Do you not own a phone or camera?
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ripped capacitors off GPU
- Thread starter UkayJ
- Start date
Do you not own a phone or camera?
Needed to take heatsink off again to measure capcaitors, one of which was about to drop off so I took the opportunity to get a picture, this is the best I could get with a smart phone.
Can you tell what condition the solder pads are in? Are they OK to be soldered to as is?
oops sorry for huge photo.
Can you tell what condition the solder pads are in? Are they OK to be soldered to as is?
oops sorry for huge photo.
'cause I like to do things myself.
Do you reckon I'll need new capacitors? Are they likely damaged inside from been knocked off the board?
I think I'm going to order a soldering iron kit, won't bother with that expensive cold solder or doing solder pads.
I'll just hope that resoldering capacitors (new or old) will fix it and lower my temps back down.
Do you reckon I'll need new capacitors? Are they likely damaged inside from been knocked off the board?
I think I'm going to order a soldering iron kit, won't bother with that expensive cold solder or doing solder pads.
I'll just hope that resoldering capacitors (new or old) will fix it and lower my temps back down.
They should still work but you're best off getting new capacitors especially if the legs are broken, they're cheap enough and if you can get a smaller physical size it'll be easier to solder. I don't know about temps it depends if it's related to those capacitors, imo it's got to be either that or TIM related.
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@alex2zulu - Someone has stolen your crown!
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If there's glue (super or otherwise) on the solder pads, then you'll need to clean that off before soldering.
as for the caps suddenly helping with the card's temp, I can't imagine that. I think most caps are for signal filtering, not temperature management... Saying this, a flux-capacitor might help you, as long as you can OC your PSU to produce 1.21 gigawatts.
as for the caps suddenly helping with the card's temp, I can't imagine that. I think most caps are for signal filtering, not temperature management... Saying this, a flux-capacitor might help you, as long as you can OC your PSU to produce 1.21 gigawatts.
These are likely there to deal with a mixture of smoothing and spikes in power demands. Without them it is possible the GPU will unexpectedly reset/power off under certain demands.
Can you measure the capacitance of the cap with a multimeter to see if it's giving the right reading? If the capacitor that you knocked off is 'brick' shaped then it would be worth inspecting the ends as they are now pre-tinned. You might want to get some solder-wick and some flux to remove the existing solder on the pads on the GPU board. This will clean up the pads ready to accept the cap. Place the cap onto the board so that it bridges the two pads. apply a little flux to the ends of the cap where they meet the pads. Load up the iron with solder, not too much, you can always add more later to tidy it up. Maintain the cap in the correct place with fine tweezers .Bring the tip of the iron to the corner of the 'L' shape formed buy the cap on the pad and let the solder wick onto the cap and pad to form concave fillet, (see fig 5. http://poeth.com/smtmfg.htm ) Now solder the other end of the cap.
I ordered a £15 soldering kit off Amazon but it's been a few weeks since I was looking at them so forgot to get the kit with a multimeter. Went ahead with soldering the original capacitors I tore off.
First I scraped the solder pads to remove any glue etc.
you may struggle to see solder joints as phone camera is rubbish but you can tell the capacitors are wonky so you know I did it
right hand side ones in the below photo
unfortunately this hasn't helped temperatures at all so I've ordered some more capacitors, rated same voltage and ohms but a tiny bit smaller so might be easier to work with as my skills are very limited, it took me about 2 hours to solder those 4 on. The first half of that time I achieved nothing, it was very awkward.
First I scraped the solder pads to remove any glue etc.
you may struggle to see solder joints as phone camera is rubbish but you can tell the capacitors are wonky so you know I did it
right hand side ones in the below photo
unfortunately this hasn't helped temperatures at all so I've ordered some more capacitors, rated same voltage and ohms but a tiny bit smaller so might be easier to work with as my skills are very limited, it took me about 2 hours to solder those 4 on. The first half of that time I achieved nothing, it was very awkward.
Are those the original capacitors? looking at the pads it looked like the legs had got ripped off so no wonder it was so hard. Also you need to use flux to get the solder to flow, the solder shouldn't be blobby (too much) and it shouldn't stick to your iron when you're pulling away creating those spikes (that's because you've burnt off all the flux). I'd imagine the glue residue might be creating problems though.
