Fairly certain this is my card, you sir are a wizard. But really this took a lot of work and troubleshooting I was not expecting an hour long video, thank you for saving my card!
boards are usually laid in sections for each circuit. It's rare to see a circuit run all over the board, not impossible but it's really inefficient and unlikely.
@@MegaFUZZY2010 Yeah I don't think getting your product banned from sale in the EU and US is worth the increased reliability. After all if the product fails outside warranty it's not the manufacturer's problem. So any large "name-brand" manufacturer is gonna follow RoHS. Some random aliexpress seller not-necessarily.
Even in the absence of lead there are tons of solder alloys that they could have used instead, with varying ratios of tin/silver/indium/antimony. But when they can sell the cards with 1-2 years of warranty, they have zero motivation to care about long-term reliability and invest in figuring out what the best lead-free alloy is.
Totally agree, there are numerous lead free alternatives - this is bad procurement process/penny pinching. Large companies really can't go back to lead products, it's mandated in EU, US etc.
Well, that was a confusing problem to solve. I had no idea a less-than-optimal connection on a resistor could screw a power phase up so badly it caused the mosfet to go into lava mode.
MOSFET not mosfet You have not yet learned that it is an acronym and not a word. You have been a scholastic failure since first grade at school. Your ability to learn is ZERO However - brainwashing works well for you. That is truly amazing Perhaps one day there will be a scientific explanation.
Modern controllers measure the current flowing through each phase and adjust the pulse widths to balance the load across the phases. But if the current measurement circuit goes bad, the balancing can get way out of whack.
I noticed you were working on a mem tester and I saw Adrian's Digital Basement (Title:"It's so annoying when things fix themselves (but we made a new Diag ROM anyway)".) where one of his friends developed a deep memory tester for old memory but the technique for testing is essentially the same in any era so it might help or inspire you.
I love you videos dude. I've never been interested in electronics, on this level, but you've made me very interrested. Also, to my ears, you have a similar accent to a chap called Nicholas Moran, "The Chieftain". Are you also from California, or haveGreek/Irtish descent? (Random, I know) lol Anyway, I enjoy watching your channel dude. Keep it up.
i hope you are keeping detailed records on all repairs made. would love to see a spreadsheet of which cards are worked on the most. also might would come in handy one day to hold the manufacturers accountable for the corners cut
@@northwestrepair do you record failure mode eg. "Voltage rail designator + component designators + description of failure"? Don't know if it's useful for your operation, I guess it depends on the volume of cards you work on yearly.
You are right about dry caps, heh. Personally, when I do my own soldering (repairing old electronics from the 1970s) I will only use 60/40 Sn/Pb with an extractor fan and carbon scrubber. I've never had luck with Pb-free, they are all brittle, no matter how much silver is put in the alloy.
Lead free solder doesn't mix well with any leftover oldoriginal solder, and like you said its hard to use and brittle. I also find the flux varies a lot in solder. Used to use cheapo tubes, now I use rolls of Stannol made in Germany. Vintage hifi forever! :)
One of your best videos, thanks for showing the oscilloscope signals. No doubt, for me, you are one of the best techs in RUclips. Greetings from Portugal 🇵🇹
I left KY 4 or so years ago. Once I got to TN I saved 20k in a couple years...made more at Amazon in TN than in KY welding stainless all day. I felt your pain dude.
Lead free Solder is mechanically less durable compared to Leaded Solder. But i would think they are using Solder with a few % Silver (like in the Car industry) . This would make the Solder mechanically even more resiliant compared to normal Leaded Solder. It needs higher temps but it also helps with wetting. Thats why i use it especially for high power LED´s (in flashlights. . . ).
I believe that electromechanics will become increasingly important again in the next 10-20 years, because we urgently need to learn again (and the manufacturers need to make the products in the same way) that we need to repair broken things. With resources becoming increasingly scarce, manufacturers must also make all electronics more maintainable. When I look at the circuit diagram, the information overwhelms me and I realize that there urgently needs to be more specialists who are capable of repairing things. I sometimes repair smaller SNES and NEO GEO modules, but complete graphics cards or motherboards? Absolutely brilliant.
You basically described 99% of the jobs I've had. Every place is work harder, not smarter, and you're a bad person if you try something different that clearly improves things.
@@honeybadger6275 Or you know they could be doing their job. Using better solder (unleaded, like 405), using heatsink subassembly for reinforcement, adding edge bond and underfill, using higher quality materials overall. Just adding lead isn't gonna help if the manufacturers are still hell bent on making things as shoddily as possible, they'll find ways to make it landfill fodder yet.
You'd have to be mad to buy that. Lead was banned for a reason, it poisoned an entire generation of people in the 1980s. That's considering they knew lead was poisonous back then too. It was only the Romans that found out too late. Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Tony, I watched every second of this video and I knew from the beginning the answer on to "why GPU's break so easy" it would be the solder joints. Question: Would you consider a re-flow oven for such kind of jobs ? Do you think it will make any difference especially in saving time ? I don't mean to replace the reballing of a core with a reflow oven but only for this specific kind of jobs where you have to reflow every single component.
@@northwestrepair I remember reading about this method for more things than just GPUs, but in practice it takes a quite sophisticated oven capable of delivering precise temperatures on a given amount of time for each phase of the process, pre-heat, reflow and cool off.
Crashing under load is 80% core, 20% power. Whem you hear an inconsistent coil whine before crash in furmark, that is a near dead mosfet or controller or components around them.
