[BPI-R4] Successfully upgraded 8GB RAM on BPI-R4

第一步 先换2颗4g颗粒

第二步

去掉一颗电阻 另两个换240R

第三步

AVAIL_DRAM_SIZE := 1024 2048 添加4096 编译atf

第四步

刷写bl2

最后开机

升级成功

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Please use English! :see_no_evil:

Would that pave the way to an 8GB option? I’m fairly sure not everybody is confident in desoldering and soldering back the ram :slight_smile: But it is great that the software would support it with such a small change.

He said need to modify the resistances

Let me translate the content for him.

Step 1: Replace the two 2G memory above BPI-R4 into two 4G memory.(H5ANBG6NAM RXNC)

Step 2: Remove the RDA resistor, and then replace the RDB and RDC resistance to 240R.

微信图片_20240426164415 微信图片_20240426164419 微信图片_20240426164423

Step 3:As shown in the figure, the 20th line “Avail_dram_size: = 1024 2048” add 4096. Then compile ATF.

Step 4: Flash BL2 to BPI-R4.

Finally power on

Upgrade successful

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See delight every few days. Please keep them coming. It’s so much fun.

I do have a question to people who had done this MOD already.

Did you benchmark the latency & throughput before and after? Saw any significant degrade in both aspects after upgrade?

I would like to know everthing about RAM upgrade for R4 and R3: 4GB & 8GB possible?

Where is this overview from?

This is nice info, i’m curious what @simon can tell us about this idea.

I read the datasheet of MT7986, it marked MT7986 support max RAM is 2GB , so I think R3 cannot upgrade to 4GB or 8GB RAM.

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慕名而来,刘姐nice!!! 刘姐牛逼!!! :laughing: :laughing: :laughing:

请用英文写!

?你的评论是什么意思 ?

谢谢你!

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He said that he came here because of Liu jie’s reputation. Liu jie is nice! Liu jie is awesome!

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Yeah, I would love to order an 8GB official version without having to solder it myself. More memory for (future) containers, without the need to buy one of those 8/16/32GB Rockchip SBCs like the Banana Pi M7 (or Orange Pi 5 or NanoPC T6 … or others).

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Where is the description of the process, what memory chips are used? Looks like a fake.

This is physically possible!

Yes, the questions are will it work and is it needed?

What are the usecases?

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So, what is next? I can also solder BGAs and more, but I don’t see a photo of the board and memory chips, and believe me, I can immediately distinguish the factory soldering. Where are the names of the memory chips? Maybe a link to an article that explains how this is done? Also no? If not, then what is written here is worth absolutely nothing.

There is a Step by Step discription:

https://forum.banana-pi.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/eb9ed0/48.png

He has pictures from schematic draws, and from his open wrt system. Looks like solid work for me!

The current RAM chips on the R4 are from Samsung. So, best idea would be, to take Samsung chips again!

As you can see, i also get no answers from that guy:

Looks for me, that he only writes in chinese. If you have questions ask him personally! It would be glad to hear what he is saying :slightly_smiling_face:.

It’s certainly doable but not without pitfalls and excellent soldering skills.

Do you need 8GiB RAM? Depends. If you plan to run lots of memory hungry applications, perhaps it helps. Otherwise, creating a swap file can mostly solve whatever need of the edge cases.

It’s fun though, especially for the younger generations who haven’t gone through the explosive growth of PCs in the 80s & 90s. SBCs are re-living that history for them. And it’s fun.

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The MT7988A datasheet says it can have up to 8GB RAM so it seems plausible. Replacing RAM chips is not difficult with the right tools and experience. But, my BPI-R4 has 4G RAM Chips, and config limits it to 3G usable RAM, so I don’t exactly know how one would utilize the 8GB RAM chips if they were there.

A few bits missing in the MOD. Regarding the 4GiB limit, I believe it is on devs TODO list for a proper fix.