100% Working repair for Gateway XHD3000 30" LCD monitor

*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.

^ That's probably your best bet, lachdanan. If you can't find one locally you could try posting in the freebies thread...surely someone there has an extra heatsink they could throw your way for the cost of shipping. :)
 
Thanks alot guys.

So the thermal epoxy is permanent, right? I only ran the lcd for a few mins to test so not sure if I actually successfully fixed it yet :)

I did search for some motherboards online but they were asking for $60-100 even for old ones.

I think one of my friends have this, so I could use it if you think that's good, and he still has it:

1f9fm.jpg


I remember the model because of that huge square heatsink. I don't know if that pipe heatsink is attached to it, or not though. Either way that should be good for the task, right?

As for the second monitor though, what about the other heatsink you see in the lower left of the same image. Do you think that's also worth using?

Also out of curiosity, all these heatsinks in the motherboard are referred as northbridge heatsinks? I don't know if there are southbridge heatsinks, but I know the boards are section with north and south if I am not wrong.

@imyourzero: I didn't know there was a freebies thread. This forum is very helpful, thanks all :)

EDIT: That thread requires >50 posts, which I don't have.
 
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The flat square metal heatsink that has ASUS on it is a Southbridge heatsink. Different boards have different chipsets which have different cooling requirements - some chipsets require no heatsinks at all, some are only one chip instead of two, some require active cooling. An old Pentium-III Socket370 heatsink would be fine as well.
 
I attempted to get you some help in the freebies thread...hopefully those guys can come through for ya. The amount of old hardware some of these guys have is crazy. Surely there is a heatsink or two to be found out there!
 
Thanks alot man. I really appreciate it. I will follow the freebies thread and PM people who say they have one they can ship. In the meantime I will try to get my post count to 50, but that's not very easy :)
 
I come from the freebies section. I don't think i have many socket 370 coolers left but i do have lots of northbridge coolers floating around. Think i have a few small, thin fans as well.

I'm about to hit the bed for the night but if you can get me some sort of specs on what you are specifically looking for; I'll get you a pic of the heatsinks i have laying around tomorrow.
 
Hi thanks alot for replying. I saw the post in the freebies thread but I still can't post there. I am basically looking for small heatsinks that look like these (screw holes do not matter):

soltek-northbridge.jpg


137324507-40.jpg


Or any other shape. I don't know size specs, but I guess 3x3 cm or so?

Thanks alot again :)
 
pick your poison, friend. Just some of the sinks i found while doing a quick rummage of one of my spares bin.


 
Thanks man, those are sick :) I reckon these would work:

A3RGr.jpg


You must have had alot of cards to have all these :)
 
if you would like i can mail you off all of the heatsinks and fans i have here that can fit in a small flat rate box..That is as long as you pay shipping and you return the heatsinks and fans you do not use.
 
Thanks alot man. I really appreciate it. I will follow the freebies thread and PM people who say they have one they can ship. In the meantime I will try to get my post count to 50, but that's not very easy :)

You're welcome and let me point out that I appreciate that you're not spamming your way to 50 posts just to be able to participate in that thread. We get newbs fairly often that post generic 3-4 word replies all over the forum to get their post counts up. You're actually contributing like a respectable forum member should. :)

Thanks for the quick assist, 404! You da man.
 
@imyourzero: Thanks man, np. I did post a couple posts in other threads but only when I could say something useful :)

@404: Thanks alot, I will pay for the shipping of course. I don't need all of them though. So those 3 would definitely do the job. Or if you just want to send the 2, then exclude the black one.

How can I send you the payment? Paypal?
 
@imyourzero: Thanks man, np. I did post a couple posts in other threads but only when I could say something useful :)

@404: Thanks alot, I will pay for the shipping of course. I don't need all of them though. So those 3 would definitely do the job. Or if you just want to send the 2, then exclude the black one.

