Thursday 5 August 2010

Baking the Geforce Go 6800 on my (plagued) Fujitsu Siemens Amilio 3438G via reflow soldering technique.

I was getting severe graphics failure very similar to the garbled dos screens here before even booting into Windows. Blue, grey artifacts and whiteouts after the Windaz splash screen.
Having convinced my other half that we needed a new lappy, I ignored the pile of poo for a whole year before attempting to bring it back into commission.
I came across a forum that suggested this technique, the advice really was quite unbelievable, however, the thing is dead, sticking needles into it couldn't possibly hurt it anymore, so, what the fk, I surmised.

This is the procedure.

Equipment:
very small screwdriver and normal screwdriver, same as you would to tighten your glasses
foil
oven


First thing, remove the back of your zombie machine.


This is the first part to remove, the heatsinks, you will need two screwdriver sizes.
In this model, the unit is responsible for dissipating the heat from two chip units.



Be sure to remove the power lead,



It looks like this afterwards



Next, remove the graphics card. It is the thing that fills up most of the next image,



The culprit by the way,



Both bits detached are like this,




Ventilate your kitchen, open windows or switch on extractor hood and cover exposed food.

Get a baking tray and scrunch up four balls of foil to rest on top,



And alight the mutt on the foil balls so for Doric pillar-esque support

Like so,



Oven will have been pre-heated to 190 deg Celsius please.

In it goes, leave for 7 minutes



Freshly baked,  open oven door, wafting away the toxic fumes,
Reflow soldering on BGA is now complete.
Let it rest for 10 mins to set properly.
Reassemble card and heatsinks.
Take this opportunity to clear out the dust from the innards of the lappy.

Voila, lappy a la soufflé, est rené.

It worked, I was amazed.

Carry out this procedure at your own risk, and at last resort.