Man, okay, so here’s the wild thing. Nintendo’s Switch 2 just dropped, like, two weeks ago. But hold on a sec — folks in China are already snagging those motherboards straight from the factory line. I’m talking about nabbing them and tossing them up for $120 on places like Goofish, which I guess is kinda like Craigslist over there. HXL on X (or Twitter, for those not keeping score) is where this news hit.
Now, picture this: the pics show some kinda fancy-schmancy panel thing going on — multiple PCBs slapped together on one big ol’ board. Makes sense, right? Probably Foxconn’s doing — they handle the Switch 2, right? Anyway, they chop these suckers up later on.
Here’s the kicker, though. These boards? They’re a dead ringer for what you get in the store-bought version. Same markers and all. Maybe it’s some verification voodoo they do. Sure, there’s a bit of shielding missing — that shiny metal stuff — but eh, it’s basically the real deal minus a few bells and whistles.
Side note: went snooping around Nintendo Japan for repair costs. Turns out, fixing or swapping one of these bad boys sets you back $175. So, this back-alley option on Goofish is looking a bit friendlier on the wallet if you have a third-party fixer-upper. Mystery is, does Nintendo play tag with component IDs? Like, syncing every piece to its board? That could throw a wrench in the works for DIY repairs.
And speaking of dreams — anyone out there think about building a Switch 2 from scratch with this motherboard? Yeah, could be one heck of a Frankenstein project. Right now, parts are as rare as a unicorn, seeing as the Switch 2 just came out. This board packs Nvidia’s Tegra T239 — 8x Arm Cortex-A78C cores, for those tech-heads out there, and some snazzy GPU from the Ampere family with 1,536 CUDA cores, hanging around the GB10 die. Manufacturing it doesn’t sound super pricey since it’s all about Samsung’s not-so-fresh 8nm and 10nm tech, plus Arm and Nvidia stuff from, like, 2020.
Random tidbit: someone went on a smashing spree with pliers trying to take down the Switch 2. Amazingly, it stood up pretty well, but the screen? Yeah, took a hit when folks at GameStop went rogue and stapled receipts to the box. iFixit wasn’t feeling charitable either, dropping the repairability score. The OG Switch went from an 8/10 smiley to a 4/10 frown, and its heir? A miserable 3/10. Oof. But really, it’s only gonna hurt when warranties run out or if Nintendo throws up a “Nope” sign at fixing stuff.
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