100% Working repair for Gateway XHD3000 30" LCD monitor

Hi,

Thanks for replying. I just finished trying the heat gun before reading your reply as there were also pictures in this thread about it so I got more confident using that. I tried the lcd and it didn't have the green lines. I can't believe it. I turned it off after a minute.

Like you said I want to add a fan to it but not sure which one I have to use. You said 80mm is good but some people on this page shows using 120mm ones. Do you think that would be better? I don't mind it if it's not gonna be too much noise.

Also do you guys hook it up inside the lcd's usb ports internally?

Either way though, how do you guys cut the casing and the metal cover? I am not sure if I have the tools for that?

Also you mentioned the scaler board. Is that the one that has the altera chip? What about the RF shield? Sorry I don't know these terms.

Lastly there was a soft sticky plastic on the altera chip. When installing the fan, we take this out, right? So the heat is transferred from the chip directly to the fan/heatsink.


Thanks again.
 
Some people use 40mm fans as they use old Pentium heatsink/fans, but I never liked that as the fan acts as a heat trap if it fails for some reason. I offset my fan so it blows sideways to prevent such an occurance. As a bonus if your monitor is close to a wall (like mine are) the hot air doesn't bounce back onto the monitor. 80mm is sufficient for me, you can use whatever size you like but I found that at 80mm 5V the fan is virtually silent yet the heatsink is cold to the touch even after hours of use, so I think 120mm is probably overkill.

I hook up the fan to a USB cable and plug it into the USB hub for power. The annoying thing about the 305T is that it is a non-powered hub so you have to hook it up to another USB powered hub to run the fan - the XHD3000 has a powered hub so it doesn't have the problem. Other people have wired the fan internally which has the advantage that the fan doesn't run when the monitor is off, but I'm not adventurous enough to try that. To turn my fans off I simply turn off the power bar the monitors are plugged into, which has the extra advantage it saves a little more power as the standby mode does consume a bit of electricity.

I never put the casing back on, it's too much of a heat trap. To cut the RF shield I just use tin snips.

The Altera chip is mounted on the scaler board. The RF shield is the metal casing around the board.

The TIM (Thermal Interface Material) is the sticky stuff. Definitely take it off - I use thermal tape to stick my heatsinks on, that way if I ever have to bake the board again I can easily take off the heatsink and reapply it later.
 
Thanks for replying. I never used 305's USBs but are they not powered? Would it be more tricky to connect the fan internally? Basically I never use standby but physically turn off the monitors when I am gonna be away from more than 20 mins.

I will try to find a tin snip. One of my friend might also have a dremel. Would those cut the casing and the RF shield? I never used one myself so not sure if it actually can.

Also offsetting the fan is interesting. Is the 80mm fan already not bigger than the altera chip? If so, do you cover the whole chip but instead of centering the parts that stay outside the chip, you align one of their corners together?

Lastly can you please send me the link to the fan you used? Because you said heatsink but the fans I found don't have one, i.e. this:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999199

Thanks again.
 
If you read this thread there are people who have wired the fan to the circuit board rather than use a USB connection. I prefer my mods be easy to undo in case of trouble.

A dremel can cut thru the RF shielding if you have the right wheel.

The 80mm fan is much bigger than the chip or the heatsink which is one of the reasons I blow the air sideways. It also cools the RF shield which acts as a heatsink for several other components.

Any 80mm fan will do - I use standard case fans and wire the power cable to a standard USB cable.
 
Thanks alot for replying. I will read the thread now.

Btw last question, so the RF shield acts like a heatsink, right? I din't know that was its purpose.


Cheers.
 
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I secure the fan with cable ties looped thru the ventilation holes in the RF shield - the heatsink is attached to the Altera chip with Sekisui double-sided thermal tape. The fan itself doesn't touch the heatsink, in fact it isn't all that close to the heatsink in order to help cool the RF shield as well as avoid being a heat trap in case of fan failure.

Your link is for someone who needed to put the rear casing back on - I'm not worried about the back being neat and clean and given the amount of heat the scaler board produces I don't want to risk a single point of failure causing the board to overheat, with the back casing off the passive cooling capability increases considerably which buys you time if the fan does fail. The tech in the link had replaced the scaler board and needed a way to make it look neat and nice for his client without risking a second failure. As it is his method still puts the original TIM in the way, which is not very efficient and I worry that the thermal conductivity is insufficient for such a hot chip. I bypass all that stuff and put the heatsink in direct contact with the Altera chip with only a thin layer of double-sided thermal tape in the way. I'm baking the scaler in my oven and presuming that the repair is *NOT* permanent as I'm still using the faulty lead-free solder and not reballing it with a more flexible solder to prevent another failure. I am assuming that I will have to bake the board again at some point (although in my case it has lasted 2 years and counting without any issues) so making it too difficult to remove and bake is in my opinion counterproductive. If I was going to sell the monitor I would consider options that would allow the back casing to be put on, but I cannot in good conscience sell the monitor with a baked scaler as it is a ticking time bomb. If I bought a new scaler board then I could sell the monitor and at that point I'd put the rear casing back on.

