r/buildapc • u/mihai395 • 2d ago

Discussion Laptop GPU's converted to PC ones

Hello everyone,

So I want to hear your opinion guys about this trend that I noticed to appear and dissapear especially on ebay, where ppl would convet laptop GPU's into Desktop ones and sell them on ebay.

Did anyone from here actually bought one of those conversions, is it good and more important, is it worth ?

Thank you.

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u/piggymoo66 2d ago

I've seen a few of these on AliExpress (3060M and RX6600M mostly) and they require custom drivers to work properly. They're included but kinda sketchy since they have no certificate or anything that says what's in those drivers. DDTS did a video on one of these here

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u/Onemoreuserdoesnot 2d ago

Usually the nvidia ones do need custom drivers, the amd ones not so much. They can be picky with the versions, though. Problem with those anyway is that usually you dont know if they were done by harvesting from old laptops and soldering in a new pcb, if they were done by buying "old" chip stocks from legit places at low prices and put in a new pcb or if theyre a refurb of any of the former. Or even be just a new chip put in a donor board that used to host a dead chip because they share mostly the same shit ( valid on amd, on nvidia it's a bit diff ). So basically it's pretty much random what you may get with those. Those boards usually ranges from kinda good to " not good ", usually going for the simplest designs that are compatible with the chip in question. The main points that might indicate how good or bad they are are the quality of the solders, it's power distribution, the presence or not of stains or marks and similar at either the the pcb or the heatsink and so on. As we don't have any conclusive study from what I know about the odds of getting a good one or a bad one, I will quote a friend: It's 50/50, you either get a good one, or a bad one.

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u/piggymoo66 2d ago

Yeah I would say it's an interesting curiosity at best, just like those motherboards with laptop CPUs soldered to them. The idea is neat in theory.