How can I send you the payment? Paypal?


whatever you want. We are here to help. You can have however many you want or need. If you want all three, they are yours. Need any small fans? I might have one or two of those as well.

I'll have to find a small box if you want just 2 or 3 and I'll have to calculate postage which might take me some time. That is, unless you want me to ship it out in a simple small flat rate box. It's up to you really.

And finally, yes i can do paypal. I will pm you my paypal email shortly
 
Hey guys, I finally got everything except tin snips which I need to get today, to cut the RF shield. I was wondering if I should also get a plier for cutting the cables? I thought I could use a knife but that would also sever the wires inside, right?

I would appreciate any advice.

Thanks :)
 
If you have a steady hand you can strip the insulation off the wires with a sharp knife, otherwise get a pair of wire strippers.
 
Thanks man, I have surgeon steady hands :) I just thought the smaller wires would be hard to strip, but I can always try and if it doesn't work then get wire strippers like you said.

Also I still have the lcd case closed but the thermal tapes seem pretty small. I assume it won't cover the whole surface of the chip, right? Or do I have to stick the tape to a corner of the chip and then fill the remaining areas by cutting smaller tapes? I just don't know if covering the whole chip is necessary or doesn't matter as long as there is a contact between the chip and the heatsink via the tape.

Cheers :)
 
Tape covers most of the chip, should be enough. If you do use multiple strips, do *NOT* overlap them.
 
Hello every one,

Had the green haze and colors going off.
Did the oven trick at 250 C for 10 minutes and the problems are gone.
I put a heat sink ont the GPU (used the rfshield as base) and then a fan on the heatsink.
Now it is working again fine. The GPU is now a nice 42 Celsius.
It still has the now and then once flicker, put that is rare(once an hour).
I hope it will last.

Thanks for the info, it did help pretty well.
 
Hey guys, just wanted to say that I made the fix 2 weeks ago, and everything seems to work fine. I was gonna post earlier but wanted to test it abit to see if it actually holds up. All seems to be in working order.

Special thanks to rtangwai, 404 and imyourzero for everything, without which none of this would have been possible. You guys rock and happy new years :)
 
That's awesome to hear! Thanks for the update and may your 2013 be filled with joy (and a working monitor)! :D
 
Glad to see you got it working - it isn't hard to *DO*, trick is figuring out *WHAT* needs to be done.
 
as a side effect, the monitor is now incapable of running any gangam style videos....consider this an upgrade....:D
 
Thanks alot guys. I am using it now as we speak :)

@rtangwai: You are right, this just means for me to ask alot of questions since I never did something like this, but thanks for being patient about it :)

@404: Thanks for the fans and heatsinks man, they are solid :) But shame on Samsung for not taking care of this in the initial design by spending a couple more bucks on a high end monitor.
 
Today I found out just how important a heatsink+fan is for these monitors. I bought a replacement LVM board more than a year ago and attached a HSF to the Altera chip as a preventive measure. No problems the whole time, until...

yesterday when my monitor started artifacting again... opened it up and found the heatsink fell off completely :eek: I had just moved a month ago so that's probably when it happened, that's how long these things last without good cooling.

I just finished baking the card and reassembling everything, so far so good... hope this thing lasts me another year, or however long it takes for a mass market 4k monitor to hit.
 
That's why I don't attach the fan to the heatsink, you don't lose *ALL* your cooling if something like that happens. Mind you, my method means there is no way to put the casing back on the monitor but given how much heat they put out (especially the 305T's as they have an internal power supply) that's not necessarily a bad thing unless you have cats or small children.
 
tldr: Sell me a LTM300M1C8LV3.2!

Hi guys, big time noob here. Just got done overcooking my LTM300M1C8LV3.2 and now I'm hoping one of you guys that is able to get the board will also be willing to sell me one.

