Thursday, September 22, 2011

Nvidia G84/G86 = Dead Laptops ( how to revive dead laptops)

Greetings and welcome back, today we venture into the world of reviving dead laptops due to the failure that was the G84 and G86 Chipset from nvidia, check it out here, you might be surprised on how many models from hp/compaq and many other companies are affected.

HOW WE GOT HERE
To recap a little, we saw last time, how Nvidia ventured forth into an unknown territory by utilizing a new and untested proccesing scheme that involved materials and bindings that technically operated at a given TDP, but ultimately  after the disaster and trough testing was discovered that function with a higher TDP, coupled with the unsufficient cooling solution provided by HP/Compaq and you have the recipe for disaster: A  Chipset/Video part  that heats up beyond its structural treshold and breaks down causing death upon its wake.



THERE IS STILL HOPE
The problem root comes from the GPU/CHIPSET becoming too hot suddenly and then cooling down whenever the user shuts off the computer, these "cycles"  start to crack warp and bend the proccessor, which makes things worse, because then the soldering spots under the chipset start to distend and break apart and the outcome is that either the chipset becomes too warped inside that the electrical lines short circuit and kill / fry the part with no conceivable repair(without replacing said chipset with special tools /motherboard) or if you are lucky, the chipset bent enough to loose contact to the motherboard, in this case you can try to resolder it.


REFLOW and RE-BALLING ( the one you can do and the one that only specialists can do )
Since you have no way of telling if your chipset is Fried or just desoldered, you will have to try at least to reflow the part and see if you can stretch the life of your laptop for a few more months.. there is actually a difference betwen reflow and reballing...

REFLOW: A method in which you heat and keep a steady temperature over the chipset around 210 ºc for over 3-6 minutes in order to soften the part and let it bend back to its original form, also the welding material underneath becomes liquid and resets once more creating a good contact and fusion betwen the chipset and the motherboard,repairing the broken faulty connections (this wont fix a fried chipset)

Reflow chart, you can see the heat up take as low as 90 seconds to get to 140ºC 
and toping at 220ºc At around 3 and a half minutes in!(210 seconds) dont over do it!


REBALLING: In this method, you basically heat up the part to unwarp the chipset  and at the same time take it off the motherboard, cleaning  off any existing weld material  from both parts and placing NEW solder balls, so that you can place the REBALLED chipset on the mother board and proceed to REFLOW it  and solder it down (this method will solve the problem of shorted solder beneath the chipset, but requires extended experience , also it  requires special metal grids and compounds  not easily avalable to many, i myself have not performed a reballing yet due to this)

 look at all that expensive equipment!


WHAT YOU NEED
Here are some of the tools you need to try at least reflowing your dead laptop :D
Heat gun, these puppies can heat stuff from 100ºC to 500ºC real fast!
 Infrared thermometer: pick one that goes from 100ºc~ to 300ºc~


YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE
So lets start by finding a nice clean surface and proceed to use your screw driver and pull apart your laptop, find all the screws in the back part of it and try to set them down on your workplace in order , so you have a general idea of where they go, you can even divide screws into smaller groups!


 find those sweet holes and pull out every screw you see :D
taking off the covers and the screws under the battery, they are hiding!
you can pull the dvd drive off and often you will find screws there, get them off too!
most laptops have a face plate on the front, try to stick it off from the side, remeber to check for screws on the backside of the laptop (behind it as it stands upright like in the picture)
Most times after removing the face plate, you can pull the keyboard out, some laptops have screws to hold the keyboard in place, other use small plastic latches...
see how i pile up all the stuff neatly :D.. well i know where each one goes D:
disconnect and unscrew the monitor take it apart and continue ripping things appart
disconnect cables, keep pulling screws off and try to get as deep as to extract the
motherboard, slow and steady :D dont break anything, take off ALL PLASTICS and STICKERS as they will shrink and MOVE transistors and capacitors when things heat up so REMOVE THEM
we have to foil the motherboard and leave the chipset exposed be sure to put a lot of foil around the fan connector, just slap it up and cram as much aluminum paper as you can XD
the tools of the trade and my nice workspace, the tiled floor works well.. and be sure to do it in aplace with no air current, cause it can mess up your work!
slowly heat up the gun and heat up the chipset in circular motion, remeber  you have to hit 220ºc at around 4 minutes.. so try to find a 4 minute song and build a heat pattern with it.. check the table for timing!
check often with the thermometer, you dont want to go avobe 220ºc or else the board and gpu will burn
you gotta get the timing right, lower the heat gun temps or move it away from the gpu find the sweet spot
DONT TOUCH OR MOVE THE MOTHERBOARD