Ohh man, i'm late to the show....but...it has been a while since I had to giggle that joyfully (lack of words right there). I have to catch up on alot of your videos but i appreciate your obvious knowledge of alllll the tec. I got so many questions...I really love what you are doing!
I'm not sure about the characteristics of lead-free solder, however I wonder if it causes cracking more than Zn-Sn-Pb solder. I was a digital circuit designer in the past and I didn't see any problem in lead-free solder except melting temperature and viscosity (self-alignment). If I could think the cause of cracking, it was the massive, repetitive temperature change in operational condition, I think. High temperature is a nature of high power consumption and it happened in mainly power circuit and power circuit had large foot prints in the past. But this assumption is not true in recent BGA large LSIs. Their solder joints are small so get cracked by swelling caused from temperature (e.g. think about bi-metal).
One tip, when measuring resistance, do not hold the bare part of the DMM probes with your fingers. Although high, your body resistance can affect measurement.
Had a person argue with me about lead-free solder being fine. I tried to argue back that it _may_ be "fine" but it is definitely noticeably worse than normal solder. They didn't budge. Even though they acknowledged that in mission critical situations normal solder is still used. Their argument about that was "how many satellites are you planning to launch?". Oh well.
Great Vid. Love the way you troubleshoot. How much did you charge the guy or is that don't ask kinda thing? I'm really curious how you work out how to charge jobs like this?
Yes. Having to beg the owner of your company to do his job is a frustrating thing. I just quit my job for this reason. As a chef, not a rstauranter, I'm not in a position to do anything other than try again. Sometimes it's better to play dumb, get your check and go home. Trying to exced your bosses expectations is risky.
6:06 its everytime the same, experienced this also a few times. if you say sth about making work faster or easier for everyone or if you have an easy solution for one of many problems at workplace, somebody else who has a higher position will come, claim that its his idea and do it. afterwards you will sometimes lose your job for saying the (sometimes unpleasant) truth and try to change sth and make it better. I always try to not kill some part of my personality. Just because someone else says you need to change or that you have a bad personality doesn't make it so. And if 99% of the people you deal with (including doctors and many other academically educated people) say something different, the person who made the comment or claimed you did something wrong may be wrong themselves.
You showed yourself to be a true tech. I know what you mean about backward thinking in the work place, but it's not just the south that suffers from it. Good Job!
I have a Power Color 5600XT ITX and a capacitor blew off with an air clean. It was two years old at the time with zero rough handling on my end. I used the opportunity to upgrade to a Sapphire Nitro 6700XT. Replacing the 5600XT used is as low as $40 so I don't think repair makes sense financially.
I'm curious, it's probably not ideal, especially for a professional repair, but could the good PWM signal from a neighboring mosfet have bridged to the other mosfet, and the bad signal pad blocked with conformal coating?
Pretty sure part of the problem is that a lot of gamers don't know how to build or tune a PC for cool operation. Keeping temps down will definitely slow the degradation of solder joints. I tried to snag a practice GPU recently but it ended up going for just as much as a working one would cost. I think a lot of people just don't read and then when the GPU doesn't work, they'll be claiming they got scammed. Oh well, I think I have a dead R7 250 around here somewhere.
Lead free solder is the biggest mistake in the industry. Is it really worth it to save few grams of lead in comparison to generating much less e-waste overall ?
Well I appreciate the openness with us, I just want to wish for you for your current work to fulfill you... despite the fact you throw so much bad stuff to amd cards :)
CORRECTED EDITED FORMATTED TEXT # LEAD FREE SOLDER Almost all modern electronics including laptops and motherboards use lead free solder. While it is less toxic - the life span of the device is significantly reduced by physical factors. Any bend - twist - bump or shake can cause joints to break - rendering the device inoperative and in most cases not repairable. Older devices that used leaded solder have one problem; dry capacitors. Everything else continues to work but modern electronics with lead free solder have near zero longevity. One can have a dead GPU on arrival damaged during shipping in a box. It can break by simply installing it and giving it a slight twist. The list of reasons why a GPU breaks is growing longer by the day. Some manufacturers such as ASUS sometimes use leaded solder on premium boards - so my question is: when a GPU costs nearly $2K and some models are premium models - why won't they use leaded solder ? Answer : Because they want it to break quick and deny a warranty. Corruption at its finest art form.
You will want to make the window higher resolution on some of those stress tests, if it's a powerful GPU, because you were CPU bound, and not pushing the GPU to full load. Obviously those tests aren't making use of every feature on the card, but in terms of 99-100% usage, it wasn't being pushed. If you weren't trying to stress it in that way, I get it. Just in case you didn't notice it, I figured I'd mention it.
The worst problem any tecnician can come across, bad solder in smd component, you cannot see it, cannot test it, cannot replace it and its so rare that the next time you come across it again you forgot it was a possibility. And the worst, if your not a good tecnician to spent more time than usual (or dont got lucky by resoldering the right component), you may condemn the card because you cant find the problem.
where did you get your NVidia MODS software? I'm having some weird issue with my RTX 4090 where I'm seeing fps performance degradation in every game and benchmark I've tried. GPU & mem report expected speeds (i.e. stock) and temps are low (under a water block). Any ideas on what it could be?
