Expandable memory has arguably been one of the most desired features users have wanted in GPUs over the past 20 years. GDDR memory stubbornly remains soldered, but some people apparently want the thrill of plugging a DIMM into a GPU regardless. Bitsandpcs.Tech on Facebook recently showed off the work of a modder who went the extra mile to 3D-print a fan shroud that incorporates a single DDR5 slot on the side.
Before you start second-guessing yourself, no, this mod doesn't result in extra memory capacity. Modern-day GPUs don't support adding extra memory like you would do on a motherboard, especially DDR5 memory, which is significantly slower than GDDR7.
The modder stripped down an existing GeForce RTX GPU of some kind and replaced the card's exterior shroud with a completely custom 3D-printed design featuring Asus and ROG branding. Some of the card's shroud looks like it is inspired by the Asus Dual-series, particularly the sides of the shroud, which have the same shape and design as Asus' dual-fan graphics cards.
The selling point of the modded graphics card is located in the front, where (what would have been) the right intake fan has been removed to make room for a single DDR5 slot. The slot sits at an angle with the left side resting just above the left ROG-fan, and the right resting underneath it.
Not only is there a RAM slot, but whoever modded the graphics card went the extra mile to also wire the RAM slot with power so that RGB-equipped DDR5 memory would at least light up. The end result is a white ROG-branded graphics card with a RAM stick on the side that accompanies the GPU's internal RGB lighting, assuming the RAM stick installed boasts RGB to begin with.
The modder's 3D printed creation might have been made just for fun, but graphics cards with upgradable RAM have already been done before, for real. In the 90s, several graphics card designs offered upgradable memory slots that could double the GPU's available memory pool if used. One such video card was the ATI 3D Rage II, which incorporated a single SGRAM slot on the card, allowing users to double the card's memory capacity if needed.
Sadly, upgradable GPU memory went away by the 2000s. There is no single reason why it went away, but cost, complexity, performance requirements and cooling issues are all likely reasons why the board makers at the time dropped the feature. Adding expandable memory slots to a graphics card would add a significant amount of complexity to a manufacturer's board design. On top of this, board makers would have to figure out a cooler design that could work with extra memory slots as well.
The closest thing we have to expandable memory today is memory modding. Skilled GPU repair technicians and modders have actively been upgrading modern Nvidia and AMD GPUs with larger capacity memory ICs. We've seen this with a plethora of GPU models to date, including the RX 5600 XT, RTX 2070, and RTX 3070.
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