Anyone do any mods that involve soldering?

[Ninja Please!]

Hey mates,
I recently got into soldering when my psp power switch fuse went out on me. Well got it working and just got to thinking. Are there any mods that involve soldering? Or has anyone ever broke off a capacitor etc and instead of ditching the board just solder a new capacitor on? I know if I'm ever faced with that problem (which I have bent and came close to breaking a capacitor) I will at least try to solder a new one back on now.

 

[Aod]

not by preference, but i'd certainly try if it was something hard to replace.

that said, i have a plan to do a mod to my main monitor to allow me to adjust the backlight brightness which will involve soldering a simple circuit/device up and then solder it to my monitor's PSU.

 

[Dammiz]

I just recently had to do this to a cheap graphics card I bought off the bay (Asus X1650PRO) since it wastn't worthed to send it back and have it replaced (shipping cost more than the actual Card ) I decided to repair it myself.

It had one of the solid state caps broken off so I decided to solder on a new cap (same voltage rating but higher capacitance) It's working just the same as if it were new till my new GTS 250 arrives later next week

BTW also had a XFI Xtreme Music which is highly moddable and had changed one of it's caps to a higher quality one.. on the first try it worked but then I got a bit too excited about it and decided to go for a bigger cap and ended up for some reason with a dead sound card :/ at least it was new and still under warranty hehe

Here is a link to a guide on how it's done

http://www.overclock.net/sound-cards-computer-audio/185072-incredible-x-fi-mod-will-void.html

Btw sry but i'm still new to these forums... Am I allowed to give links to external sites as long as they are not considered competition? (the site I linked to does not sell stuff and has no prices so I guess it's ok? ) if not pls tell me and ill edit this part out thx

 

[Ninja Please!]

Your link should be fine. But that's awesome that you fixed your card. Let me ask, did it work without the capacitor? I have heard of mobos getting them broke off and still working. Anyway my buddy is comming over this week and we are going hog wild with my soldering iron.

 

[PhillyDee]

Yup, ive built a whole machine around it (Not a PC, but a reprap machine). Soldered SMT/SMD components by the handful. Im now damned good at it

 

[Dammiz]

Actually I never tried it without the cap.. I didn't want to risk blowing a monitor or Graphics card you should be carefull of running something with capacitors blown/missing since the function of a capacitor is to smoothe and regulate a voltage line... without it the card may still work but instead of being fed a steady supply of clean DC you will end up with a badly fluctuating voltage line resulting in the long term a failure in your hardware... so always tc when messing around with caps... always replace with similar ones or at least better rated caps if you want to see some slight improvment in perfomance.. this is mostly done on Sound cards for better quality sound or in old hardware with old blown up caps trhat need replacing due to instability issues.. otherwise just dont do it cos most likley you will end up with a non functioning piece of hardware..

Another thing worth noting is that most PCB's today are multilayer pcb's therfore soldering should be done with great caution since you may easily burn tracks which you cant even see since they are passing through the middle of the board and covered up by outer layers...

In a short summary TC and only do this if really necessary or on old hardware you would not miss if it ends up non functioning...