I do repairs as my hobby and to get cheaper hardware then repair it myself. I bought cheap hotair at hamfest, built IR rework station out of halogen and heater scraps and doing rework/reflow to get another two years maybe three out of the old scrap that is available here in east europe. I get a 75% maybe up to 90% GPUs and notebook GPUs/chipsets working again. I do it for my friends so i am tracing the time until next failure but i didn't get any information of anything failing fot two years that i do it. It is mainly GTX4xx 5xx era hardware plagued with heat/BGA problems, and when the supply dries out, there is no problem, i invested almost nothing. I will rebuild machines to suit next needs and do whatever next. I just advice for GPUs skip ovens and hotair and build IR top and under heater with those ceramic blocks that are under 20$ on ebay and various bathroom heaters. control with triacs and thermocouples from arduino and you get the value back after three GTX465s reflowed and they will work at least for another year if you figure out the sweet temps.
Lucky me. I'm a TPS engineer. I develop Test Program Sets that walk all functionality of a board and isolate the fault down to a node. My confidence level on a failed node is up and over 90%. I get to pre-package all my testing into a 1 hour program that I start and walk away so I can go back to working on something that requires user interactions. Do these boards you work on have sufficent Test Points to develop a program to diagnose on your behalf?
been doing BGA repairs for 16 years and couldn't agree with you more on that 30-40 mins rule ;-) we live in a world ruled by money unfortunately and even though i want to fix that particular mainboard and help a customer it is just not worth it. I have developed a system of checks where i can check i'd say with 90% accuracy the board is worth repairing or not within 10 mins, OF course i get stuck at phones ( my specialty) for longer than that and thats the reason why i am watching your video about IRDA SMD rework station LOL...dont get angry bro :-)))
This subject is more than a year old now yet still holds true. I just want to say thanks for saying all you said about the logic pertaining to the business of component level repair and BGA rework. I can not remember the last time i used my costly BGA rework station. Why? For the very reasons you stated. BGA rework is not guaranteed to work the first time around, nor are the chips. I am sure to make more replacing 2 DC power jacks in one attempt than two attempts at a failed BGA rework.
Thank you very much for the tips and ideas, im planning to open a small repair shop myself and your advice on eliminating time waste on inadequate time/pay ratio repairs will really help me in future. :)
M1zzu q Thank you! RUclips still sodomizes t, but I am happy with what comes out. Getting some cheap covers for the overbearing LEDs in my office was helpful.
Thanks, good video! (When are you going to fix the Dell XPS 1530's nvidia chipset from the laptop behind you in the closet, it's been there for ages haha :)
Really useful Video , i have the same problem with customers also , they dont understand maybe you will spend 3 Hours for repairing any deceive without result :/
Hey Ross , let me shed light on some more information , from 2015 onwards , both intel and amd have moved to system on a chip (SOC) approach , which means , even if a single power rail on a motherboard gets shorted out or a usb port gets shorted out , the SOC goes bad and you have no other option but to change that SOC as everything is controlled by that single chip and for that a bga rework station is a necessary requirement and without that , your business is done . Please share your views on this point .
+maxinventer once we are at thst point that chip will cost as much as the device itself and this business will be pointless. You also must consider that even as it stands getting major bga chipsets is a crapshoot.
i love your no bullshit approach you say it as it is mate i am an amateur electronics engineer and i am learning all the time and you are an influence and a mentor to me. keep up the good work ....i hate apple stuff .......@@@kim@@@@
I've been googling for CIC and EBest but I really don't think that I have found them. I'm going to try to get into board repair soon and I'm just trying to gather as much info as possible. Can someone give a link to these sites?
True on getting bad chips. If it's small, I now make a castellated board and install a comparable chip I can find from Mouser or Digikey. Because usually they have a different pin assignment.
Louis RossmannFirst of all, Thank you for your great work and time. Like you stated in this and previous presentations, its all about the time and reward. I did a number of machines starting by re-flowing then moving onto re-balling to replacing BGA chips and not forgetting the mods on the cases. The results were always poor rate of success and returns, never felt happy take payment as I could never guarantee a solid solution. Finally, in the end I accepted and told the "truth" it's is not worth the time and money. My conclusion most units are designed to fail, BGA being. "key component". Tracing a fault is far more rewarding and guaranteed success, again Time in relation to reward.