You Sir, done an excellent job, if I could give you 1000 subscriptions I would . I've seen a video 3 years ago with guy reballing laptop GPU in South America- after 6 months GPU dies he said, maybe had same problems like you had with this MSI, but maybe, he failed to discover some stupid Pb free stupid brittle connections on other parts of the layout. Maybe that's why manufactures of mainboards now days are using 8 PCB layers, to overcome the rigidity(brittleness) of the soldering but, not sure is really enough. We put tension on our mainboards when use heavy CPU radiators, when we mount them incorrectly, we put to much pressure in turning the bolts excessively, even on AIO mounting can create pressure, DDR slots overused sitting several times the DDR modules. However the new alloys for soldering I think needs more silver %. Maybe 5-10%. High purity silver is good conductor but is also elastic. Still, Pb should have a good % in the the alloy. Your video description is equally precious and very important. BRAVO!!!!
Lead free has been a pain in the butt since its inception. Red ring of death on original XBOX360's etc etc. I've never used the stuff and certainly don't plan to ever start. The lead allows a certain degree of flex in the joints essential for long term reliability. I've repaired so many Pb free dry joints at this point I've lost count.
Love your channel, going through and giving a like on every video!!! Thanks for the amazing content and being a good human being!!! I appreciate your work ethics as I share your values. Had my own business repairing semiconductor equipment and had a very similar model. Still a million bucks shy of being s millionaire though. Keep up the good work!!!!
Leaded solder isn't always what it's cracked out to be. Like sure more modern devices using leaded JUST before unleaded were introduced usually had really good soldering and metallurgy, and when you solder you take the good stuff and make it nice and then it's fine. But there are plenty devices from before with cold solder joints, and many develop their own unique pest, hard lead compounds caused by chemical contamination (capacitor outgassing). I think silver makes the solder a lot more long term durable, so sn62pb36ag02 is amazing, but modern SAC alloys 305 and 405 used in electronics well they don't have that issue at least. I also think they're skimping. Higher silver lead-free solder compounds are much less brittle. Maybe they've got 105 in there? That would be funny wouldn't it. Plus underfill edge bond etc is supposed to prevent PCB flex from killing BGA solder joints, so... well when's the last time you have seen that on a GPU? You'd think it would be important, no? Apropos skimping, you desolder those chips you occasionally show factory oxidised pads on the PCB, well that wouldn't be happening if someone used immersion gold PCBs now would it. I wonder how much damage skimping on gold is causing overall, could be quite something. I don't think you can blame unleaded when these companies do the bare minimum job and worse. Cards like that should have used an opportunity to have the heatsink assembly reinforce the PCB against flex as well, instead of imparting more flex on the PCB. Some plastic ribs, some more screw down points, some PET tape on the PCB to prevent plastic eating into the solder mask. It can be done.
early 90's wave soldering techniques resulted in heaps of failed hifi. It wasn't the lead free solder but the technique used. It was just early days. Now they have no excuse. It's money pinching, accounts telling engineers what to do.
Why manufacturers don't use Pins instead of solder balls, like CPUs? I thought maybe because temps, but CPUs also go above 100ºC and I don't see them dying all around or having channels dedicated to repair about them.
This information makes me wary of removing my MSI 1080ti from where it's been sitting since the summer of 2019. Was thinking I should clean then give it a fresh coat of thermal grease between GPU and heat sink - might be the beginning the end of it. You give these manufacturers 500 to 2000 bux for their shoddily manufactured equipment - thinking surely ASUS or MSI or Gigabyte, etc... would think enough of their product and workmanship that they'd take steps to prevent manufactured obsoleteness.
IMO this is a bigger problem on nVidia cards than on AMD cards. If nVidia board partners want to make any money selling nVidia GPU dies, they are pretty much forced to cut corners on their PCBs. Consumers aren't the only ones who nVidia wants to milk all the money out of, and that is exactly why eVGA threw in the towel, they were sick of it. Any thoughts on nVidia board partners using poorer quality solder vs. AMD exclusive board partners? Because I think the solder on AMD exclusive board partner cards (Sapphire and PowerColor in particular) seems like it's higher quality than the stuff on nVidia board partner cards. It flows a little earlier, and it seems like the oxide layer doesn't form as rapidly when it starts cooling, which usually indicates more potential strength in the joint. Also, thanks to the tip in this video, I'm going to stop farting near my GPUs. Seems sensible.
my sapphire rx 580 pulse 8gb doesn't show picture until sign in to windows. when i turn pc on it sounds 1 long beep then 3 short beeps at start. do you know what's the problem?
I conferr Dr We shouldn't have to reball memory ect on newer cards. Be nice to know the percentage of cards having soldering issues.I think some CLASS ACTION IS in order😊
The absence of lead isn't the problem here. It's the fact that manufacturers use the cheapest stuff that barely does the job. And why shouldn't they? People will buy it anyway.
That's pretty sad. I wonder tho if it's the manufacturer of the solder paste they buy that's cutting the corners. I'm sure board manufacturers do not make their own solder or solder paste, they just buy from whoever. Anyway that's beside the point, how much money is there in solder in even a large card like a 4090? $2?
People have no choice but to buy it anyway. What else could they do? Manufacture their own gpu or electronics? Unless remaining a caveman is considered a choice too.
any idea why a new tuf gaming oc 7900xtx is not giving display on a rog strix z490-f gaming motherboard with the latest bios version. Set manually gen 3 speed gen2 gen 1 and auto does the same thing. Card spins fans and lights up. No recognize in device manager. Motherboard shows no pcie detection (white led)
I have a WARNING on my GPU packaging that says chemicals like lead is used ... So does it uses lead solder or the lead is used somewhere else on the GPU...??
