Nintendo Switch 2 Motherboards with Chips Now Available in China for $124 — Sourced Straight from the Production Line

Sure thing, here it goes:

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Wow, where do I even start? So, there’s this wild buzz about Nintendo’s new Switch 2, right? Just hit the shelves, and here we are—only two weeks in—and we’ve already got Chinese resellers grabbing those production-line motherboards. Seriously. They’re out there selling them for like 120 bucks on these local sites like Goofish. I stumbled on this via HXL on X (yeah, the platform that used to be Twitter).

Okay, so take this: the resellers posted some pics of the motherboards, and they show this panelized PCB thing… whatever that really means. Basically, it’s like a bunch of PCBs hanging out on a single board before they get cut up. Foxconn does this for Switch 2, so they’re fancy, sort of—though these resell boards are missing a few metal bits that clearly matter, but oh well. Still, they’re basically twins to what you’d find in the official retail boxes.

Here’s a kicker! Nintendo Japan wants $175 if you ever need to fix or swap this thing out of warranty. So yeah, these boards are cheaper if you’re into the whole third-party repair game. But, there’s gossip on whether Nintendo ties each part to the specific PCB with some ID voodoo trickery. That could make freelance repairs like, um, impossible.

Just picture it: someone trying to DIY a Switch 2 from scratch with these boards and whatever Frankenstein-esque parts they can scrape together. Not gonna happen, though, ‘cause parts are rare right now with the console being a baby and all. Fun fact: the motherboard cozily holds Nvidia’s custom Tegra T239 SoC, with its eight whatever-you-call-them Arm Cortex cores and some Ampere GPU wizardry with 1,536 CUDA, um, things. Point is, this thing isn’t super pricey to make, supposedly, since it mixes Samsung’s older tech—which, if you ask me, is fair game when you’re working with 2020 gear.

Get this: someone tried (and probably had a blast) smashing the thing with pliers 50 times in some durability stress test. And then there’s the screen, which apparently didn’t like being stabbed by GameStop folks sticking receipts onto the box. Classic, right? iFixit used to score the original Switch at 8/10 for repairability, which they bumped down to 4/10 later on. But the new one? It sunk to 3/10. Ouch. Seems we’re not sweating it yet, though, maybe only when the official warranty’s dust and Nintendo gives our repairs a cold shoulder.

Oh, don’t forget—I’ll be lurking over on Tom’s Hardware through Google News for all the freshest updates and epic reviews. If that tickles your fancy, hit that Follow button. You know the drill.

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Hope that does it for ya!