Louis Rossmann Main repair failures were around the GPU, rest of the boards pretty much straight forward. But over all, "instinct" usually tells you how bad the laptop is. For example, external condition moving onto internal condition, what are the vents like, how blocked they are. Then what are the symptoms!. Then only then, I will proceed with a re-flow of the GPU nothing else is on offer, everything else not economical for GPU related work. Generally the answer sorry, but no. To honest my views are that most new laptops developed for a life span of 18 months, Flex in Plastics being first being destroyed. After all that, Dude "your the man".
I don't like AMD because they haven't made a competitive product in years, Intel has been sodomizing them without even trying. It's easy to talk shit when you're competing against a prescott P4 but they've been eating their words for almost ten years now.
camtheham13 I loved my opteron 165 i had running at 2.7 GHz, and my 3000+ that did 2.4 ghz quietly. I wish they made good stuff again.. they don't though :(
Sorry for my lack of knowledge... i am just involved with databases and software analyses, dont know anything about those electronics at all. All i know is that BGA's been causing lots of pain on people who use notebook. I once bought a notebook with an AMD 6990m 2gb (around 2011 or 2012). Started seeing artifacts on the screen and all those things. Tried repairing like 2 or 3 times. Each one of those repairs costed me 850. Ended up dead and everybody didnt even want to touch it and try to repair. I watched your video and it made me understand them. Perfectly. I would do the same as they did now that i understood. What i would like to understand is why... just why BGAs give us so many issues? Is it still a concern now-days that (i guess) the technology might have improved? I suddenly decided to give it a chance (after years of psychological treatment to cure me from the trauma from having another notebook).... i decided to give it a change and bought a notebook. Now to my awful surprise, i found out that now-days even the processors are coming in BGA! ... An INTEL i7 !!! i looked at myself and said - "What?? My processor is in a BGA? No... this cant be happening". Been trying to find answers , but no one seems to even want to give me attention and read and answer my questions.....i would love if somebody could clarify me if BGA issues still a concern...if it has improved along side with the technology improvements.... if there is any temperature i can take as a red line so i can monitor and take care it doesnt ever get past that so i can guarantee my job's been done?... I mean,i am just worried
I think the problem is the overall product design. BGA by itself isn't a bad technique. I suppose the pc manufacturers just allow their chips to run too hot. It's a consideration of how much speed you can get out of it vs how many people will actually run it at that capacity all the time. So if enough users don't run their laptops at full potential, it's acceptable for the manufacturer if a small portion actually doesn't live up to the proposed performance for a long time..
BGA is pretty much the standard for high pin-count ICs on motherboards which aren't designed to be replaceable, for e.g. laptop CPUs/GPUs, GPUs on graphics cards, etc. You can get a lot more pins connected that way compared to something like QFN, so that's why they're used. The only problem is that you can't easily tell if it's soldered down correctly like you can with QFN and you need to reball the chip using solder balls instead of just soldering on the pad like any other component. So you need dedicated machines and high powered hot air stations to deal with them, and most of all, time, which makes it a lot harder to justify in a repair shop environment where time is money
If I had a way to get these chips from the company that makes them AND be authorized by them to do this would you buy them from me? (and which chips would you want). Also do you think many other repair shops would want these chips?
hi louis! i have a samsung np550, and here, on brazil, anybody help me. maybe my bga is failing. the laptop turn on somentimes and die again for a long time. before this hapend i se aome interferences on screen. it is possible remove the dedicate video (remove the bga chip) and only use the intel integrate? tks
could anyone plz tell me a hot air and solder station I could buy for less then 50 bucks plz it would really mean a lot if u could tell me and if u can't still ty
to be honest with you mate anything you find under $100 for both hot air or soldering station isn't really gonna be good for repairs like mobos/GPUs etc. Some soldering stations are good but a lot of cheap hot air stations won't have the power you need, and you'll end up cooking every other component waiting for a chip to come off (I thought an 858D would be good enough for even some small chips, and man, i learnt it the hard way). I recommend BST-863 or Atten ST-862D which are over $100 but well worth it in my opinion. No clue on soldering stations though.
jeremiah9561 Yeah. I have an R9 280x in my desktop that is decent, useless in Linux compared to VDPAU, but decent. But the processors are complete trash in terms of the high end consumer market, they will not be competing with Intel again for a long time. :(
Louis Rossmann Yep, when I interned at a computer store, the boss was telling me way back when intel CPU's were still locked and AMD's weren't, people would overclock the hell out of a cheap AMD CPU up to spec of a higher clocked one which would cause them to literally catch on fire. He hasn't used AMD since, and AMD support is terrible, another reason I won't be making a purchase from them for a long time.
