Can I replace the NRF52840 in a Preview DK for a Rev 1 IC?

[riataman]

Hello!

I have 3 NRF52840 Preview DK's with Q1AAAA revision ICs. I have been putting those to good use, but I want to test some stuff with SPIM at 32Mhz, which I understand doesn't work in the engineering version of the chip that I have.

My question is, if I replace the Q1AAAA IC in the PDK for a rev 1 IC (don't worry I have the soldering skills) will everything still work fine?

My alternative is to buy new DKs but these seem good to throw away!

[Simonr]

Hi

I'd highly recommend buying a new DK, as there are more differences between the PDK and the official release DK than just the nRF52840 revision. If you check out the hardware files for the two DKs (downloadable here), you can see that there are various changes to component values in the reference design for both the nRF chip and the debugger chip. Replacing the nRF52840 chip will not make the PDK a fully-fledged Development Kit, and we can't guarantee that the newer nRF52840 chip will work on this board, as the ref. design is different.

Best regards,

Simon