Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

[BalkanBoy]

Hi guys,

I bought this laptop with shorted PCH (SRJAU), it's 10th gen Core i7 ans RTX3060, lovely machine.

Problem is ofc, it doesn't work after PCH replacement.

My question is if it's necessary to do some clean me procedure or something else on these newer platforms?

I must say I believe PCH is soldered properly and chip looks fine. I can find 1.05V, 1.35V, 1.8V and 3.3V on little capacitors on PCH itself, that's without pressing power button. On BIOS chip I got 1.8V as well.

When I press power button nothing happens for about 5-6 seconds and than briefly I get power LED, and whole motherboard gets power (CPU/GPU/RAM), but just for a part of second.

Nothing else is shorted as far as I can see.

Other problem is that I cannot read BIOS chip with my programmer TL866II Plus, it can read device ID but it says chip is not supported. BIOS chip is GigaDevice 25LR128D which indeed is 1.8V chip.

Besides that problem, I got problem with finding ANY bios dump.

Another thing is I got one more device, very similar, slightly different motherboard, gtx 1660ti chip with same symptoms. That one has original PCH.

Another strange thing is that with BIOS chip desoldered from motherboard, device acts the same. 5sec nothing, 1sec light and power and that's it.

Any clue guys?? Please help!

[SMDFlea]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

My question is if it's necessary to do some clean me procedure or something else on these newer platforms?

Besides that problem, I got problem with finding ANY bios dump.

Other problem is that I cannot read BIOS chip with my programmer TL866II Plus, it can read device ID but it says chip is not supported. BIOS chip is GigaDevice 25LR128D which indeed is 1.8V chip

Select another 1.8V chip, untick check-ID .

Post your bios request here -> https://www.badcaps.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=40 .

After changing the PCH its necessary to clean the ME firmware. There`s some guides if you want to have a go at it yourself -> https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...41&postcount=3

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

Hi, thanks for pointing me on those links but could you clarify few more things to me?

I got CSME 14 and OEM hash key inputed in Platform protection section.
Do I have to do anything about it or I should just replace ME Region section and build it?

Please do understand latest tutorial is realted to CSME 11 and I don't know if anything changed meanwhile, and do I have to do some more steps to make whole thing functional?

I uploaded both original dump and FIT outimage so if you can take a look I would appreciate it.

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=114936

Thanks!

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

I'm asking because it doesn't work with image I created, everything is same. Just want to be sure I did everything good before I put blame to chinese PCH or something else.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

If you are certain you fitted 100% BRAND NEW PCH chip and the soldering is corrrect, you can lift the blame off the PCH and look elsewhere.

What I do on chips with tiny and closely spaced balls like these is give them another full LF reflow after they have at least 1h at room temperature and a tiny tiny push while watching with a camera with a zoom lens on and good lighting, to be triple sure they're soldered down correctly, but if your board is in good condition, your chip comes from a reliable supplier and your BGA equipment is high end, this may not be necessary.

I do not think it is the BIOS, either. Even with a damaged/incorrect/"dirty" ME region, it should still POST and boot fine, just take 10-45 seconds longer to do and it will sit there for about 5-30 sec with no screen backlight, no kb backlight (if it has one), no rgb leds (if any) and no picture. Then it will continue as normal. A ME region that needs cleaning is just an annoyance, not a fault in itself. Not on consumer machines. Corporate is a different story, some admins DO actually use the advanced functionality available from the ME and AMT - but those also have a much bigger ME region.

You said you had PCH short on 1.8V. Also you found BIOS chip dead which is also 1.8V. This, along with the fact that your board does two things: jack and s*** indicates to me that there was, and most likely still is, a bigger issue going on with the 1.8V power supply.

What I would do right now is grab that bench PSU, wire it up to the 1.8V rail of the motherboard, leave all and any peripherals ON AND ATTACHED TO THE BOARD, that means if the RAM is removable, you leave the RAM in the slots. Same goes for any NVME drives and RGB lighting. SATA disk you can remove, it's annoying when it wobbles around and you can drop it or break a cable. Power adapter and battery DISCONNECTED.

Set your bench power supply to 1.8V flat and a currrent limit of 0.1-0.2A to start with. See if anything gets hot. Have a thermal camera? Use it. Don't have one? You don't need it. Nothing getting hot but bench PS being loaded down? Increase current limit until the voltage climbs back up to 1.8V, then wait. Go to the toilet, have a smoke, coffee, beer, fix another board, whatever floats your boat. Then come back and feel all over, see what's the thing getting a touch warmer than it should.

I'm going to leave the real killer bad news for the end. My money, if I were to bet, would be that whatever killed the PCH and BIOS, also took out the 1.8v auxiliary silicon of that CPU. Most likely, "It's dead, Jim". Sorry.