Not all trucks are super hard on gas, but yeah even here in Northeast Ohio, you see them pavement queens with big lifted diesel trucks with them low pro tires, yet see a tiny bit of snow and its stuck and they wont use it for work. I like older stuff as I work on my own crap, my 91 c1500 v6 truck wasn't hard on gas at all, but of course wasn't as good as a tiny car, but I usually work on lawnmowers, other things, scrap stuff, I can't do that with a tiny car, so the cash flow from that offsets the fuel costs, I could own a small car as well for when I need to run to the store, but the cost of insurance and matainence costs, I'd rather just the truck, it makes me money in more ways than a car can.
You said you disagreed with your boss and got fired, and learned your lesson, "Don't disagree with boss".. Wrong, the lesson learned is, "Don't work there". Any place that is like that, deserves to fail, even if it takes time to do so.
I use non-leaded solder and everything seems to last fine and have good structural integrity, maybe they're just using poor lead-free alternatives? The only difference I really found between working with leaded and lead-free solder is that leaded solder is easier to work and solder with at the increased risk of occupational health related conditions, so maybe it's the specific type of solder that's at fault rather than blaming the entire leaded-free market.
I've got a question for something I have been wondering for a while. It's about that oily residue that seeps from the thermal pads. Should that oily residue be cleaned off the board as well as the pads when servicing my GPU? I realize that it is not conductive but could it cause issues. You've seen many Video cards and I'm just wondering if it can become an issue in the long run. Cheers!
I canát speak for Kentucky in general, but politics and general personal vendetta is always present. People who become managers will want to be above all others, and take no shit. You gotta play the game if you are working at a relatively large organisation. What you do, is to make suggestion, that sort of come accross neutral, nothing personal, nothing emotional. So if the manager doesnát want it, he/she can just reply with a no. Don't make enemies out of your superiors, because you can't win. That is only of course, if you want to keep that job in question, if not, then go ahead and talk back. I've done both scenarios in the past, but if you wana be offensive, make sure you got enough savings in case you get fired or you walk out.
Fairly certain this is my card, you sir are a wizard. But really this took a lot of work and troubleshooting I was not expecting an hour long video, thank you for saving my card!
Why did you fart on your card?
@@Akkilliestoo much cheese
It was supposed to be 2hrs long but I managed to cut it to main points
@@FuriousFuria no not the cheese
I guess a re-ball wasn’t enough for you huh? Had to take things south east it’s fixed though.
"Where's the resistor?"
>looking at the ocean of components
"Yeah good luck finding that"
I feel you man
boards are usually laid in sections for each circuit. It's rare to see a circuit run all over the board, not impossible but it's really inefficient and unlikely.
There hasn't been any lead in consumer electronics since roughly 2006: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive
You're underestimating the determination of Chinese factories to skirt the rules
Love your channel too!
@@MegaFUZZY2010 god bless the chinese! Skirt those rules!
@@MegaFUZZY2010 Yeah I don't think getting your product banned from sale in the EU and US is worth the increased reliability. After all if the product fails outside warranty it's not the manufacturer's problem. So any large "name-brand" manufacturer is gonna follow RoHS. Some random aliexpress seller not-necessarily.
As the Beatles said, Lead it Be.
Even in the absence of lead there are tons of solder alloys that they could have used instead, with varying ratios of tin/silver/indium/antimony. But when they can sell the cards with 1-2 years of warranty, they have zero motivation to care about long-term reliability and invest in figuring out what the best lead-free alloy is.
Yea, and it's kinda sad and infuriating for the Graphic card of that caliber and cost.
Or we could just go back to the leaded solder as numerous companies overseas have in recent years.
@@christopherkidwell9817let's bring back R22 and tetraethyllead while we're at it
Totally agree, there are numerous lead free alternatives - this is bad procurement process/penny pinching. Large companies really can't go back to lead products, it's mandated in EU, US etc.
@@christopherkidwell9817 Pls no. There are already lead free alternatives that work just as well and lead is REALLY bad for you.
Well, that was a confusing problem to solve. I had no idea a less-than-optimal connection on a resistor could screw a power phase up so badly it caused the mosfet to go into lava mode.
MOSFET
not mosfet
You have not yet learned that it is an acronym and not a word.
You have been a scholastic failure since first grade at school.
Your ability to learn is ZERO
However - brainwashing works well for you.
That is truly amazing
Perhaps one day there will be a scientific explanation.
Modern controllers measure the current flowing through each phase and adjust the pulse widths to balance the load across the phases. But if the current measurement circuit goes bad, the balancing can get way out of whack.
@@TheBackyardChemist Makes sense, thanks for explaining!
Any other person would have called it dead..but you are just a genius! Learning experience for everyone, thank you for posting this
This one was a bit of a rabbit hole,, am glad you didn't give up on it whereas some people would, well done!
I noticed you were working on a mem tester and I saw Adrian's Digital Basement (Title:"It's so annoying when things fix themselves (but we made a new Diag ROM anyway)".) where one of his friends developed a deep memory tester for old memory but the technique for testing is essentially the same in any era so it might help or inspire you.
I love you videos dude. I've never been interested in electronics, on this level, but you've made me very interrested.
