welcome to graphics card repairs my name is Fraser and today we are going to talk about upgrading the RTX 370 from 8 GB to 16 GB and why this upgrade is crucial for gamers you see as games evolve they crave for more video memory having that extra vram can significantly enhance your performance and make your gaming session smoother and more enjoyable so let's get started all right so let's get into the nitty grees the 8GB V Ram limit on the RTX 370 is a challenge for many gamers out there what happens is that in demanding games you may experience stuttering lag or even crashes games like cyberpunk 2077 Last of Us Part One or flight simulator can push that limit leaving players frustrated when they're trying to immense thems in amazing Graphics plus with the gaming industry pushing for higher resolution and more detailed textures that 8GB is looking smaller every day and let's be real if you want to Future prooof your rig for upcoming games you're going to need that extra memory it's like trying to fit a big piece of puzzle into a tiny spot that just doesn't work isn't it now let's talk Tech vram or video random access memory is like the short-term memory for your GPU it stores textures images and other data needed for rendering Graphics so when you increase your vram from 8GB to 16GB you're allowing your graphics card to load more data at once which can lead to smoother gameplay in today's gaming landscape as resolution SES to 4K and Beyond and as games get more complex with Rich textures and environments the demand for vram is skyrocketing just think about it if you're playing a game that's using up all your vram your GPU is going to start pulling that system Ram which is way slower not ideal right this upgrade could be a game changer literally so here's the exciting part I'll be showing you the secrets how to upgrade the RTX 3070 from 8GB to 16 GB B we're going to dive into the world of Hardware modification I can't wait to share the step-by-step process with you showing you every detail on how this can be done imagine the thrill of boosting your gaming performance and diving into your favorite titles with enhanced visuals and smoother frame rates the potential benefits in this upgrades are massive this is going to be a two-part series of the upgrade process in this video we're going going to make the hardware modification and get the card ready to boot in part two of the upgrade we are going to look at how we can resolve the issues that we face after the upgrade is completed and run a couple of benchmarks and run some games to test the GPU before we start I would like to mention this do not try what I'll be showing you if you do not have the experience in reballing BGA chips graphics card repairs or any of it Associates are not responsible for the actions you take now with that out of the way let's continue on my workbench is a zorch RTX 3070 that's going to be our test subject to start I will dismantle the GPU down to the PCB now this GPU currently has Samsung 1 GB memory module which I will replace to 2 gb the replacement memory I have right now is a 2 GB for 14 gbits per second Samsung memory the part number I will flash it on the screen just in case if you would want to make a note of it so let's start the replacement process I'm going to preheat the board and then use hot air from top so let's start [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now that we have replaced the memory it's time to run the memory test to check if everything is installed correctly running mats we can see that mats has passed and our memory is installed correctly the next step is to change the Str straps the question is what is straps in simple words on a GPU board there is a chip that holds the scripts that communicate with the PC and also controls the power the fan curve and also how the core and the memory should function the script is called bios now straps on the other hand are resists of 100 kiloohms each which tells the BIOS which memory is installed on the PCB of the GPU the BIOS reads commands in binary codes like ones and zeros these resistors called straps provide those commands in ones and zeros so when a resistor is connected to 1.8 volts it indicates one and if that same resistor is connected to ground it indicates zero so the binary code required for the Biers to recognize that there is a 2G GB Samsung memory module installed is 1 1 and zero then the bius will send the required data to the PC and the drivers will act accordingly now the tricky part was that I didn't have the schematics nor a board view for this GPU after poking around for Eon I found the area that the resistor needs to be connected and I switched the register to indicate 1 one and zero I then assembled the GPU back again and put it on my test bench it installed the drivers just fine and upon opening GPU Z it showed us that it's now reading 16 gab wow I then ran firmar to test if the GPU was steady it ran fine but when I stopped the test I got a black screen at this point I thought could it be that the batch of memories I received uh faulty I then disassembled the GPU and reball the GPU core thinking the problem may be with the soer joints underneath the core but that was not the case so at this point I decided to replace the memory instead of 14 GBS per second I thought let's install 16 GBS per second memory modules as I did not have a separate batch of 14 GBS per second memory modules I will FL the part number of the 16 gbits per second memory modules on your screen just in case for your reference so I then install this memory assemble the GPU ran the test again the GPU ran fine as long as it was under stress and as soon as I stopped the stress it would go back to a black screen I ran tests like superposition heavens and Fir mark and it all did the same thing I also wanted to test and check if it would utilize the extra memory that I have installed so I ran occt the first run was with a small memory portion so that you know I know it's not going to just crash out the second run was utilizing 90% of the installed memory you can see on the screen that it is utilizing just over 14 GB of installed memory just like the other test it would give a black screen after I stopped the test run so our experiment is working but we need to fix the black screen after the load is released my assumption right now it could be the power delivery to the memory let me show you these mosfets that deliver power to the memory rail are just rated 30 amp with 12 volts input now with my power supply also dropping the voltage to around 11 volts can be another issue as well so we have a work cut out for the second part of this upgrade Journey where we will try and fix the black screen issue and run some benchmarks and a couple of games I hope you like this video and if you do hit the like And subscribe to let YouTube know so it can do its thing you can also support my channel by joining in monthly or using the thanks button to contribute one time your contribution mean means a lot to me and will help me produce more of these upgrade videos thank you for watching and I'll see you in my next video bye for now cheers