Vince's Repair Thread - (Console Repairs & Mods)

tim.stocks said:
Hi @Vince Its just as i said in my 1st post , cards been running ok accept for a hot spot in 4K wanted to rule out why we are getting the hot spot so decided to go back to air and when i took the water block of and fitted the stock fans etc the card wont display out of any port, the fans have lights and they come on so theres power there you can feel the card getting warm at the opposite end to the outputs, tried it on another psu new leads and in other pc still the same, i can send pics of card if needed but its like new.
Hope this helps a bit mate and let me no what you want to try next plz Vince..

Take care and thanks for the reply..

Cheers Tim
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Does the machine actually still boot or does it show vga errors on boot?
 
tim.stocks said:
wont even show its booted no screen at all. put an old card in the slot pc booted to desktop fine , its like the output to the monitor is switched of Vince.
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Ok - I mean the best thing I can offer is to take a look. Some cards are pretty easy to work out whats going on, others a nightmare. So far with GPU's it's basically a 50/50 if I can repair them. Say its a failed mosfet on vcore, generally that can be fixed relatively easily, failed mosfet on vmem from experience can end up taking out memory modules or the memory controller on die. Really I would need it here to poke with a multimeter and test all the power rails to see what is going on.
 
Vince said:
Ok - I mean the best thing I can offer is to take a look. Some cards are pretty easy to work out whats going on, others a nightmare. So far with GPU's it's basically a 50/50 if I can repair them. Say its a failed mosfet on vcore, generally that can be fixed relatively easily, failed mosfet on vmem from experience can end up taking out memory modules or the memory controller on die. Really I would need it here to poke with a multimeter and test all the power rails to see what is going on.
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nps Vince tell me where to send etc and i will get it up to you. and again thanks for your help mate much appreciated..
 
So not @randal switch but a blue screen stubborn switch that I had laying around...

APU off:


Ohhh nooooo! Missing pad! I will need to fix this....


And Another, its a ground pad so can leave it, phew.


This is how we will fix this one :)


With shroud removed and cleaned up.... will report back!


All the other pads under there are perfectly fine now so we shall repair that bottom pad with a new one, reball the APU and pray to the switch gods that its all good!
 
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I'm still being really slow and only managed an hour or so over the weekend but....



Look how small these things are! The pads are 0.2mm across, impossible without a scope for sure.



Up until now I've reballed by hand which takes hours so this should speed things up massively. Just thought I'd do a spare before attacking somebody else's.
 
Vince said:
I'm still being really slow and only managed an hour or so over the weekend but....



Look how small these things are! The pads are 0.2mm across, impossible without a scope for sure.



Up until now I've reballed by hand which takes hours so this should speed things up massively. Just thought I'd do a spare before attacking som
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Its all good Vince im just happy that you will look at my sons card when you can.
 
Vince said:
So not @randal switch but a blue screen stubborn switch that I had laying around...

<snip>

All the other pads under there are perfectly fine now so we shall repair that bottom pad with a new one, reball the APU and pray to the switch gods that its all good!
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Nice! Impressive work, how much of a ball ache is it removing the APU? Does it need a PCB heater as well as hot air?

Also, those trace repairs... hot damn.
 
randal said:
Nice! Impressive work, how much of a ball ache is it removing the APU? Does it need a PCB heater as well as hot air?

Also, those trace repairs... hot damn.
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So to remove the apu first you have to remove the metal surround that protects the apu and memory, I then heat the board up for a few mins under hot air and let it stabilise for a minute or so, I then I heat it a bit more to around 200c across the whole board. After that I throw down a ton of flux and start hitting the apu at 430c for a minute or two while gently tapping the apu, when its ready I just slide the apu off of the board while attempting to also lift it. It's a ball ache :D the trace repairs to the apu are also a nightmare as its properly tiny but the replacement pads i have are of various sizes so i just try a few up until we have one that fits in the hole then its the painstaking task of holding it all still while attempting to solder something properly tiny to an equally tiny trace. :D
 
Vince said:
So to remove the apu first you have to remove the metal surround that protects the apu and memory, I then heat the board up for a few mins under hot air and let it stabilise for a minute or so, I then I heat it a bit more to around 200c across the whole board. After that I throw down a ton of flux and start hitting the apu at 430c for a minute or two while gently tapping the apu, when its ready I just slide the apu off of the board while attempting to also lift it. It's a ball ache :D the trace repairs to the apu are also a nightmare as its properly tiny but the replacement pads i have are of various sizes so i just try a few up until we have one that fits in the hole then its the painstaking task of holding it all still while attempting to solder something properly tiny to an equally tiny trace. :D
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This is really interesting. How do the new replacement pads 'stick' to the required location when you're reballing?
 
drakulton said:
This is really interesting. How do the new replacement pads 'stick' to the required location when you're reballing?
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surface tension plus the solder mask should keep the pad in place while I flow the reballed apu back onto it., once ive reballed the apu ill do the same in reverse while making sure that new pad has a tiny bit of solder on it.
 
Also I forgot to show you some of the franken interposer before I tied it back to the board:





Ive been absolutely rammed with work so will do my very best to do a ton of updates here over the next little while :) Am aiming to give this back/test with @randal tomorrow now... (dude sorry for the extra day delay!)
 
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The tininess of those wires and their proximity to one and another hurts my brain lol. Have replied to your message btw, I'm busy too with the house move but hopefully will have some time over the weekend!

Thanks again!
 
For the thread... This is Randals sons switch that it blue screening - I do believe it is likely unpatched as I have injected a payload to try and work out what is wrong with it! This is the result:



Now all I need to do is work out if this is memory related or SoC related... Place your bets people!
 
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