Also, to my ears, you have a similar accent to a chap called Nicholas Moran, "The Chieftain". Are you also from California, or haveGreek/Irtish descent? (Random, I know) lol
Anyway, I enjoy watching your channel dude. Keep it up.
i hope you are keeping detailed records on all repairs made. would love to see a spreadsheet of which cards are worked on the most. also might would come in handy one day to hold the manufacturers accountable for the corners cut
I have the record but don't track any statistics. Only success rate to some degree.
thank you so much for the reply. It means alot to me that you took the time to read and respond to the comment. @@northwestrepair
@@northwestrepair do you record failure mode eg. "Voltage rail designator + component designators + description of failure"? Don't know if it's useful for your operation, I guess it depends on the volume of cards you work on yearly.
@@Rotwold not in any way that can be tracked.
You are right about dry caps, heh. Personally, when I do my own soldering (repairing old electronics from the 1970s) I will only use 60/40 Sn/Pb with an extractor fan and carbon scrubber. I've never had luck with Pb-free, they are all brittle, no matter how much silver is put in the alloy.
Lead free solder doesn't mix well with any leftover oldoriginal solder, and like you said its hard to use and brittle.
I also find the flux varies a lot in solder. Used to use cheapo tubes, now I use rolls of Stannol made in Germany. Vintage hifi forever! :)
Wow 1h Long! Perfect for bed time. Thank you c:
1hr ? LOL i thought i was like 2hrs. Oh well
@@northwestrepair Double speed.
One of your best videos, thanks for showing the oscilloscope signals.
No doubt, for me, you are one of the best techs in RUclips.
Greetings from Portugal 🇵🇹
This is Top Level troubleshooting man.. Great stuff!
I left KY 4 or so years ago. Once I got to TN I saved 20k in a couple years...made more at Amazon in TN than in KY welding stainless all day.
I felt your pain dude.
Note to self, ...DO NOT fart near my gaming rig! You crack me up Tony! What a great job, you are truly the master.
Lead free Solder is mechanically less durable compared to Leaded Solder. But i would think they are using Solder with a few % Silver (like in the Car industry) . This would make the Solder mechanically even more resiliant compared to normal Leaded Solder. It needs higher temps but it also helps with wetting. Thats why i use it especially for high power LED´s (in flashlights. . . ).
Use solder with silver myself, stuff is great.
Oooh 1 hour long video. I always get excited watching your repair videos for whatever reason :D
I believe that electromechanics will become increasingly important again in the next 10-20 years, because we urgently need to learn again (and the manufacturers need to make the products in the same way) that we need to repair broken things. With resources becoming increasingly scarce, manufacturers must also make all electronics more maintainable. When I look at the circuit diagram, the information overwhelms me and I realize that there urgently needs to be more specialists who are capable of repairing things. I sometimes repair smaller SNES and NEO GEO modules, but complete graphics cards or motherboards? Absolutely brilliant.
You never give up ! Excellent job 👏🏼 greetings from Italy
dude. the commentary style = instant sub :)))
You basically described 99% of the jobs I've had. Every place is work harder, not smarter, and you're a bad person if you try something different that clearly improves things.
lol I foresee manufacturer advertising claims of "Now with leaded solder!" becoming a new premium selling feature.
I'd pay $10 more for that.
Would need to rescind some laws to be able to sell that but yeah it would be nice.
@@honeybadger6275 Or you know they could be doing their job. Using better solder (unleaded, like 405), using heatsink subassembly for reinforcement, adding edge bond and underfill, using higher quality materials overall. Just adding lead isn't gonna help if the manufacturers are still hell bent on making things as shoddily as possible, they'll find ways to make it landfill fodder yet.
You'd have to be mad to buy that. Lead was banned for a reason, it poisoned an entire generation of people in the 1980s. That's considering they knew lead was poisonous back then too. It was only the Romans that found out too late. Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Tony, I watched every second of this video and I knew from the beginning the answer on to "why GPU's break so easy" it would be the solder joints. Question: Would you consider a re-flow oven for such kind of jobs ? Do you think it will make any difference especially in saving time ? I don't mean to replace the reballing of a core with a reflow oven but only for this specific kind of jobs where you have to reflow every single component.
No I would not.
How do you expect to reflow GPU with electrolytic capacitors and not blow them up or damage inside the oven .
?
@@northwestrepairLow temp I suppose...But anyway, this is not a good idea I agree. Just asked out of curiosity.
@@northwestrepair I remember reading about this method for more things than just GPUs, but in practice it takes a quite sophisticated oven capable of delivering precise temperatures on a given amount of time for each phase of the process, pre-heat, reflow and cool off.
this one just want to go where pharaoh goes after life..
Why don't they just install squat toilets? It is a lot more hygienic than just install toilets with out seat cover.
Crashing under load is 80% core, 20% power.
Whem you hear an inconsistent coil whine before crash in furmark, that is a near dead mosfet or controller or components around them.
Ohh man, i'm late to the show....but...it has been a while since I had to giggle that joyfully (lack of words right there). I have to catch up on alot of your videos but i appreciate your obvious knowledge of alllll the tec. I got so many questions...I really love what you are doing!
I'm not sure about the characteristics of lead-free solder, however I wonder if it causes cracking more than Zn-Sn-Pb solder. I was a digital circuit designer in the past and I didn't see any problem in lead-free solder except melting temperature and viscosity (self-alignment). If I could think the cause of cracking, it was the massive, repetitive temperature change in operational condition, I think. High temperature is a nature of high power consumption and it happened in mainly power circuit and power circuit had large foot prints in the past. But this assumption is not true in recent BGA large LSIs. Their solder joints are small so get cracked by swelling caused from temperature (e.g. think about bi-metal).
lead-free isn't as soft, has less malleability, more likely to crack from any form of stress
One tip, when measuring resistance, do not hold the bare part of the DMM probes with your fingers. Although high, your body resistance can affect measurement.