In case anyone is curious: this was my second time baking the board, the first time it worked for about a month and was still kind of working (starting to flash often) when I got greedy and put it in the oven again. Whereas the first time I used my grandma's awesome Viking oven, some antique french nonsense to sit it on, and those fun "orca" oven mitts, this time I was in my dorm using electric crap that still is smelling up the place, a disposable cookie sheet, paper towels as mitts, and the room has nearly zero ventilation. What happened is that the connector actually fell off and one of the capacitors(?) melted. I suspect that this happened because it did not heat evenly and because it was not perfectly flat. Also, the 4 orange links to the Samsung panel are now deformed from the heat. The stuff on the interior of the board looks fine, giving further evidence that the electric oven "pulses" heat well above the 350 degrees I had it set to. It was in for about 3 minutes before I saw the connector fall off.

So please sell me a new one! I love everything about this monitor and I really do *need* the 1600p resolution for my architectural design software. Beyond that, it matches my desk so damn well!

P.S.
Isn't it crazy how this is still arguably the best monitor available? I bought mine in 2007! (btw, I think mine lasted as long as it did because I only used it at 2560x1600. Just before it died I had started to use it often with my Xbox 360 @1080p, damn you Halo 4.)
 
I looked at that website but it says 4-6 weeks for it to ship out. I guess I can wait that long but it makes me a sad panda. Has anyone bought from them and received their chip faster than that?

I baked it at 400F but, like I said, I think the oven was "pulsing" at much higher temperatures than that. I can post a picture later today but it wont be very dramatic looking, the bottom connector fell off, the top ones warped, and a plastic cylinder at the top left (capacitor?) flattened itself.
 
400F is a bit high and it does sound like your oven was either a cheap model or out of calibration.

You could buy the board on eBay but it's more expensive and there is no guarantee the shipping would be faster, quite apart from the fact that a lot of them are used ones that somebody baked.

When you baked your board the first time did you make any changes to the back of the monitor to keep it cool? Which monitor do you have, the Gateway XHD3000 or the Samsung 305T/305T+? The Samsung's have an internal power supply that uses the same RF shield as the scaler board as a heatsink so it gets significantly hotter than the XHD3000. Did you try any active cooling for the scaler chip?
 
Ordered it.

After I baked it I ran my XHD3000 with the back cover off and with two USB fans sitting on top of the input board's cover which acted as a nice shelf. My thought with using the usb fans was that they would power on and off with the monitor (since I used it's usb slots) but it turns out that those plugs are always powered. When the new board comes in I'm undecided about whether I'll run it with the case on or off - I only need it to last for a year and a half until I graduate / 4k touch monitors like the Sharp Igzo 32 get cheaper. I'll still play xbox but I'll run the signal through an av card for my pc so that the scaling is done by the computer (and so I can make let's plays) and the monitor gets a native resolution signal.
 
You've seen the TIM on the Gateway - it's nearly an inch thick, bigger than any single piece of TIM I have ever seen in my 32-year computer career. Either replace it with a block of aluminum or (my preference) cut a hole in the RF shield and attach a heatsink directly to the scaler chip. You were right to attach the fans, the problem is that a TIM that thick cannot conduct enough heat fast enough to the RF shield (acting as a heatsink).
 
Hey people !

Found a 305t for a good price. Looks like it has the mod heatsink + fan already made by the owner. I don't know much info about it's history, nor have I seen it in "person" to inspect exactly what kind of mod was done to it ( on the shield or on the chip itself ).

My question is : Is it safe to purchase a monitor that was previously "baked" or reballed? After re-balling I know the problems will just come back if you don't cool it but what's the life expectancy AFTER doing the re-ball + cooling added?
Anybody had problems after adding the cooling system or this is pretty much safe and future proof ?
I've had some trouble with the famous nVidia BGA issues with some of their cards and I know the re-baking was due every month and I only did surfing with the damn laptop ( so no gamings ).

I don't want to purchase a monitor I have to "bake" every 2 weeks - so I am curious if anybody has any any issues AFTER modding the beast.

Thanks
 
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