I'm seriously considering buying replacement scaler boards for all three of my monitors as they are starting to get scarce and I'm concern that I'll eventually bake a scaler board once too often and it will be literally toast. The only reason I haven't done it yet is that I'm am unsure how long the rest of the monitor will last, I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars in parts if a different part fails. In the 305T's case the power supply capacitors can actually fail before the scaler board does, fortunately they are cheap to replace if you know how to wield a soldering iron. Unfortunately replacing capacitors on the power supply creates a new problem when reselling - in Canada you cannot repair a power supply without it being recertified by the CSA (Canadian Standards Association). If the power supply fails, starts a fire, and burns down your house your insurance company will *NOT* cover the damages because the power supply had been tampered with and not checked for compliance. Fortunately that is not likely on a monitor but it is not impossible especially if you screw up and put the wrong replacement capacitors in. There are kits available on eBay that ensure you have the right replacement caps and they are known good brands that will last much longer than the original faulty caps.

I wonder sometimes how much money I'm really saving trying to revive and keep running these monitors when I can buy new 30" monitors from Korea for $650. Mind you nobody knows how long *THOSE* monitors will last. Dell and HP produce reliable 30" monitors for about $1,000 apiece. I have spent $350 on 3x30" monitors plus using assorted parts lying around my bench (fans, heatsinks, thermal tape, etc.) which is roughly 10% of the price of new, but I have to live with the fact that they can fail at any time and I cannot guarantee I can fix them, keep them fixed, and/or get replacement parts (as they are no longer in production). I will keep my XHD3000 and 305T's going as long as possible, but I will *NOT* buy new parts other than capacitors (which are $20). When they start to fail in ways I cannot fix, I will bite the bullet and purchase new replacements. I'm hoping by then that:

(a) we will know how reliable the Korean models are,
(b) Apple will make retina displays so common that everyone will want a 30" monitor and
(c) the demand for 30" monitors will have driven up production to the point where good 30" monitors are $500 each.

In the meantime I will enjoy 3x30" Eyefinity while it lasts :D
 
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Thanks for your detailed reply. I appreciate it. Funny I also have 3 305s but I only use 2, I got them in place of the first one that's failed. For my work using 3 is overkill, but I can keep it as a backup if I can fix the 2 broken ones :) I also don't have SLI.

Did you do the same fix for all of your LCDs? I would also appreciate it alot, if you can take a pic of one of them from the back so I could see your setup. That would be very cool if you can.

Also did you get your fan and heatsink separate or got one and then separated them yourself? For example this one:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835200042

You are right, I will also leave the back case off, because making it work is more important than aesthetics :)

I thought the time of 30"s was over, like not many companies seem to produce them anymore, no? Before samsung had 3 different 30"s if I am not wrong, not they sell none. 27"s seem to replace it. I really hope in the future 30"s become more popular like you said :)
 
I put the fix in on all 3 of my 30" monitors strictly as preventative medicine.

Taking a picture of the back isn't practical for me as they are very difficult to get at as they are surrounded by other monitors and a wall.

I have tons of old motherboards lying around, I just ripped the Northbridge cooler off one of them and taped it to the Altera chip. If you want to remove the fan on that one go ahead, but if you have any broken motherboards lying around you might want to raid one of those. I'm lucky because I had old AthlonXP motherboards that required a large Northbridge heatsink so I took them for my monitors. Modern chipsets don't get nearly as hot so they tend to have smaller heatsinks, certainly shorter ones.

27" is the rage right now because it is a 16:9 ratio, while the 30" is 16:10. Both Samsung and Apple don't have 30" LCDs in their lineups right now. Since I plan to divest myself of my PLP rig, when the time comes to replace the 30" monitors I will probably go 27" simply because that's what will be available and at $400 each right now it is reasonably affordable and who knows what the price will be in the future. I'm retiring the PLP setup because of the lack of Eyefinity/nVSurround support, it's not a priority for AMD or nVidia and with the way monitor designs are going PLP will soon be a thing of the past. PLP was attractive when large monitors were $3,000 apiece - at $400 for 27" it makes a heck of a lot more sense to go LLL with three of them. I suspect that future 30"'s will be 16:9 instead of 16:10 in order for companies like Dell and HP to keep the claim of building the largest PC business monitors.
 