Had a person argue with me about lead-free solder being fine. I tried to argue back that it _may_ be "fine" but it is definitely noticeably worse than normal solder. They didn't budge. Even though they acknowledged that in mission critical situations normal solder is still used. Their argument about that was "how many satellites are you planning to launch?". Oh well.
Great Vid. Love the way you troubleshoot. How much did you charge the guy or is that don't ask kinda thing? I'm really curious how you work out how to charge jobs like this?
Yes. Having to beg the owner of your company to do his job is a frustrating thing. I just quit my job for this reason. As a chef, not a rstauranter, I'm not in a position to do anything other than try again. Sometimes it's better to play dumb, get your check and go home. Trying to exced your bosses expectations is risky.
6:06 its everytime the same, experienced this also a few times. if you say sth about making work faster or easier for everyone or if you have an easy solution for one of many problems at workplace, somebody else who has a higher position will come, claim that its his idea and do it. afterwards you will sometimes lose your job for saying the (sometimes unpleasant) truth and try to change sth and make it better. I always try to not kill some part of my personality. Just because someone else says you need to change or that you have a bad personality doesn't make it so. And if 99% of the people you deal with (including doctors and many other academically educated people) say something different, the person who made the comment or claimed you did something wrong may be wrong themselves.
You showed yourself to be a true tech. I know what you mean about backward thinking in the work place, but it's not just the south that suffers from it. Good Job!
7:33 More relevant than ever. Kentucky must be absolutely thrilled to be going to the past lately.
What a hard work pal. Amazing skills and aknowledge! Grettings from Porto Alegre (Happy Harbor), Brazil.
I have a Power Color 5600XT ITX and a capacitor blew off with an air clean. It was two years old at the time with zero rough handling on my end. I used the opportunity to upgrade to a Sapphire Nitro 6700XT. Replacing the 5600XT used is as low as $40 so I don't think repair makes sense financially.
If you need a good strong metal table you can usually find table saws on your local marketplace for under $100. Also good as welding tables.
I'm curious, it's probably not ideal, especially for a professional repair, but could the good PWM signal from a neighboring mosfet have bridged to the other mosfet, and the bad signal pad blocked with conformal coating?
Pretty sure part of the problem is that a lot of gamers don't know how to build or tune a PC for cool operation. Keeping temps down will definitely slow the degradation of solder joints.
I tried to snag a practice GPU recently but it ended up going for just as much as a working one would cost. I think a lot of people just don't read and then when the GPU doesn't work, they'll be claiming they got scammed. Oh well, I think I have a dead R7 250 around here somewhere.
Nah. The GPUs just need to be built to handle PC heat. You cannot blame pc builders for poor solder from manufacturers.
Lead free solder is the biggest mistake in the industry.
Is it really worth it to save few grams of lead in comparison to generating much less e-waste overall ?
I thought it was done for health and safety reasons, mostly because the EU pushed it
The industry didn't choose to handicap itself.
saving lead is not the purpose at all
Lead is dangerous to humans even in small concentrations. No mistake was made moving away from it.
lead allows the joints to be flexible.
Well I appreciate the openness with us, I just want to wish for you for your current work to fulfill you... despite the fact you throw so much bad stuff to amd cards :)
CORRECTED EDITED FORMATTED TEXT
# LEAD FREE SOLDER
Almost all modern electronics including laptops and motherboards use
lead free solder.
While it is less toxic - the life span of the device is significantly
reduced by physical factors.
Any bend - twist - bump or shake can cause joints to break -
rendering the device inoperative and in most cases not repairable.
Older devices that used leaded solder have one problem; dry capacitors.
Everything else continues to work but modern electronics with lead free
solder have near zero longevity.
One can have a dead GPU on arrival damaged during shipping in a box.
It can break by simply installing it and giving it a slight twist.
The list of reasons why a GPU breaks is growing longer by the day.
Some manufacturers such as ASUS sometimes use leaded solder on premium
boards - so my question is: when a GPU costs nearly $2K and some models are
premium models - why won't they use leaded solder ?
Answer : Because they want it to break quick and deny a warranty.
Corruption at its finest art form.
Damn AI robots won't let humans make human mistakes 😐
Amazing Video Again! You Rock! Greetings from France!
You will want to make the window higher resolution on some of those stress tests, if it's a powerful GPU, because you were CPU bound, and not pushing the GPU to full load. Obviously those tests aren't making use of every feature on the card, but in terms of 99-100% usage, it wasn't being pushed. If you weren't trying to stress it in that way, I get it. Just in case you didn't notice it, I figured I'd mention it.
furmark put the card at about a 90% load, which is good enough for the card to heat up and see whats going on with it.
The worst problem any tecnician can come across, bad solder in smd component, you cannot see it, cannot test it, cannot replace it and its so rare that the next time you come across it again you forgot it was a possibility. And the worst, if your not a good tecnician to spent more time than usual (or dont got lucky by resoldering the right component), you may condemn the card because you cant find the problem.
Wild ass guess - a rough contact surface on a heat sink block might improve heat transfer efficiency?
KY? Whereabouts in KY? I'm over in the bootheal side, Murray.
where did you get your NVidia MODS software? I'm having some weird issue with my RTX 4090 where I'm seeing fps performance degradation in every game and benchmark I've tried. GPU & mem report expected speeds (i.e. stock) and temps are low (under a water block). Any ideas on what it could be?
