User Review How a dead GFX Card is made alive professionally.

How a dead GFX Card is made alive professionally.

In this article I will show you how a dead graphics card is repaired. No oven baking, no do-it-yourself type trikes, just a pure professional repairs.
Meet the victim, my old no display, dead ATI-Radeon X1650 graphics card.

SI8zWca.jpg


Removing the heat sink.
CLn2O4k.jpg

ut9h8t7.jpg

NhpdqQx.jpg


Thermal compound on the chip cleaned.
9jmUOhY.jpg


Now circuit board is installed on a BGA chip reflow machine.
6tk9uJW.jpg


Heater head mounted properly.
5H3zvqN.jpg


Machine in action
cG0T5Ji.jpg


Within a minute chip is out.
CEt9EJO.jpg


There is very little space between chip and circuit board approx. 0.1mm still you can see their is dust under the chip. This dust, heat and moisture together sometimes oxides and breaks these fine connection resulting a GPU failure.
AWkM6NW.jpg


Chip is mounted on a reballing mount.
NkbxtO0.jpg


You can see many connection pins have gone black due to dust and oxide layer.
mc7vRX6.jpg


Heat cleaning the chip connection terminal.
F7EYxVq.jpg

6uhe1nJ.jpg

WbBtM7P.jpg

ybGFuqj.jpg


Preparing the chip for new BGA soldering balls. Flux, 0.6mm lead free soldering BGA balls and grid.
VBTOEcs.jpg


Some close look on BGA soldering balls
xV5utqN.jpg

S93ofI0.jpg

4G0kjfs.jpg

VlHrz9H.jpg


Grid aliened, chip ready for reballing.
z2zsxPC.jpg

gj3nyLn.jpg


Ball properly falls into place.
y1t0iNc.jpg


All missed holes are carefully populated with a ball using a fine needle.
Nm4WXkd.jpg


Perfect. New shiny ball are in place. Looks nice
FF6uUNP.jpg

yoDPr7a.jpg


Little heat for removal of any excise flux applied during the ball placement stage.
GcnvL5p.jpg


Now chip is carefully placed back on the circuit and controlled heat is applied for re-soldering.
VOL9EOP.jpg


Perfect chip re-soldering
zhcSpwL.jpg

wPLqIj7.jpg


New thermal compound is applied and heat sink installed.
cGABFAM.jpg

D5oAsXv.jpg


Test system ready. Now is the time that will show whether the GPU is back to life or gone forever.
hlghiZY.jpg


It’s live.. Success.
rtekl9T.jpg

kpUJtA2.jpg


Some GTA san andreas run shows that GPU is 100% fine.

Hope you like this article.

Regards
Rakesh Sharma

Source / More Info
 
Last edited:
I am AWESTRUCK !
yes that is some Repair Porn!

any chance you'd open a No Warranty, GPU Necro/Zombification service? (for a decent fee of course)
 
Really loved the post.! By the way, where is the machine available? in mumbai?? I heard that in laptop services, major failures are of graphic chips & reflowing/ reballing is done to rectify the same. Thanks for posting!
 
Hey rakesh, do you have any pics of the card minus the processor installed on top of it? Like what does the card look like without the processing chip installed on it?
 
How do I like this? HOW DO I LIKE THIS ?!!!!

Awesomeance at work - the joy of seeing a dead Gfx card come alive is worth all this effort !!! terrific work Rakesh !!
 
So I am getting many PMs asking for GFX repair.

OK If you want a GFX Card repair , first I want to make some points clear.
  • You have to pay shipping to and for, to city Jodhpur..
  • Rs.500 each will be charged only if card get fixed.(money goes to machine owner)
  • No warranty on repair.
  • Will have to give me time of more than 2-3 weeks as have access to machine on Sundays only.
  • Dont send fully burned cards..

******Shipping risk is all yours.

If all fine for you PM me.
 
Question - in the case of my faulty card I think its a RAM chip thats gone wonky rather than the GPU itself.

The GPU boots fine, runs for a while and then over time, vertical "glitches" tend to start forming on screen.

Can you fix a potentially faulty RAM chip as well and if so, how much would this cost?

Do let me know...
 
Replacing GPU chip or RAM chip is not possible cos spare chips are not available. Chip manufacturers provide chips to only OEM guys.. So only connection or power related issues can be attended.
 
Back
Top