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Nintendo Switch 2 gets disassembled — Nvidia chip gets its close-up

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That's a lot of shielding.

Nintendo Switch 2 playing Mario Kart World
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The Nintendo Switch 2 is only just launching, and someone has already torn it down. YouTube channel ProModding has opened up the new handheld console, showcasing the new Nvidia chip, as well as taking a microscope to examine all the circuits.

Nintendo Switch 2 Disassembly and review under the microscope - YouTube Nintendo Switch 2 Disassembly and review under the microscope - YouTube
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The teardown starts with screws on the bottom of the system and behind the kickstand. It ends up toher screws are on the colored covers on each side of the system, where you attach the Joy-Con controllers. With screws and clips out of the way, the back cover comes right off.

There is a lot of metal shielding, but ProModding dispatched that with a few screws after removing the antennae.

After removing the cooler and disconnecting the battery, the motherboard came out. After prying off more shielding and removing the thermal paste, the new Nvidia chip was unveiled. The GMLX30-A1 name on the chip is similar to leaks posted back in 2024.

Image 1 of 2
Pictures of the Nvidia chip in the Nintendo Switch 2.
(Image credit: ProModder/YouTube)

If you want to see every IC on the board, you're in luck. ProModder goes over the whole board with a microscope.

With the exception of the screws on the sides of the device, this doesn't seem like a very arduous teardown. That being said, you probably shouldn't open your own Switch 2, as you may void your warranty or damage your console.

Recently, Nintendo of America updated its End User License Agreement to note that you can't "bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services, including through the use of any hardware," and that if you do, Nintendo may "render... the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part." So if you open it to make a change, you may be risking the possibility of your system working at all.

Nintendo will likely have a more specific repair manual for its technicians. But until the launch tomorrow, June 5, we can watch modders on YouTube do their thing.

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Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Notton
    ...may void your warranty...
    You'll have to look up your local laws, but in the US, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 allows the user to open up the device and attempt reasonable repairs themselves and the device will still be covered under warranty. The onus is on the manufacturer to prove that you caused the damage.
    AFAIK, Canada has a similar law. IDK about other countries.
    Reply
  • John Nemesh
    Notton said:
    You'll have to look up your local laws, but in the US, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 allows the user to open up the device and attempt reasonable repairs themselves and the device will still be covered under warranty. The onus is on the manufacturer to prove that you caused the damage.
    AFAIK, Canada has a similar law. IDK about other countries.
    I was JUST gonna say...lets see how this plays out in the courts after Nintendo oversteps it's legal limitations...and you KNOW they will!
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Nintendo may "render... the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.

    it'll be same way they deal with ds, 3ds, switch...
    they'll disable online functions becasue that is ALL they can do.
    Consumer rights in most of world would have a field day if they actually tried to make your switch 2 unusable at all...That exact reason is WHY they didn't brick your ds/3ds/switch 1 & just banned it from nintendo servers...because again that is ALL they can do in msot of world.
    Reply
  • S58_is_the_goat
    Notton said:
    You'll have to look up your local laws, but in the US, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 allows the user to open up the device and attempt reasonable repairs themselves and the device will still be covered under warranty. The onus is on the manufacturer to prove that you caused the damage.
    AFAIK, Canada has a similar law. IDK about other countries.
    Problem with this law is that you need to sue them first, how many people will do that? Zero.
    Reply
  • Air2004
    S58_is_the_goat said:
    Problem with this law is that you need to sue them first, how many people will do that? Zero.
    If you haveva valid claim, any class action law firm will take the case on a contingency.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    S58_is_the_goat said:
    Problem with this law is that you need to sue them first, how many people will do that? Zero.
    thats why class actions exist.
    law groups sue them for the bunch of little people who normally couldnt.
    Reply
  • John Nemesh
    hotaru251 said:
    thats why class actions exist.
    law groups sue them for the bunch of little people who normally couldnt.
    Problem is, unless you send them a written letter within 30 days of purchase, you CANT sue them in a class action lawsuit! Read their horrible EULA:

    https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/68586/~/nintendo-switch%26nbsp%3B2%3A-user-agreement
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    Notton said:
    You'll have to look up your local laws, but in the US, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 allows the user to open up the device and attempt reasonable repairs themselves and the device will still be covered under warranty. The onus is on the manufacturer to prove that you caused the damage.
    AFAIK, Canada has a similar law. IDK about other countries.
    Contract clauses like that would be null and void in Germany and likely most of the EU, but by the time you won the court case, that switch has long since been thermally recycled.

    Unfortunately the best law is of little use, when big money can slow things down to the point where it no longer matters.
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    What I found most intersting is just how little CPU performance mattered for game play in his review.

    It reminds me of some experimentation I did with a 22-core Broadwell Xeon a few months ago, using a mix of GPUs including some more modern ones with games that were evidently designed to scale with cores now.

    Some are still rather hopeless, Microsoft's flight simulator 2020 and 2024 among them, which simply require one really fast core to perform on my 4k screens.

    But other did really well at 4k, spreading the game load rather evenly across the 22 cores and running really well at rather low overall load below 20%: perhaps the 55MB 3rd level cache in that CPU don't hurt either.

    It shows that yes, it might take a 9800X3D for top scores on synthetic benchmarks, but way slower CPUs aren't doing terribly, when the GPU is beefy enough.

    I'm not touching my RTX 4090 unless I have to, but only the B580 wasn't doing so great, because BAR resize isn't supported by the Xeon's BIOS.

    RTX 3070, GTX 980ti/1080ti and RTX 2080ti weren't doing half bad on all Tomb Raiders, Far Crys, Doom, Thief, even Hogward's Legacy was ok, I believe. And Cyberpunk will adjust to practically everything, somehow.

    For a while there was a lot of X99 chipset mainboards in China (still sold on Aliexpress) which evidently were recycled C612 from server mainboards and run with 6-18/22 core Xeons Haswell or Broadwell and quad channel DDR4-2400 or also overclocked. Those make for quite reasonable gaming rigs, when your game has been adapted to multi-core consoles, because those sport CPUs that are quite a bit weaker.

    It's hard to argue for such a rig these days, because fast and more modern 6 and 8 cores will also do. But if you happen to get one for dirt cheap or free, you may want to give it a spin: you may be surprised, quad channel DRAM and plenty of I/O are a nice bonus.
    Reply