Thanks man, np for the pics. I also have a asus MB from 4 years ago, I was thinking I would sell it. Should check if I could first I guess.

What do you mean by PLP and LLL? Yes I noticed they are 16:9. I am not sure why they prefer that over 16:10. IMO vertical space is more important so sacrificing from there is a bad move. I hope in the future they would be much better and cheaper.

Also you said you secured the fan using cables. What cables did you use? Since it touches the RF shield, would the plastic fan not sort of melt?
 
PLP = portrait/landscape/portrait. Some people found that older Dell 20" monitors worked wonderfully on each side of their 3007/3008/3011 monitor as seen here.

LLL = all 3 screens in a landscape configuration. It's too wide for some games IMO, but has the advantage of spacing the bezels further apart unlike a PPP configuration.

I think PLP looks great but as rtangwai said, unfortunately it's not supported very well in games.
 
My monitor setup (until the capacitors for my 305T come in) looks like this:


asymetric_six_monitors by rtangwai, on Flickr

The upper row is pure landscape, LLL.

The lower row is portrait-landscape-portrait, PLP

Now you see why it is such a pain for me to get back there to take photographs.

I use cable *TIES*, the plastic ones used to secure wiring. They are strong, cheap, and easy to cut if I need to remove it to rebake the scaler board.

I will be replacing the wing monitors with the 305T's, and if I can get another job (I just got laid off) I'll put 4x22" 1080p monitors above as they would be a perfect match in horizontal resolution and PPI. That means my rig will evolve from a LLL/PLP to a LLLL/LLL. At one point I had beside it 5x1 portrait Eyefinity Samsung 245T 24" 1920x1200:


IMG_0260 by rtangwai, on Flickr

I got rid of it because it is a lousy layout for productivity. I literally found myself with 2 monitor setups, one for gaming and one for productivity. I also have a 46" TV attached to play movies so my workstation has literally 3 personalities, each with its own monitor layout. Getting the extra 30"'s is to consolidate the Eyefinity which shortens my desktop by 5 ft.
 
Thanks guys, I get it now. I didn't know of these terms. Is the eyefinity thing to make the whole desktop as a single continuous space? Mine is seen as separate, i.e. the apps do not scale to full screen covering both monitors but one.

Here is how my desktop looks like:
http://i.imgur.com/nhV3M.png

So for me this is the best/most productive setup and I only use the left screen which is at 45 degrees from the main monitor when working, or in rare wide movies. Otherwise I find myself only using one screen, i.e. internet browsing.

I think it would take a lot of energy from me to manage your setups :)

Also I only use a wacom tablet for everything so having much bigger desktop would be tricky. I am already using a medium tablet for 2x30" which I think is very good fit as I also don't want to have a very big tablet and move my arm alot.

When you get 305ts though, would it not make your desktop space uneven? Like taller than other monitors pixel wise?

What's the size of your whole desktop? Also do you watch movies using all? If so what do you use? VLC I imagine?
 
The XHD3000 and the 305T use the same panels so they are a perfect fit.

Eyefinity is AMD's technology to treat multiple monitors as a SLS (Single Large Surface), making games think there is only one monitor. It has bezel compensation to reduce distortion.

Energy use is one of the reasons I'm slimming down - I won't even be mounting the upper monitors for a while, although I *MIGHT* put 4x20" 1680x1050 monitors up there as I already own them. The problem I will be facing is getting proper stands - my original plan involved actually designing and building custom monitor stands (out of plumbing pipes) to make everything fit because there doesn't exist monitor stands designed for what I plan to set up.

My current desktop is 13 megapixels (excluding the 46" TV as I don't use it for applications). Going to 3x30" actually drops it to 12 megapixels which is why I'm exploring how to mount 4 monitor above the 30"'s. I am setting up a dedicated HTPC for the 46" TV so I don't have to waste electricity on my quadfire just to watch Mythbusters :)
 
I am having a problem with my 305T. I started having the regular fuzzy line problems so I baked my controller board with the Altera chip on it. Now I get the self test to work with no fuzzy lines, but the monitor will not display. When I plug a DVI cable in the self test stops, so the monitor knows it is hooked up. Any advice would be apreshiated. TIA
 
Check the power supply of the 305T - it may have bad capacitors. Make sure you check the bottom as well as the top of the capacitors for bulges/ruptures. Also, reseat your ribbon cables.
 
rtangwai - Glad to see you helping everyone here.

