[SOLVED] If you remove vram from a gpu, would it work?

[Giant Hunger]

I was just windows shopping the other day and i saw this gtx 960 that has 1 vram remove, would it work?

 

[rgd1101]

what do you mean would it work?

 

[Giant Hunger]

what do you mean would it work?

what I mean is would it display on the monitor

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Wouldn't go near it with a 50' pole. There's no telling what may be wrong with it.

 

[geofelt]

GTX960 should come with 2 or 4gb of vram.
If it has less, it will be crippled, if it will work at all.
At some price, and with a return guarantee, it may serve, but I would not buy.

 

[Bazzy 505]

I was just windows shopping the other day and i saw this gtx 960 that has 1 vram remove, would it work?

This is not a card to put in a PC to play games. What i see in the picture is card used for harvesting parts to fix other cards. If you run a repair shop, in 10-15 buck range it would have been worth getting. Otherwise it's a resounding no


It will not run. The missing VRAM chip would be reason alone, but if you look at the image closely you see VRAM chip to left of it shifted out of place. Looks like a botched heatgun job. Now presuming there's nothing else wrong with it ( which i seriously doubt is the case) it's not something you can fix yourself without proper equipment and correct BGA stencils in the drawer. There are shops that specialize in this kind of repairs, but frankly you would be charged more for the repair than the actual value of the card is.

 

[USAFRet]

I was just windows shopping the other day and i saw this gtx 960 that has 1 vram remove, would it work?

I wouldn't take it if it were free.
Why? Because then I have to deal with getting rid of it.

Sometimes trash is simply trash.

 

[hotaru.hino]

No. And if it does, it's a fake. The video card's BIOS is looking for a specific amount of VRAM.

 

[Remeca]

If you took an existing chip off a GPU, no, it wouldn't work most likely. That is very unlikely the case here though. Many cards have empty VRAM pads for different SKUs of a card, or if the PCB is recycled from a different card. It isn't terribly unusual to have unpopulated VRAM spots is the point, and I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that it was removed.


GTX 960:

 

[Remeca]

Looks like the GTX 960 comes in 2 and 4G versions. Based on the pictures, they put either 512MB or 1GB memory modules in slots 3/4/5/6, and leave slots 1/2 empty.

 

[Bazzy 505]

Looks like the GTX 960 comes in 2 and 4G versions. Based on the pictures, they put either 512MB or 1GB memory modules in slots 3/4/5/6, and leave slots 1/2 empty.

yes it does, the problem is the GDDR ram chip (top left side) is so misaligned you can't see the left side stencil pin 1 alignment marker. Given the clearances between BGA contacts, that chip can't possibly work.

here's slightly modified reference PCB from gigabyte 2 gb version , look at the alignment marks stencil on the pcb for the GDDR ram chip (bottom left right next to heasing screw) and compare it to image OP posted

 

[Remeca]

yes it does, the problem is the GDDR ram chip (top left side) is so misaligned you can't see the left side stencil pin 1 alignment marker. Given the clearances between BGA contacts, that chip can't possibly work.

here's slightly modified reference PCB from gigabyte 2 gb version , look at the alignment marks stencil on the pcb for the GDDR ram chip (bottom left right next to heasing screw) and compare it to image OP posted

It looks perfectly fine to me, just a blurry photo with bad lighting.

Eta: those screws don't look great but hard to tell what's going on.