
When I was a kid software that would "double your RAM" was a thing. I remember thinking it was awesome, and at the same time feeling a huge sense of doubt that you could do that.
Is there such a mod for RTX 3080 TI 12GB?
Even RTX 3060 12GB to 24GB would be interesting.
Can't wait for someone to realize there's a market for low-power/mid-spec 32GB GPU/TPU.
Local, tuned open weights is going to quickly become a thing.
If you reverse engineer it deep enough.
You can get 3080 20G from China.
What is the price for this upgrade?
Not sure but full card is around 300usd it seems…
Considering the price is listed at $0, it doesn’t inspire confidence to do business with this enterprise.
The 2080ti is what, 8 years old at this point? Upgrading the RAM is throwing good money after bad.
Depends on the price, surely?
A 2080Ti is approximately on a level with a 5060Ti (from a quick search), though obvs does not support the newer DLSS features etc. So to get a good upgrade you’re looking at a 5070 or better.
If this gives you a performance boost for less $$$ …
Huh. On my device it shows up as 0 AED. I wish it could be in $, I don't know how to exchange all that money
"The final cost depends on the availability of high-capacity memory modules."
It's childish behavior to hide the price of your services.
It does clearly state that the price is variable depending on what it costs them to source the memory modules.
And other pages give the costs for repairs & diagnostics, which are probably in line (it's effectively a type of 'repair').
(Although prices are in emirati dirhams, given they're based in Dubai)