a cool draft of air will destroy your hard work, you gotta let it cool down on its own for around 20 minutes, a big cover like this works wonders, you can cover it up with a garbage can lid .
 but whatver you do DONT MOVE IT
her we go after a good cook out, its time to check that everything is in place, remove all aluminum paper
place a dab of heat transfer silicon or artic silver 5you cna even use a small copper piece to help the  heat transfer (check the video guide below)
place all stickers/stamps back, memory and heatsink, plug it all back together and cross your fingers, you might have given your laptop a few more months/year of life.

IT IS DEFECTIVE ANYWAYS
Something that many people fail to tell you, is that the gpu is defective .. so no matter how many times you revive it, it is gona die eventually.. so again try to keep it as cool as possible!! it might last you another year or two with proper cooling care thank you for reading! :D



If you want to check out a longer in depth guide on de- asembling and reflowing check out this video, runs for 18 minutes but explains step by step, he even places a copper plate to decrease temperature and uses a pen blowtorch.. you can see he has done this many times! strangely i cant seem to be able to post the video here, so HERE IS THE LINK  " VIDEO HERE"



23 comments:

  1. Thanks for the info, but I doubt I would need to undergo this procedure for my desktop.

    ReplyDelete
  2. omg this is pretty cool! i wouldn't dare do it to my laptop though :s

    ReplyDelete
  3. Awesome! It's really great! great info =D

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very useful information!!

    You have a nice blog. :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great blog man. +Follow

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow, Nvidia has really been dropping the ball lately.

    ReplyDelete
  7. that's great =D I've done kind of the same with a defective GPU though... Putting it in the oven for a short while...
    Good tutorial!

    ReplyDelete
  8. That's really helpful - on one hand I hope I'll never have to put that knowledge to use, on the other - I'm glad I found this info on your site. I don't remember any of my friends having problems with these chipsets, but yeah - NVIDIA is quite known for such problems like this, while their GPU products are somewhat less 'malfunctional' then competitors'.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Nice blog bro... Far to high tech for me tho aha

    ReplyDelete
  10. Awesome! If it means I can save some money on repairing or even buying a new one, although looking a bit dangerous I would risk it! Its already dead so why not!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Nice fix! Gotta try this out on my old Laptop which currently doesnt work, cos i think thats the problem!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm pretty much of a newbie when it comes to hardware issues, any hardware issues. Damnit, I can't even replace a DVD-ROM.

    Even though you laid it all out nice, slow and simple, I'm still hesitant, because I know it's me, and I'm prone to messing up when poking around computers.

    Anyway, nice blog. +followed anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  13. The cousin of mine has a "broken" laptop with G84. Thanks for the great guide:)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Looks like alot of work, but wish I had a dead laptop to try this on, I like messing with stuff like this :p

    ReplyDelete
  15. this is all very...complicated to me o_o

    ReplyDelete
  16. This is a great tutorial for those who are in the situation. Nice blog :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. This is very useful. That's why I love your blog. :) Try to uptade it more often!

    ReplyDelete
  18. thanks for the info, but don't have the tools to do this...

    ReplyDelete
  19. Thank you for this post, my laptop is saved :)

    ReplyDelete
  20. Looking for D-link Support call on 1800987893 , visit on:
    d link email address
    dlink-router

    ReplyDelete