Discord
hey bro watched you a while im loving the more recent videos watching you show more of you're personality come through
amazing work as always but how can that labour time be costed you must love what you do
I don't charge hourly rate.
I charge per fix.
what ever it is it is not enough as guys like you are in short supply@@northwestrepair
Great video. I love to watch repair videos. I'm very glad I found your channel.
I was trying to figure out why componants would change value' so all it was-was poor solder joint ?
You certainly earned your money for this one Tony 😍
I show up for the GPU REPAIRS but stay for the "life advice". Like my GF's bottom, this show is well rounded. Just saying. Thanks so much :)
You Sir, done an excellent job, if I could give you 1000 subscriptions I would . I've seen a video 3 years ago with guy reballing laptop GPU in South America- after 6 months GPU dies he said, maybe had same problems like you had with this MSI, but maybe, he failed to discover some stupid Pb free stupid brittle connections on other parts of the layout.
Maybe that's why manufactures of mainboards now days are using 8 PCB layers, to overcome the rigidity(brittleness) of the soldering but, not sure is really enough.
We put tension on our mainboards when use heavy CPU radiators, when we mount them incorrectly, we put to much pressure in turning the bolts excessively, even on AIO mounting can create pressure, DDR slots overused sitting several times the DDR modules.
However the new alloys for soldering I think needs more silver %. Maybe 5-10%. High purity silver is good conductor but is also elastic. Still, Pb should have a good % in the the alloy.
Your video description is equally precious and very important. BRAVO!!!!
What city in Kentucky is your abode? I live in Surrey, BC which is very close to Vancouver. Cheers Tony!
Very very rough cooler, might help with heat absorption, as it provides slightly more surface area.
Lead free has been a pain in the butt since its inception. Red ring of death on original XBOX360's etc etc. I've never used the stuff and certainly don't plan to ever start. The lead allows a certain degree of flex in the joints essential for long term reliability. I've repaired so many Pb free dry joints at this point I've lost count.
Love your channel, going through and giving a like on every video!!! Thanks for the amazing content and being a good human being!!! I appreciate your work ethics as I share your values. Had my own business repairing semiconductor equipment and had a very similar model. Still a million bucks shy of being s millionaire though. Keep up the good work!!!!
I'm curious how much a hour you charge? I bet it's not enough. Excellent Work!! Thank you for sharing with us.. God Bless 🙏
Smart people dont need managers. Keep up the good work
Leaded solder isn't always what it's cracked out to be. Like sure more modern devices using leaded JUST before unleaded were introduced usually had really good soldering and metallurgy, and when you solder you take the good stuff and make it nice and then it's fine. But there are plenty devices from before with cold solder joints, and many develop their own unique pest, hard lead compounds caused by chemical contamination (capacitor outgassing). I think silver makes the solder a lot more long term durable, so sn62pb36ag02 is amazing, but modern SAC alloys 305 and 405 used in electronics well they don't have that issue at least.
I also think they're skimping. Higher silver lead-free solder compounds are much less brittle. Maybe they've got 105 in there? That would be funny wouldn't it. Plus underfill edge bond etc is supposed to prevent PCB flex from killing BGA solder joints, so... well when's the last time you have seen that on a GPU? You'd think it would be important, no? Apropos skimping, you desolder those chips you occasionally show factory oxidised pads on the PCB, well that wouldn't be happening if someone used immersion gold PCBs now would it. I wonder how much damage skimping on gold is causing overall, could be quite something. I don't think you can blame unleaded when these companies do the bare minimum job and worse. Cards like that should have used an opportunity to have the heatsink assembly reinforce the PCB against flex as well, instead of imparting more flex on the PCB. Some plastic ribs, some more screw down points, some PET tape on the PCB to prevent plastic eating into the solder mask. It can be done.
early 90's wave soldering techniques resulted in heaps of failed hifi. It wasn't the lead free solder but the technique used. It was just early days. Now they have no excuse. It's money pinching, accounts telling engineers what to do.
Why manufacturers don't use Pins instead of solder balls, like CPUs?
I thought maybe because temps, but CPUs also go above 100ºC and I don't see them dying all around or having channels dedicated to repair about them.
At 1:06:23 in the bottom right of the screen, there seems to be a badly fractured resistor. Could have something to do with it...
You freaked me out with the intro. I thought my screen is garbled and memory is trashed.
i saw you was solder the original resistor at the wrong position 48:00 and 1:06:00 , can you exlain , that would helpful
I think there are many reasons modern hardware fail more, and it's not just about the solder. And lead soldier can also fail.
Where in KY are you located? I am in Cincinnati and may be able to help with the table. Hit me up if interested.
the entire rant about kentucky is so entertaining 😅
This information makes me wary of removing my MSI 1080ti from where it's been sitting since the summer of 2019. Was thinking I should clean then give it a fresh coat of thermal grease between GPU and heat sink - might be the beginning the end of it.
You give these manufacturers 500 to 2000 bux for their shoddily manufactured equipment - thinking surely ASUS or MSI or Gigabyte, etc... would think enough of their product and workmanship that they'd take steps to prevent manufactured obsoleteness.
its an older card before this stupid lead free movement happened
IMO this is a bigger problem on nVidia cards than on AMD cards. If nVidia board partners want to make any money selling nVidia GPU dies, they are pretty much forced to cut corners on their PCBs. Consumers aren't the only ones who nVidia wants to milk all the money out of, and that is exactly why eVGA threw in the towel, they were sick of it.