[rediii]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

If you are certain you fitted 100% BRAND NEW PCH chip and the soldering is corrrect, you can lift the blame off the PCH and look elsewhere.

What I do on chips with tiny and closely spaced balls like these is give them another full LF reflow after they have at least 1h at room temperature and a tiny tiny push while watching with a camera with a zoom lens on and good lighting, to be triple sure they're soldered down correctly, but if your board is in good condition, your chip comes from a reliable supplier and your BGA equipment is high end, this may not be necessary.

I do not think it is the BIOS, either. Even with a damaged/incorrect/"dirty" ME region, it should still POST and boot fine, just take 10-45 seconds longer to do and it will sit there for about 5-30 sec with no screen backlight, no kb backlight (if it has one), no rgb leds (if any) and no picture. Then it will continue as normal. A ME region that needs cleaning is just an annoyance, not a fault in itself. Not on consumer machines. Corporate is a different story, some admins DO actually use the advanced functionality available from the ME and AMT - but those also have a much bigger ME region.

You said you had PCH short on 1.8V. Also you found BIOS chip dead which is also 1.8V. This, along with the fact that your board does two things: jack and s*** indicates to me that there was, and most likely still is, a bigger issue going on with the 1.8V power supply.

What I would do right now is grab that bench PSU, wire it up to the 1.8V rail of the motherboard, leave all and any peripherals ON AND ATTACHED TO THE BOARD, that means if the RAM is removable, you leave the RAM in the slots. Same goes for any NVME drives and RGB lighting. SATA disk you can remove, it's annoying when it wobbles around and you can drop it or break a cable. Power adapter and battery DISCONNECTED.

Set your bench power supply to 1.8V flat and a currrent limit of 0.1-0.2A to start with. See if anything gets hot. Have a thermal camera? Use it. Don't have one? You don't need it. Nothing getting hot but bench PS being loaded down? Increase current limit until the voltage climbs back up to 1.8V, then wait. Go to the toilet, have a smoke, coffee, beer, fix another board, whatever floats your boat. Then come back and feel all over, see what's the thing getting a touch warmer than it should.

I'm going to leave the real killer bad news for the end. My money, if I were to bet, would be that whatever killed the PCH and BIOS, also took out the 1.8v auxiliary silicon of that CPU. Most likely, "It's dead, Jim". Sorry.

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

If you are certain you fitted 100% BRAND NEW PCH chip and the soldering is corrrect, you can lift the blame off the PCH and look elsewhere.

What I do on chips with tiny and closely spaced balls like these is give them another full LF reflow after they have at least 1h at room temperature and a tiny tiny push while watching with a camera with a zoom lens on and good lighting, to be triple sure they're soldered down correctly, but if your board is in good condition, your chip comes from a reliable supplier and your BGA equipment is high end, this may not be necessary.

I do not think it is the BIOS, either. Even with a damaged/incorrect/"dirty" ME region, it should still POST and boot fine, just take 10-45 seconds longer to do and it will sit there for about 5-30 sec with no screen backlight, no kb backlight (if it has one), no rgb leds (if any) and no picture. Then it will continue as normal. A ME region that needs cleaning is just an annoyance, not a fault in itself. Not on consumer machines. Corporate is a different story, some admins DO actually use the advanced functionality available from the ME and AMT - but those also have a much bigger ME region.

You said you had PCH short on 1.8V. Also you found BIOS chip dead which is also 1.8V. This, along with the fact that your board does two things: jack and s*** indicates to me that there was, and most likely still is, a bigger issue going on with the 1.8V power supply.

What I would do right now is grab that bench PSU, wire it up to the 1.8V rail of the motherboard, leave all and any peripherals ON AND ATTACHED TO THE BOARD, that means if the RAM is removable, you leave the RAM in the slots. Same goes for any NVME drives and RGB lighting. SATA disk you can remove, it's annoying when it wobbles around and you can drop it or break a cable. Power adapter and battery DISCONNECTED.

Set your bench power supply to 1.8V flat and a currrent limit of 0.1-0.2A to start with. See if anything gets hot. Have a thermal camera? Use it. Don't have one? You don't need it. Nothing getting hot but bench PS being loaded down? Increase current limit until the voltage climbs back up to 1.8V, then wait. Go to the toilet, have a smoke, coffee, beer, fix another board, whatever floats your boat. Then come back and feel all over, see what's the thing getting a touch warmer than it should.

I'm going to leave the real killer bad news for the end. My money, if I were to bet, would be that whatever killed the PCH and BIOS, also took out the 1.8v auxiliary silicon of that CPU. Most likely, "It's dead, Jim". Sorry.