I have had to postpone my fixing due to bunch of other issues. But I will be fixing and modding as well :)
 
No problem - that's why the Internet was invented, to share knowledge. I'm also a great believer in karma - if I help people with the knowledge I possess, someday someone else who has knowledge that I don't posses may help me.
 
@lachdanan:

I finally got my capacitors so I have repaired my 305T power supply (after a quick trip to an electronics store - in my haste to replace the capacitors it never occurred to me to check the fuses and sure enough one was blown). Since the monitor was on my workbench I figured now was the time to take some pictures of the mods as you are not the first person to ask me for one:


Untitled by rtangwai, on Flickr

As you can see the fan blows sideways. The fan itself is actually closer than I would like but there aren't any convenient mounting holes farther away. There is a flat spot of metal nearby which make me think that some heavy-duty double-side foam tape (to absorb the vibrations of the fan) would work. As always my modifications for 305T's/XHD3000's are designed specifically to be easy to disassemble in case something needs to be fixed (scaler needs baking, capacitors blow, etc.).

I have both 305T's side-by-side right now as a test, specifically a thermal test. Interestingly enough each monitor is producing the same amount of heat thru the LCD even though one does not have a heatsink (they both have fans and the back casing off). Both are hotter than the XHD3000 which I attribute to the fact that the 305T's power supply is internal while the XHD3000 is external. The metal shielding covering the power supply gets quite hot and an examination of the shield shows there is a strip of TIM inside so the power supply is using the shielding as a heatsink.
 
Hey rtangwai, thanks for the images. I just saw it. It cleared my mind.

Btw what's the black thing at the bottom of the image, the monitor stand? Can you screw it without the back?

Also I was wondering how you hooked the fan to a usb? Because the end of the fan has a small pinned connection, that I don't know how to connect to a usb connect.

Thanks again, I didn't get the fans yet but I want to do it all this week hopefully and start using my lcds once again :)
 
lachdanan said:
Hey rtangwai, thanks for the images. I just saw it. It cleared my mind.

Btw what's the black thing at the bottom of the image, the monitor stand? Can you screw it without the back?

Also I was wondering how you hooked the fan to a usb? Because the end of the fan has a small pinned connection, that I don't know how to connect to a usb connect.

Thanks again, I didn't get the fans yet but I want to do it all this week hopefully and start using my lcds once again :)
Click to expand...

The black thing is the stand - you don't have to put the back on for the stand to work as the casing is not load-bearing. That stand is from an HP monitor, not the standard 305T - that was what the monitor had when I bought it.

To hook up the fan to a USB cable simply cut off the square end of the cable and hook the red wire to the red wire of the fan and the black wire to the black wire of the fan. I don't even solder them together, I twist them and wrap electrical tape around the joins.
 
Yep - cut off the rounded end as the flat end has to plug into a USB port for power.
 
Hey rtangwai, I just got around to ordering the stuff. I couldn't find thermal tape in futureshop's website though. I see that you are also in Canada. Do you know where I could find it?

Thanks man :)
 
NCIX has it but it is quite expensive. eBay is the best place to get it cheap. I have Sekisui which is rated for all sort of stuff like video RAM, although I wouldn't recommend it for a CPU or high-end GPU. Home Depot supposedly carries 3M but I never saw it in any of the stores in Toronto.
 
Thanks for replying. I didn't know they were expensive. I will check out NCIX and ebay.

Also another silly question: when I connect the fan to the usb cable, where will I hook the cable? My lcds are not that close to my PC case, and AFAIK usb fans are pretty short. So are you connecting the usb to somewhere on the monitor?

Thanks again :)
 
The 305T hub is unpowered (unlike the XHD3000) so I just plugged the fan into a cheap USB powered hub I had lying around. I have 2 305T's so I needed 2 powered USB ports. Fortunately most powered hubs have at least 4 ports.
 
Thanks, so essentially a usb hub multiplies an existing usb connection? If that's the case, isn't the voltage divided too?

Also I wonder if you can use only a passive CPU heatsink for this? Because if they are good enough to cool CPUs, they should also be a viable alternative no? Of course this eliminates power issues, etc that you need to provide for the fan, and the usb hub which I need to buy one too.

Another question I had is, when I was looking at the voltages for 80mm fans, I found out that they were showing 12V, but usb is 5V max, right? So how are you running your fan with 5V?