Louis Rossmann Hard to compete when you've got very little resources compared to intel/nvidia - i'm amazed that they can fund any r&d at all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that AMD's new Zen architecture (2016) will actually be good.
I do repairs as my hobby and to get cheaper hardware then repair it myself. I bought cheap hotair at hamfest, built IR rework station out of halogen and heater scraps and doing rework/reflow to get another two years maybe three out of the old scrap that is available here in east europe. I get a 75% maybe up to 90% GPUs and notebook GPUs/chipsets working again. I do it for my friends so i am tracing the time until next failure but i didn't get any information of anything failing fot two years that i do it. It is mainly GTX4xx 5xx era hardware plagued with heat/BGA problems, and when the supply dries out, there is no problem, i invested almost nothing. I will rebuild machines to suit next needs and do whatever next. I just advice for GPUs skip ovens and hotair and build IR top and under heater with those ceramic blocks that are under 20$ on ebay and various bathroom heaters. control with triacs and thermocouples from arduino and you get the value back after three GTX465s reflowed and they will work at least for another year if you figure out the sweet temps.
Good info, thanks!
Awesome video man! I can't seem to stop watching! Just so much awesome information that is never actually disclosed by others :) keep it up!
Lucky me. I'm a TPS engineer. I develop Test Program Sets that walk all functionality of a board and isolate the fault down to a node. My confidence level on a failed node is up and over 90%. I get to pre-package all my testing into a 1 hour program that I start and walk away so I can go back to working on something that requires user interactions. Do these boards you work on have sufficent Test Points to develop a program to diagnose on your behalf?
I'm interested.
been doing BGA repairs for 16 years and couldn't agree with you more on that 30-40 mins rule ;-) we live in a world ruled by money unfortunately and even though i want to fix that particular mainboard and help a customer it is just not worth it.
I have developed a system of checks where i can check i'd say with 90% accuracy the board is worth repairing or not within 10 mins,
OF course i get stuck at phones ( my specialty) for longer than that and thats the reason why i am watching your video about IRDA SMD rework station LOL...dont get angry bro :-)))
This subject is more than a year old now yet still holds true. I just want to say thanks for saying all you said about the logic pertaining to the business of component level repair and BGA rework. I can not remember the last time i used my costly BGA rework station. Why? For the very reasons you stated. BGA rework is not guaranteed to work the first time around, nor are the chips. I am sure to make more replacing 2 DC power jacks in one attempt than two attempts at a failed BGA rework.
+Doc Falworth yes!
You are a smart guy, have a lot of thoughts, love it and love your video, keep going on.
great vlog everyday i learn something new either a repair or a business prospective
thank you Louis
Thank you very much for the tips and ideas, im planning to open a small repair shop myself and your advice on eliminating time waste on inadequate time/pay ratio repairs will really help me in future. :)
60fps? awesome. video quality is pretty good in general.
M1zzu q Thank you! RUclips still sodomizes t, but I am happy with what comes out. Getting some cheap covers for the overbearing LEDs in my office was helpful.
I understand your position. When my SMD stuff fails I evaluate if the repair is feasible. Most of the time I just buy new stuff.
Hi John, I was wondering if you can tell me where you buy your new chips. I would really appreciate it.
Thanks, good video! (When are you going to fix the Dell XPS 1530's nvidia chipset from the laptop behind you in the closet, it's been there for ages haha :)
Danny Grob NEVER!!!!!! That's for my uncle, and he knows it is going to sit there until the end of eternity.....
Louis, have you ever looked into just using solder paste and/or BGA rework stencils?
