Finding a place to buy an Nvidia RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3070, or GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is a serious frustration Only the GeForce RTX 3090 recently came back in stock, and audio editor James Archer managed to get his hands on one, but the card is incredibly expensive

However, one enterprising YouTuber has found a way to upgrade his GPU without the frustration of hunting down a device scarcer than a unicorn's tear vik-on shows how to upgrade a Palit GeForce RTX 2070 with 16GB of video RAM VIK-on uploaded a video showing how to upgrade a Palit GeForce RTX 2070 with 16GB of video RAM

Our colleagues at Tom's Hardware noted that the YouTuber upgraded the RTX 2070 from 8GB of Micron GDDR6 video memory to 16GB of Samsung GDDR6 VRAM based on a leak diagram VIK-on received This diagram showed an RTX 2070 with the 16GB VRAM option

This is interesting because leaks suggesting that Nvidia may release 16GB versions of the GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2070 a few years ago VIK-on's DIY upgrade is based on the fact that support for twice the VRAM was built into the previous generation GeForce graphics cards, demonstrating that it must have been built into the graphics cards

16 GB of VRAM is more than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080's 10 GB, although the 3080 uses faster GDDR6X memory However, the current RTX 3070 has 8GB of GDDR6, so VIK-on's improved RTX 2070 outperforms its successor in terms of memory capacity

However, the RTX 3070 uses the new Ampere architecture, which offers improved performance over the RTX 2070's Turing architecture Therefore, even with increased VRAM, the RTX 2070 will not suddenly be able to compete with the RTX 3070

Still, given the RTX 2070's ray tracing and deep learning supersampling capabilities, it is an interesting upgrade to an already quite powerful graphics card But there's a catch: YouTuber's upgrade is far from stable at full load

Also, unless you're used to disassembling graphics cards, upgrading can be tricky; Tom's Hardware details how VIK-on did the upgrade, but unless you're very confident or very bored (or both) Unless you are very confident or very bored (or both), we recommend that you do not attempt this upgrade on your RTX 2070

In theory, doubling the RAM would certainly allow the RTX 2070 to handle games that make heavy use of complex graphics assets However, to be effective, it must remain stable under high loads Nevertheless, this home-grown upgrade is a promising sign that the 16GB RTX 2070 could be made, and we may see the GeForce RTX 3070 receive such an upgrade later on

For a more powerful gaming machine without the risk of DIY mistakes, see our picks for the best gaming PCs