Reason I ask is, if they can be run with 5V, then you can also use something like this, right?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103074

I think I have access to something similar but I didn't bother to look for it when I found that they require 12V. But if all 80mm fans work fine with 5V, then that's what I will use.

Thanks again man :)
 
A passive heatsink would be better than nothing at all, but I think people are using fans to make sure it stays as cool as possible in order to extend the life.

Pretty sure fans can run at a reduced voltage; they'll just spin slower. Add more volts = they spin faster.
 
Thanks imyourzero, I will use a fan similar to the newegg link I posted then. Reason I asked is, I thought a CPU level expensive heatsink might outperform a modest fan.

I also found a pretty long usb cable in my scrapes. Probably came with my mobo. It will easily reach my PC. So before cutting I looked up, it has 4 different cables inside:

P1012732%20(Small).JPG


I know how I will use the black and red as rtangwai told me, but fans also seem to have yellow, but the usb has green and white. So I assume I will leave those out, right?

Thanks again guys. When I finish all these, I will take pics for the forum :)
 
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I tried a heatsink without a fan - wasn't good enough. The thermal output of the Altera chip is quite high, plus if the monitor is near a wall like mine are there isn't enough airspace back there to cool it effectively. If you get a proper passive CPU heatsink, how do you intend to mount it? Thermal tape won't hold the weight of that class of heatsink.

On a powered USB hub *EACH* port is rated for 500mA, so plugging in multiple cables won't lower the power output. You actually *WANT* to use 5V on the 12V fans as it makes them spin slower and therefore a *LOT* quieter.

Leave the yellow wire on the fan alone - it is the sensor wire. Also leave the green and white wires on the USB cable alone - they are the data wires.
 
Thanks alot rtangwai, you cleared my mind :)

I was also thinking of somehow securing the heatsink since like you said I also thought the tape wouldn't hold it.

You know I probably have a 80mm fan similar to this:

rRcPu.jpg


Do you think I should give it a try to use it? I need to secure it much tighter so not sure what I can use, but I was thinking of tying it. I also have chaulk but don't think it would be useful.

I was hoping for something like this (crude example):

flibZ.jpg


What do you think? :)
 
The thermoconductivity of the heatsink will depend greatly on how well you can mount it. It's no accident that CPU heatsinks have very strong mounts, enough to often bend the motherboard. I still think you won't be able to mount a heatsink that big with enough pressure and contact to make it viable. If you are planning on using a fan anyway, why bother going overkill on the heatsink? If nothing else, my fan cools more than the Altera chip which cannot be anything *BUT* good on a 305T.
 
Thanks for replying. You are right, I remember mobo bending tightness of those. I don't really want to go overboard but since I need to do this for 2 monitors, I thought a more readily available combo of both would be easier to apply to both monitors. I also don't have any small spare heatsinks other than the above one, although it might be in one of my packed boxes, or not.

I searched for small heatsinks but they only show up with 40mm fans, etc. So do you think I should get those, take out the fan on top, and then buy 80mm fans to do a similar setup like yours?

Another thing I noticed is, even though they are small, they still seem to cost just as much as 80mm ones.

When I searched for "northbridge heatsink", I do get ones similar to yours in google but I think these are also mobo parts. Not sure if I can find them online by itself.

What would you do if you didn't have spare heatsinks? :)

Thanks again man, sorry for all these questions.
 
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What about one of those kits for cooling video cards that includes thermal tape/paste and several small heatsinks for the chips on the video card? Might be an option; I don't know if the cost would be prohibitive or if they'd even fit the Altera but GPUs can get super hot; I imagine if they'd work to cool a GPU they'd be able to handle the thermal output of the Altera chip.
 
Thanks imyourzero. I am not very hardware-savy, so I didn't know they have special kits for that. Are they just called "video card cooling kit"? I will see if I can find them. Sounds like a good idea.
 
The video cooling kits vary widely because different GPUs have different thermal requirements. A cooler big enough for say a HD6950 will weigh a ton and unable to be mounted. A very small cooler for an entry-level chipset like the HD6450 would be light enough but I doubt it would be big enough. Someone in this thread used the heatsink and fan from an older GPU successfully, but he never mentioned how hot the heatsink gets.

I have an idea but it is very dangerous - use a thermal epoxy. They are used on RAM heatsink and supposedly quite strong, maybe it's strong enough to hold a decent-sized heatsink.. The problem is obvious - it *WON'T* come off so if you have to bake the board again you're screwed.

*ANY* Northbridge heatsink should do, look around for a blown-up motherboard there are plenty out there. Walk around on garbage day, look for computers on the curb.
 
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