"Unlocking" the GTX 670...

[Mawson]

HI everyone! I'm a bit of a novice in this end of things, but my Google-Fu and desire to learn are equally strong 
 
I am planing a couple of over the top mITX builds, and have been putting a good little bit of though into how it might be possible to have a fully unlocked GK104 chip on a reference 670 PCB, or, better yet, Asus' new DC Mini board, with it's upgraded power delivery. Why? because having a dead core in a main component of a build that will be packed to be gills just bothers me. Its all about overkill. 

The big question is how that 8th core is disabled? Is it done on the PCB, or the chip itself? If it is on the board great, but even if that is the solution that still leaves the unknown of whether the core is disabled for a reason, and how to enable it in the first place! If it's on the chip, or we can't determine then we go to plan B...

My plan B would be to have someone with experience remove the chip from a 670 and a 680 and swap them for science. The results of that would tell us a lot, and possibly show what needed to happen to do this without chip swapping. Another thing to do would be to compare reference 680's to 670's that use 680 boards to see how they were populated differently.

Now assuming the worst, that the core is locked on the chip and we can't do anything about it then swapping chips with a DC mini and a high binned card like the lightning would be the ideal solution, provided that swapping chips can be made to work.

What are your thoughts?