Hi Jim, thank you for showing interest in my pain

1st of all I think you got it wrong, my BIOS chip isn't dead, I just couldn't read it but I solved that part by updating programmer application, now it's all good.
I uploaded here bios dump and clean ME outimage I did, but moderator removed it.
2nd thing is I removed that PCH almost year ago so got no idea on which part exactly it was shorted. New PCH looks good, it's got all voltages and resistances also looks fine.

I did reflowed it once more using more flux and 10 celisus higher temp, but nothing changed.

Now what I do not understand is next:

1. Why upon pressing power button nothing happens for at least 5 seconds and then it powers on CPU/GPU for brief moment, shouldn't CPU get power immediately or measured in milliseconds?

2. How come same thing happens with BIOS chip removed from motherboard? Shouldn't EC communicate with BIOS before powering on CPU?

3. Strange thing is that I got nearly same machine with identical problem, only difference is that machine wasn't touched except somebody already tried to flash BIOS, don't you find that strange?

On both machines looks like typical BIOS problem but it obviously isn't.

I need to add I got thermal camera and nothing gets hot. On that brief moment where CPU gets power it gets hotter only 4-5 celsius above room temperature.

Have you got any other thoughts on this?
Thanks

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

Hi Jim, thank you for showing interest in my pain

No worries, I'm also Balkan and I respect the hustle and also any job where the employee goes the extra mile and uses his spare time at work to try and figure out difficult jobs that others would have written off years ago. The rest of your post confirms this.

1st of all I think you got it wrong, my BIOS chip isn't dead, I just couldn't read it but I solved that part by updating programmer application, now it's all good.

Great. I got nothing wrong - GigaDevice is in the business of manufacturing bullshit - in 11 years of BIOS flashing and consumer electronics repair, I have never seen more sensitive and finicky BIOS chips than theirs, and they're a new player. Toss that sucker where it belongs - IN THE TRASH BIN - and fit a real BIOS chip.

Try a Winbond FV or FW or Macronix MX whatever capacity and 1.8V rating, go download yourself a datasheet. Those are guaranteed to actually do the job of being a BIOS chip and not give you unexpected and unwanted warranty work in your shop.

I uploaded here bios dump and clean ME outimage I did, but moderator removed it.

1 year is a long time, I am sure you still have that BIOS dump saved on the computer in your shop so it is all good. You can upload it on Google Drive or your favorite free file host and PM me the link and I'll take a peek at it tomorrow.

2nd thing is I removed that PCH almost year ago so got no idea on which part exactly it was shorted. New PCH looks good, it's got all voltages and resistances also looks fine.

Good. Leave it alone then.

I did reflowed it once more using more flux and 10 celisus higher temp, but nothing changed.

Very, very good. Triple reason to never touch that PCH again with anything else than a multimeter probe or a temperature sensor. It's fine. The fault is elsewhere.

Now what I do not understand is next:

1. Why upon pressing power button nothing happens for at least 5 seconds and then it powers on CPU/GPU for brief moment, shouldn't CPU get power immediately or measured in milliseconds?

Because starting from 4th gen U series (ULV - Ultra Low Voltage aka bullshit) integrated CPU/PCH packages things started getting weird and Intel chips w/ UMA GFX, which were known as tanks, started failing by the DOZENS, and then with 6th gen H series, the big behemoths, Skylake, things started getting weirder there too, you buy laptop with big, beefy, 45W, H series gaming CPU... and the godddamn thing dies 3 months out of the 2 year warranty. Seen one too many. Not funny.

They're just that - weird. 4th gen U are absolute bullshit, some 5th gen U have success and reliability with reballing IF you are the first to touch the board and have the right tools and big enough preheat and wide top on your BGA station, I've done a few. None have come back in for warranty work. But I still absolutely hate them.

2. How come same thing happens with BIOS chip removed from motherboard? Shouldn't EC communicate with BIOS before powering on CPU?

Because your CPU has most likely gone the way of the dodo bird last year.

3. Strange thing is that I got nearly same machine with identical problem, only difference is that machine wasn't touched except somebody already tried to flash BIOS, don't you find that strange?

On both machines looks like typical BIOS problem but it obviously isn't.

Dead CPU, again. In an invisible and (mostly) unmeasurable way. I'm not surprised at all.

I need to add I got thermal camera and nothing gets hot.

Nail in the coffin for that motherboard right there. I already told you you do NOT need the thermal camera if you don't have it, right? That Intel 10th Gen processor is deader than a doornail. Let it rest in peace.

[SMDFlea]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

I uploaded here bios dump and clean ME outimage I did, but moderator removed it.

