You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Wrong. I have here a low-end Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo. An absolute pile of turd. Celeron M 440 1.86GHz, 768MB RAM (1GB, but it seems the onboard video lends itself to a rather generous 256MB), S3 video, only one speaker...

Would freeze upon trying to boot. Suspected HDD, tried to run HDD Regenerator, it failed to recognize the controller. Ran Victoria - scan came up clean. When trying the seek test i lifted the machine so i could get out of bed - and it froze with some flickering pixels on screen. Hey wait a second...

Rebooted it and hey presto - it booted into Windows. As soon as i moved it tho it froze with subtly flickering colors. The colors almost look like the LCD ribbon was bad - but there's no way a bad LCD ribbon can freeze a computer, so i'm definitely looking at a failed video chip. Today's menu will be S3 graphics. Yum.

RoHS sucks.

[c_hegge]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

Well well well, I never knew S3 graphics would get hot enough to crack RoHS solder. I've come accross a few motherboard with VIA chipsets and onboard S3 Savage graphics. Even without a heat sink, they would only get warm to touch, although if they're using desktop graphics in a laptop, that might just do it.

Reminds me of an old ASUS laptop I saw at work once. It had a 3.2GHz P4 Prescott desktop CPU. It The fan would always fun really loud and if you closed the lid while it was running, it would overheat and shut off.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

Now it sometimes works, sometimes won't even power up and beeps angrily at me. If i press hard on the right side (where the heatsink is) it runs fine. Definitely failed solder.

Oh yes i do remember the P4 desktop replacements. Unless you lived in Alaska or had air conditioning they were unusable.

[c_hegge]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

I honestly don't know what drugs ASUS were on when they decided to put a prescott CPU in a laptop. They're hard enough to cool in desktops. I have seen a couple of those desktop replacments with northwood CPUs, though, and some were actually OK, even here in Aus.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

Here's what we get for cooling the northbridge/GPU... Are you shittin me? Btw that black thing in the middle is a rubber foot making sure the NB heatsink presses on the cover when it's on, basically guaranteeing the board is going to flex when the laptop is moved. Outrageous.

After i took the board out i realized why they put that piece of rubber in: the board is ridiculously thin and flexes very easily, so they thought it's gonna provide some support. It's dead now btw.

Going to return this as "not worth fixing". Searching ebay.co.uk found 16 listings, 2 of which were for cables, 13 dead boards and only one good board listed for what it isn't worth. Googling for "amilo li 1705 motherboard" finds a number of people with the same issue, so a new board will just die again eventually... Consumerism at its finest. It lived past its warranty... and that was it.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

The owner has no use for a broken laptop, so i get to keep it for the time being. I guess i'll be giving a shot at reballing the sucker... i'll order some stencils and leaded solder balls and see what happens.

In this case i think the reason is mechanical rather than thermal. The mainboard is WAY too thin.

[momaka]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

I honestly don't know what drugs ASUS were on when they decided to put a prescott CPU in a laptop. They're hard enough to cool in desktops.

Sony did that too. My sister's old laptop has a 2.8 GHz P4 Prescott in it. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to run hot at all, but it sure is crazy loud, though. My guess is that the heatsinks must be of decent size. Then again, that laptop wights almost as much as a SFF desktop, so they better be. And the power brick... it really is a brick. I expect nothing less, though - after all something has got to feed that power hungry CPU. I'm actually surprised it's only rated for 95W.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

Managed to get the chipset off but i think i damaged it (stripped some pads) so i'll have to order a new one. On the positive side, i cleaned up the board real nice and there's no damage to it. And look what i found on ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1x-VIA-VN8...item4aab76a3a9 I like how it sounds. A chipset with Balls.

Just drop in, heat or bake, done.

[momaka]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

And look what i found on ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1x-VIA-VN8...item4aab76a3a9 I like how it sounds. A chipset with Balls.

A manly chipset, I see . Does it like beer too?

[mockingbird]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

What are you using for reflow???

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

Depending on my mood, an average hot air station, or an average oven and a temperature probe. I think i'll be using the oven for this one.

[mockingbird]

Re: You thought only nvidia needed reflow?

Do you have that Kingbo tack flux they use to do reballs or you just use the regular stuff?

Interesting you were able to get a "pre-balled" chip... Balling a chip would be a nightmare without a stencil and some sort of vice to hold the whole thing. And you do absolutely need the tacky solder if you're going to ball it yourself.