I design electronics and simple solder BGA's on a pre heater plate with a hot air gun when making a prototype board.
love your videos. You've got some really good advice and maaan I feel your frustration :)
There are many many instances where the chips are obtained by Triads robbing them from the supply chain.
Really useful Video , i have the same problem with customers also , they dont understand maybe you will spend 3 Hours for repairing any deceive without result :/
Hey Ross , let me shed light on some more information , from 2015 onwards , both intel and amd have moved to system on a chip (SOC) approach , which means , even if a single power rail on a motherboard gets shorted out or a usb port gets shorted out , the SOC goes bad and you have no other option but to change that SOC as everything is controlled by that single chip and for that a bga rework station is a necessary requirement and without that , your business is done . Please share your views on this point .
+maxinventer once we are at thst point that chip will cost as much as the device itself and this business will be pointless. You also must consider that even as it stands getting major bga chipsets is a crapshoot.
This guy is great. First time seeing his videos.
i love your no bullshit approach you say it as it is mate i am an amateur electronics engineer and i am learning all the time and you are an influence and a mentor to me. keep up the good work ....i hate apple stuff .......@@@kim@@@@
Finally!!! Honesty +1
I've been googling for CIC and EBest but I really don't think that I have found them. I'm going to try to get into board repair soon and I'm just trying to gather as much info as possible. Can someone give a link to these sites?
If this is where your stuck, don't proceed.
True on getting bad chips. If it's small, I now make a castellated board and install a comparable chip I can find from Mouser or Digikey. Because usually they have a different pin assignment.
2021 Should I buy a BGA rework machine for my repair shop?
BGA work was always a waste of time, looking back I should have said no to customers for this type work.
nozynoz What were your experiences that led you towards that conclusion? I would love to hear!
Louis RossmannFirst of all, Thank you for your great work and time.
Like you stated in this and previous presentations, its all about the time and reward. I did a number of machines starting by re-flowing then moving onto re-balling to replacing BGA chips and not forgetting the mods on the cases. The results were always poor rate of success and returns, never felt happy take payment as I could never guarantee a solid solution. Finally, in the end I accepted and told the "truth" it's is not worth the time and money. My conclusion most units are designed to fail, BGA being. "key component". Tracing a fault is far more rewarding and guaranteed success, again Time in relation to reward.
Was this mostly with GPUs or with other types of chipsets as well?
Louis Rossmann Main repair failures were around the GPU, rest of the boards pretty much straight forward. But over all, "instinct" usually tells you how bad the laptop is. For example, external condition moving onto internal condition, what are the vents like, how blocked they are. Then what are the symptoms!. Then only then, I will proceed with a re-flow of the GPU nothing else is on offer, everything else not economical for GPU related work. Generally the answer sorry, but no. To honest my views are that most new laptops developed for a life span of 18 months, Flex in Plastics being first being destroyed. After all that, Dude "your the man".
Right after the warranty is over. Curious... Strange coincidence
Mousers service is great - FedEx Express worldwide awesome !
Can you do the video about why you don't like AMD, I am curious because people I talk to have varying opinions about amd
I don't like AMD because they haven't made a competitive product in years, Intel has been sodomizing them without even trying. It's easy to talk shit when you're competing against a prescott P4 but they've been eating their words for almost ten years now.
