Last night I finished my testing and evaluation of both Borti’s N64 3.3v Voltage Regulator add on PCB and my own modified N64RGBv1 PCB with the voltage regulator built right in. The results of both tests were fantastic.

If you don’t know, the N64 has a very dirty 3.3v power rail which high frequency noise from the audio and controller systems of the N64 leak into. This is a problem for the RGB mods based on Tim Worthington’s original R2R video DAC, which expose the sensitive analog video signals directly to the digital noise on the 3.3v rail. This produces visible noise patterns on screen on any bright colors. This is especially noticeable when connecting your N64 to an analog to digital converter such as the OSSC.

The 3.3v regulator board designed by Borti4938 was created specifically to address this problem by producing clean 3.3v power for the mod board and bypassing the internal 3.3v rail of the N64. I’ve put together a small run of these boards for testing and long story short, they work incredibly well. So well in fact that I also went to task modifying the N64RGBv1 design in order to integrate the 3.3v regulator directly onboard, eliminating the need for the extra PCB.

This integrated regulator appears to perform just as well as the separate power regulator board, so I have officially decided to start offering both designs in my shop. If you already have an RGB modded N64 and you want to upgrade the power regulator, you can purchase the 3.3v regulator board. If you are doing a new installation then I would recommend getting the N64RGBv1 with integrated 3.3v regulator.

Here is a live stream of me discussing and installing my integrated 3.3v regulator version of the N64RGBv1 board.