This may or may not pertain your exact problem, but I have seem many similar threads about GPU repair, mostly reballing. I also once went down the rabbit hole checking all sorts of problems, and eventually failing... just to have reballing as my last resort and it work. Feel free to ignore this post if you want, but I really do think it could help this type of topic to have someone test out the below.
A bit of back story and rationale: These type issues have annoyed me a lot.
This is another of
many such threads. More often than not, people just get into arguments, leaving the problem unsolved or half-assed. There are some who insist that nothing less than spending hours on a full reverse-engineered schematic to find the exact cause is the only way, others who go straight for the reball because most of the time the problem is ultimately an open/short from heat stress on the BGA, and the third group who say no matter what you do it's temporary so don't mess with large BGA 's. I think all three methods have their logical flaws based on assumptions that aren't necessarily well-founded.
GPU's, especially the r9 series (I have one myself) and similar AMD cards, run quite hot and oxidize the solder from repeated reheating and cooling, esp with the lead-free solder that they use for ROHS compliance. I've "reballed" several GPU's and have had mixed success. I've had more success where I added pressure and increased cooling/airflow as part of the repair process.
These cards are manufactured professionally using solder, so it is possible to do it properly. The question is, HOW to do it properly (without professional equipment)? Anyone have any tips?
Perhaps he is not getting it hot enough (lots of thermal mass to heat up)? Perhaps the solder is too oxidized already... so how would one go about taking care of the oxidation? Would it be possible to just add a lot of flux
around the BGA before reballing, thus chemically taking care of the oxidation? Would it be possible to do a Rossman-style BGA removal and reinstallation with more standard tools? By that I mean a basic hot air gun and some kapton tape.
is the type of technique I'm talking about. That and some
solder paste.
It seems perfectly doable, with the main question being thermal capacity needed vs what your hot air system can produce. I've reballed GPU BGA's with my 300w
Radioshack heat gun before with success, but I don't know if it would take more heat to remove the GPU and resolder with fresh solder paste. Any input? I usually get the BGA quite hot (and protect other stuff with kapton tape) when I reball, and so far everything is still holding up... in other words, I don't have any non-functional boards to test with.
It would be very valuable service to the forum if someone with experience trying those things (on consumer setups, preferably) would chime in, or if someone would be willing to try those things and report the results.
Or, should I just assume that people will argue no matter what and nothing will ever change. :p
(I've checked the code and I don't see any errors... I don't know why that one video is embedding itself instead of being displayed properly as a link.)