If you read your PM you know i moved it to the "Bios requests ONLY" sub forum,where all bios requests should go. As nobody has replied to your thread yet you can bump it up by posting "bump" ,and i`m sure someone will help

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

Don't worry, Mr. Mod, I'm sure he got the message if it's been almost a whiole calendar year. His CPU is dead. Better luck next time.

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

If you read your PM you know i moved it to the "Bios requests ONLY" sub forum,where all bios requests should go. As nobody has replied to your thread yet you can bump it up by posting "bump" ,and i`m sure someone will help

I've asked someone who knows the job to check my cleaned ME bios if it's all good just to be sure I don't need to look there anymore and continue inspecting other parts of the board, I didn't ask for anything else like other bios dump or requests. But it's ok, nevermind. My board is obviously gone for good anyway.

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

Don't worry, Mr. Mod, I'm sure he got the message if it's been almost a whiole calendar year. His CPU is dead. Better luck next time.

I do it for fun mate, I bought that laptop long long ago but with 3 kids and full time job it's difficult to find time to mess with thosr chinese suckers. I got at least 15 incomplete laptops from past 2 years

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

I'm sure if you dig and meter 3 more days you'll come to the same conclusion as I did in 30 minutes by reading, judging what I read and from my own work experience. The CPU is gone. Keep that board for spares.

I understand. You have put in the time, the elbow grease and the money with the new parts. It is painful and frustrating to see a very expensive part just... do nothing, have a failure in an invisible and extremely un-obvious way, even for an experienced tech. You refuse to believe that it's dead. But you KNOW it is. You have both the experience and the tools and you have already spent the time on it. You know IT. IS. DEAD. And my name is not Jim.

Just let it go and fix other boards and make 3x the money with the stuff you pull off this one.

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

I'm sure if you dig and meter 3 more days you'll come to the same conclusion as I did in 30 minutes by reading, judging what I read and from my own work experience. The CPU is gone. Keep that board for spares.

I understand. You have put in the time, the elbow grease and the money with the new parts. It is painful and frustrating to see a very expensive part just... do nothing, have a failure in an invisible and extremely un-obvious way, even for an experienced tech. You refuse to believe that it's dead. But you KNOW it is. You have both the experience and the tools and you have already spent the time on it. You know IT. IS. DEAD. And my name is not Jim.

Just let it go and fix other boards and make 3x the money with the stuff you pull off this one.

Yeah, it's frustrating but I'm not going to give up yet because of other laptop I was talking about. When PCH dies it's very common to kill CPU as well, but other laptop wasn't touched, wasn't shorted or anything. Both boards look good as new, they haven't been used heavily so I can't accept CPU died just like that on both boards.

Anyway, I misread your post, now I see you were referring on Star Trek :P
Sorry about calling you Jim.

Cheers!

[mon2]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

now I see you were referring on Star Trek :P

And we all know that (CPU) resistance is futile.

[BalkanBoy]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

I've found one guy on russian forum with similar laptop, same problem. He said he managed to get board running by replacing PCH from Tongfang donor board, PCH he ordered didn't seem to work with his board. How to explain that?

[wacd]

Re: Tongfang GM7MG0P doesn't boot, PCH replaced. Please help!

I've found one guy on russian forum with similar laptop, same problem. He said he managed to get board running by replacing PCH from Tongfang donor board, PCH he ordered didn't seem to work with his board. How to explain that?

I do believe SR40B and SRJAU PCH's went through some Revisions which caused this diversity. It's very hard to find a pch that our highness Tong Fang likes. Bu i'm not so sure its the board itself causing the problems.

Nothing happens after pushing the power button , then the board powers up after 10-20 seconds , goes up to 0.35A then shuts off.

Pinpoint identification of the problem is this :

"PCH doesn't send Chipselect signal CS0# to SPI hence can't read the bios."

The question is , why won't the pch send the Chip select?

[girleisson]

Sorry to leave this message here in this rather old post, but I believe it will help anyone who arrives here with the same problem. These PCHs have programmable fuses. Search for Field Programmable Fuses (FPFs) and Bootguard. Intel doesn't want to help repairers.

[tomodachi]

Sorry to leave this message here in this rather old post, but I believe it will help anyone who arrives here with the same problem. These PCHs have programmable fuses. Search for Field Programmable Fuses (FPFs) and Bootguard. Intel doesn't want to help repairers.

"Intel ® Boot Guard is a feature that aids boot-execution integrity through a
chain of trust. Each module is designed to authenticate and load the next
module in the boot sequence, starting from the platform root of trust. Intel ®
CSME enables storing the Intel ® Boot Guard policy in PCH Field-Programmable
Fuses (FPF), so that the user can be more confident that the system is running
an authentic, OEM BIOS."

Which translates as middle finger for us repairers..