To create the best solder joint you need to be touching both the pad and the capacitor leg to heat them up and then touch the pad or leg with your solder, don't touch the iron with your solder. If you don't heat both surfaces (leg & pad) you'll get what's known as a cold solder joint. For SMD to stop the part from moving I think people generally put solder on the pad first (again heat up the pad and touch the pad not the iron with the solder) then put the capacitor in place and put heat into the solder until it melts then the leg/pad. You might need extra flux if you heat the solder for too long and it stops flowing.
To create the best solder joint you need to be touching both the pad and the capacitor leg to heat them up and then touch the pad or leg with your solder, don't touch the iron with your solder. If you don't heat both surfaces (leg & pad) you'll get what's known as a cold solder joint. For SMD to stop the part from moving I think people generally put solder on the pad first (again heat up the pad and touch the pad not the iron with the solder) then put the capacitor in place and put heat into the solder until it melts then the leg/pad. You might need extra flux if you heat the solder for too long and it stops flowing.
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Great explanation thank you, that'll help a lot. The legs extended only half a millemeter beyond the plastic base under the capacitor, I don't know know if that means they snapped off a little when I knocked them off or not but it was difficult.
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I'd also recommend some traditional leaded solder if you are less practised at soldering. It tends to be easier to work with IMHO
GPU boards do soak a lot of heat and ideally those caps need doing with a heatgun rather than an iron being surface mounted as the legs stick under the cap and it’s hard to transfer that heat through. And as you have found out they don’t stick out very much so it is hard with an iron.
Best bet is to preheat the board or at least the area even with a hair drier, makes a big difference. Clean away old solder and legs with a solder wick and flux. Then solder back on with decent leaded solder and plenty of liquid flux as leaded is ****.
Looking at those caps I can’t see how they would make the core run hotter than usual being rated identically anyway.
Best bet is to preheat the board or at least the area even with a hair drier, makes a big difference. Clean away old solder and legs with a solder wick and flux. Then solder back on with decent leaded solder and plenty of liquid flux as leaded is ****.
Looking at those caps I can’t see how they would make the core run hotter than usual being rated identically anyway.
Well I managed to solder the new capacitors on, forgot to take a picture though! as I had just spent a while putting my new motherboard, CPU and RAM in case then thought while I'm at it I should fix the GPU before it all goes back together. So that's what I did; Then to realise I had ran out of thermal compound! haha. £16 next day (Saturday) delivery for a £6.50 syringe of compound, it was worth it though.
I'm certain the new capacitors have worked, to a degree. I can't bump up the power limit in the GPU settings anymore (it was on +50%) but I think I'm getting far superior performance anyway thanks to the new DDR4-Ryzen 5 3600 set up.
While it was broke : as soon as I opened a game the temps shot up past 80*C (I couldn't even get past the games menu) but now they're around 70*C for several gaming sessions.
Am I right in thinking that a multimeter placed either side of the capacitors I've soldered - while still on the board, will tell me if the capacitor is connected to the circuit?
I'm wondering if I'm unable to increase the power limit because one or two capacitors don't have a connection/are soldered badly.
I'm certain the new capacitors have worked, to a degree. I can't bump up the power limit in the GPU settings anymore (it was on +50%) but I think I'm getting far superior performance anyway thanks to the new DDR4-Ryzen 5 3600 set up.
While it was broke : as soon as I opened a game the temps shot up past 80*C (I couldn't even get past the games menu) but now they're around 70*C for several gaming sessions.
Am I right in thinking that a multimeter placed either side of the capacitors I've soldered - while still on the board, will tell me if the capacitor is connected to the circuit?
I'm wondering if I'm unable to increase the power limit because one or two capacitors don't have a connection/are soldered badly.
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Fair play for getting that working again 
Yes you just go from ground to the positive side of the capacitor. It should read core voltage in the case of the gpu while it’s powered across each capacitor/phase.
I’d say it’s possibly an issue with drivers or software. If one of the phases was borked or a poor connection you should be able to select +50% regardless but it wouldn’t do anything.
I’d say it’s possibly an issue with drivers or software. If one of the phases was borked or a poor connection you should be able to select +50% regardless but it wouldn’t do anything.