Build your own RTX 2080 Ti Super GPU, destroying 2x RTX 2080 Super cards in the process

The enthusiast GPU market is certainly not the one that brings Nvidia the gross of its profits, but the green team knows that a diversified GPU portfolio helps retaining and loyalizing its customer base. That is why Nvidia is offering great price/performance solutions like the RTX 2060 Super along with ridiculously priced Titan RTX GPUs.

Most of the RTX 2000-series already got the Super upgrade with faster GDDR6 memories and competitive prices to counter AMD’s Navi GPUs this summer, yet, for some reason, Nvidia decided to postpone the release of the RTX 2080 Ti Super, which is now expected to be released some time in the first half of 2020. In case you are tired of waiting for this particular version to launch, you could opt for an extreme “hardware surgery” and turn the existing RTX 2080 Ti into the Super variant. Be advised, though: this procedure requires advanced hardware knowledge and a sizeable budget.

As demonstrated by the Brasilian guys over at TecLab, an RTX 2080 Ti can be upgraded to a Super variant buy replacing the 14 Gbps GDDR6 memory chips with the 16 Gbps ones from RTX 2080 Super cards. Sounds simple, but the procedure actually requires pre-heating the memory dies so they can be safely removed from their BGA packages and PCB. Additionally, one RTX 2080 Super card would not be enough, as it only has 8 memory chips, and the RTX 2080 Ti Super variant needs 11 chips, so a second card is needed only for those remaining 3 chips. Also, keep in mind that these two RTX 2080 Super cards are essentially sacrificed in the process.

The extracted memory chips from the two RTX 2080 Super cards need to be reballed by removing the impure alloy, cleaning and then soldering them to the RTX 2080 Ti PCB. Of course, the memory chips on the 2080 Ti need to be removed, as well, to make room for the faster ones. After installing the 16 gbps memory chips, the VRAM needs to be overclocked to 2,250 MHz in order to break the 14 Gbps limit locked in the BIOS. The higher clocks offer an effective speed of 17.2 Gbps, bumping the bandwidth to around 757 GB/s from the default 616 GB/s.

In the end, the RTX 2080 Ti Super "transplanted" b the TecLab etam was able to score 11,460 points in the Unigine 2 Superposition 1080p Extreme benchmark. Not too shabby, but the Unifgine database already has some 2080 Ti cards reaching 13K points, so was all this trouble really worth $2,000 and some risky maneuvers that could have damaged the 2080 Ti itself?