Lateralus
More [H]uman than Human
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2004
- Messages
- 18,505
Apparently he's been working on a huge amount of laptops and video cards with the famous nVidia issue which have pretty much the same problem as our Altera chip thing - the beginning use of lead-free ball solders in 2006/2007 as per International Heath Laws. He says the main problem with these things is not HEAT per say, but because of big temperature differences between on and off time of the monitor in our case, makes the shitty lead-free solder they used on these board and of course on the dreaded nVidia GPUs crack and so problems like this appear.
Seems that A LOT of electronics that were built in the 2006 - 2009 range and contain chips that operate at high-temps HAVE this issue - for example I had this issue on a Dell Precision Laptop which cost $3000+ , also there are TONS of Macbooks that use nVidia 8600GT and 9600GT GPUs that have this problem and the list goes on and on.
I wonder if this is the same issue that plagued the earlier revisions of the XBOX 360? I'm almost positive that it is.
C0rnholio said:First order of business - DO NOT attempt any more candle, lighter, fire torch, oven or even heat-gun repairs if the board start to act up. It seems that because of the extensive heat that these methods imply, the board can BEND - even if by a little bit and any future re-ball attempt would be close to impossible and would probably mean the death of the board. In order to make a successful repair - the board needs to be PERFECTLY FLAT. Crap thing is - these boards are not being produced anymore so they will be very hard to come by from now on. I was very lucky to get mine fixed... or I would have had to start looking under rocks. I really don't dis-respect the people here that find conventional repair methods and so a lot of people successfully "repaired" their monitor. I've been doing the oven trick for 1 year with the GeForce card in my Dell - I think I "cooked" it about 15 times - but each time the fix was temporary and was needed more and more often until after the last one, it simply refused to start completely so I had to replace it all-together. Maybe I was unlucky with the oven fix on this board but I would really think twice about blowing up a board that's very hard to come by these days. I wouldn't want to risk bricking a monitor that would cost A LOT to be replaced by something even remotely similar.
To be fair, I don't think the oven method is touted as a permanent fix. When it was first discovered and widely talked about on this forum, I'm sure that was the hope initially. But as time went on and more people attempted this and posted their results, I think the general consensus is that it's, at best, a last ditch effort to buy some more time so that you can get some more life out of the product and not have to immediately replace it. How much time it buys you (if it even works at all) depends on a number of factors including the component being cooked, oven temperature, initial solder quality, etc.
All that being said, it's great to hear that yours is back in working order and I hope the repair gives you several more years of service out of the unit!