+Louis Rossmann I know what you mean, though I am more willing to give ten sympathy since their stuff is much cheaper
camtheham13 I loved my opteron 165 i had running at 2.7 GHz, and my 3000+ that did 2.4 ghz quietly. I wish they made good stuff again.. they don't though :(
+Louis Rossmann they need to update their fx line to Ddr 4 and to be competitive with the latest i7s
intel has a better chip quality
Sorry for my lack of knowledge... i am just involved with databases and software analyses, dont know anything about those electronics at all. All i know is that BGA's been causing lots of pain on people who use notebook. I once bought a notebook with an AMD 6990m 2gb (around 2011 or 2012). Started seeing artifacts on the screen and all those things. Tried repairing like 2 or 3 times. Each one of those repairs costed me 850. Ended up dead and everybody didnt even want to touch it and try to repair. I watched your video and it made me understand them. Perfectly. I would do the same as they did now that i understood. What i would like to understand is why... just why BGAs give us so many issues? Is it still a concern now-days that (i guess) the technology might have improved? I suddenly decided to give it a chance (after years of psychological treatment to cure me from the trauma from having another notebook).... i decided to give it a change and bought a notebook. Now to my awful surprise, i found out that now-days even the processors are coming in BGA! ... An INTEL i7 !!! i looked at myself and said - "What?? My processor is in a BGA? No... this cant be happening". Been trying to find answers , but no one seems to even want to give me attention and read and answer my questions.....i would love if somebody could clarify me if BGA issues still a concern...if it has improved along side with the technology improvements.... if there is any temperature i can take as a red line so i can monitor and take care it doesnt ever get past that so i can guarantee my job's been done?... I mean,i am just worried
I think the problem is the overall product design. BGA by itself isn't a bad technique. I suppose the pc manufacturers just allow their chips to run too hot. It's a consideration of how much speed you can get out of it vs how many people will actually run it at that capacity all the time. So if enough users don't run their laptops at full potential, it's acceptable for the manufacturer if a small portion actually doesn't live up to the proposed performance for a long time..
BGA is pretty much the standard for high pin-count ICs on motherboards which aren't designed to be replaceable, for e.g. laptop CPUs/GPUs, GPUs on graphics cards, etc. You can get a lot more pins connected that way compared to something like QFN, so that's why they're used. The only problem is that you can't easily tell if it's soldered down correctly like you can with QFN and you need to reball the chip using solder balls instead of just soldering on the pad like any other component. So you need dedicated machines and high powered hot air stations to deal with them, and most of all, time, which makes it a lot harder to justify in a repair shop environment where time is money
If I had a way to get these chips from the company that makes them AND be authorized by them to do this would you buy them from me? (and which chips would you want). Also do you think many other repair shops would want these chips?
Are you kidding? People all around the world trying to get genuinely working chipsets from companies that makes them.Even i would buy..
I don't know why but Louis makes my selfasteem go up in smoke.
After i watch him i feel.like im shit and all i can is flip burgers.
I feel the same, but without the burgers.
nice interesting vids. thanks.
Please recommend me a BGA rework station for mobile phone repair. I have seen in your video one unit.
My budget is not open to something more than 4K
Where can i buy a bga rework station with alignment tool. I bought one on aliexpress and got scammed $3400
A good one again.
Would right to repair make apple sell you the chips you need?
My 2011 macbook pro is GPU failure.... How can I fix it through you..... Please help....?
Is this still valid in 2021?
hi louis! i have a samsung np550, and here, on brazil, anybody help me. maybe my bga is failing. the laptop turn on somentimes and die again for a long time. before this hapend i se aome interferences on screen.
it is possible remove the dedicate video (remove the bga chip) and only use the intel integrate? tks
Link for zamo
could anyone plz tell me a hot air and solder station I could buy for less then 50 bucks plz it would really mean a lot if u could tell me and if u can't still ty
to be honest with you mate anything you find under $100 for both hot air or soldering station isn't really gonna be good for repairs like mobos/GPUs etc. Some soldering stations are good but a lot of cheap hot air stations won't have the power you need, and you'll end up cooking every other component waiting for a chip to come off (I thought an 858D would be good enough for even some small chips, and man, i learnt it the hard way). I recommend BST-863 or Atten ST-862D which are over $100 but well worth it in my opinion. No clue on soldering stations though.
are you in KC?
AMD is garbage.
jeremiah9561 Yeah. I have an R9 280x in my desktop that is decent, useless in Linux compared to VDPAU, but decent. But the processors are complete trash in terms of the high end consumer market, they will not be competing with Intel again for a long time. :(
Louis Rossmann Yep, when I interned at a computer store, the boss was telling me way back when intel CPU's were still locked and AMD's weren't, people would overclock the hell out of a cheap AMD CPU up to spec of a higher clocked one which would cause them to literally catch on fire. He hasn't used AMD since, and AMD support is terrible, another reason I won't be making a purchase from them for a long time.
Louis Rossmann Hard to compete when you've got very little resources compared to intel/nvidia - i'm amazed that they can fund any r&d at all. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that AMD's new Zen architecture (2016) will actually be good.
kr239 Time will tell with these types of projects
I very like AMD because it brought me lots of business