Any thoughts on nVidia board partners using poorer quality solder vs. AMD exclusive board partners? Because I think the solder on AMD exclusive board partner cards (Sapphire and PowerColor in particular) seems like it's higher quality than the stuff on nVidia board partner cards. It flows a little earlier, and it seems like the oxide layer doesn't form as rapidly when it starts cooling, which usually indicates more potential strength in the joint.
Also, thanks to the tip in this video, I'm going to stop farting near my GPUs. Seems sensible.
if you can't trust a simple resistor then whom can you trust?
Excellent job mate.
my sapphire rx 580 pulse 8gb doesn't show picture until sign in to windows. when i turn pc on it sounds 1 long beep then 3 short beeps at start. do you know what's the problem?
I conferr Dr We shouldn't have to reball memory ect on newer cards. Be nice to know the percentage of cards having soldering issues.I think some CLASS ACTION IS in order😊
Can anyone explain NVMT results ? what to look for in case of an malfunction?
20:47 why the surface is so rough? Because it cost money to make it smoother and when they can get away with it they will not care.
The absence of lead isn't the problem here. It's the fact that manufacturers use the cheapest stuff that barely does the job. And why shouldn't they? People will buy it anyway.
No pride in making quality products, willing to cut costs at every single corner if it makes them a few dollars more.
That's pretty sad. I wonder tho if it's the manufacturer of the solder paste they buy that's cutting the corners. I'm sure board manufacturers do not make their own solder or solder paste, they just buy from whoever. Anyway that's beside the point, how much money is there in solder in even a large card like a 4090? $2?
People have no choice but to buy it anyway. What else could they do? Manufacture their own gpu or electronics? Unless remaining a caveman is considered a choice too.
Too much Greed. Too little pride.
@@steve42069master cutting corners makes them much more than few dollars. Faster breaking means faster replacing. And each replacement is a sale.
Product name for thermal camera please
What brand and model are you using as thermal cam ?
Probably Infiray P2 or P2 Pro.
👍@@cameraman2505
any idea why a new tuf gaming oc 7900xtx is not giving display on a rog strix z490-f gaming motherboard with the latest bios version. Set manually gen 3 speed gen2 gen 1 and auto does the same thing.
Card spins fans and lights up.
No recognize in device manager.
Motherboard shows no pcie detection (white led)
I have a WARNING on my GPU packaging that says chemicals like lead is used ... So does it uses lead solder or the lead is used somewhere else on the GPU...??
I'm wondering if that's just the hand-soldered parts like the power connectors, but I guess it could entirely be leaded?
we need to get you out of kentucky asap my brother
Not all trucks are super hard on gas, but yeah even here in Northeast Ohio, you see them pavement queens with big lifted diesel trucks with them low pro tires, yet see a tiny bit of snow and its stuck and they wont use it for work.
I like older stuff as I work on my own crap, my 91 c1500 v6 truck wasn't hard on gas at all, but of course wasn't as good as a tiny car, but I usually work on lawnmowers, other things, scrap stuff, I can't do that with a tiny car, so the cash flow from that offsets the fuel costs, I could own a small car as well for when I need to run to the store, but the cost of insurance and matainence costs, I'd rather just the truck, it makes me money in more ways than a car can.
how much does a repair useally cost
This is 8 months old but tool auctions have metal tables amd anything else you'd ever want
I hate antimony solder. If you don't flow it perfectly the first time, you get like a crystally cold solder type of joint. I prefer old lead solder.
is there anywhere to check what GPUs have lead free solder to avoid those cards?
You said you disagreed with your boss and got fired, and learned your lesson, "Don't disagree with boss".. Wrong, the lesson learned is, "Don't work there". Any place that is like that, deserves to fail, even if it takes time to do so.
great video, could i get the mods and mats software to try? the one you are using?
You are a master at your work
I use non-leaded solder and everything seems to last fine and have good structural integrity, maybe they're just using poor lead-free alternatives? The only difference I really found between working with leaded and lead-free solder is that leaded solder is easier to work and solder with at the increased risk of occupational health related conditions, so maybe it's the specific type of solder that's at fault rather than blaming the entire leaded-free market.
his chuckle is totally the "Paulie Gualtieri" chuckle.
I've got a question for something I have been wondering for a while. It's about that oily residue that seeps from the thermal pads. Should that oily residue be cleaned off the board as well as the pads when servicing my GPU? I realize that it is not conductive but could it cause issues. You've seen many Video cards and I'm just wondering if it can become an issue in the long run. Cheers!
its best to replace leaky pads
It's a silicone oil and no it won't hurt anything at all.
Hi you have a link to download nvidia graphic test, thanks
I canát speak for Kentucky in general, but politics and general personal vendetta is always present. People who become managers will want to be above all others, and take no shit. You gotta play the game if you are working at a relatively large organisation. What you do, is to make suggestion, that sort of come accross neutral, nothing personal, nothing emotional. So if the manager doesnát want it, he/she can just reply with a no. Don't make enemies out of your superiors, because you can't win. That is only of course, if you want to keep that job in question, if not, then go ahead and talk back. I've done both scenarios in the past, but if you wana be offensive, make sure you got enough savings in case you get fired or you walk out.
My gpu was getting 2 hot i replaced thermal pads and paste any idea what i can do to further decrease temp?