Trace repair on motherboard

K

Kazzanova

Weaksauce
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Jul 8, 2008
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108
I was moving my z77x ud3h to it's new case and while unscrewing something in the case I sneezed and ended up dropping the screw driver tip into the board. I hit a trace near the middle of the ram slots and now the board is acting as if it is shorting out. I have breadboarded it, tested across multiple ram sticks, psu's, etc... I know I didn't get moisture on it so I am pretty sure it's the divot in the trace causing the issue.

Anyways, I was wondering if it is possible to fix the tracer with a conductivity pen (I should have one laying around somewhere from a dfi lan party mod,) or some sort of solder method? I will try to get a picture uploaded of it later, but it's one trace and it's about the size of the tip of a sharpened no2 pencil.

Any help or advice is appreciated. I would hate to have to spend more $$ on a new z77, this board was going to turn 2 soon :/ I sent gigabyte a support request, haven't heard back yet (as I have read somewhere that they may repair the board?)

Thanks in advance :)

-Kazz
 
A silver conductive pen designed for electronics may work, so may soldering a very fine wire (probablly 30awg or so) along the track bridging the gap. Neither will be easy though and both are likely to void any warranty you have remaining.

Before any repair you will need to carefully scrape or sand away the solder mask so you can get a good joint to the existing track.
 
Pics? Need to verify if it's a surface damage, or multilayer damage. If only surface damage, Plugwash's advice is sufficient. If the screwdriver gouged through the top layer and damaged layers beneath, you might not be able to repair.
 
Bought the board in 2012, something like September I think it was? Don't know if it is RMA able?

Sorry for not uploading the pics yesterday, had a bunch of family randomly show up and it turned into a BBQ. Just got out of work and took some pics and noticed something else that I didn't see before. Here are the pics, and the something else is on one of the mounting holes. Don't even know what it is, but looks like some kind of liquid caused something?

Also, the stripping of the mounting area happened in an old case I originally had this board in (my old original thermaltake armor.) I moved it from the Armor to a Corsair 500r, and was upgrading to my 4790k and was moving it to my TT soprano case when all of this happened.

Album of pics: http://imgur.com/a/Sh4d7


I have never seen the liquid looking residue stuff on any of my motherboards ever. I wear nitrile gloves when building, always ground myself, and I have never had issues til I dropped this stupid screwdriver on the trace :/
 
It looks like you didn't hit a RAM data trace, at least between the cpu and ram. The pics are a bit fuzzy, but it also doesn't look like you hit anything at a lower layer in the board either, or you'd see little bits of copper exposed in that gash. I think you have a good chance at fixing this one but you're going to have to do some careful sanding to get that trace ready. It is very easy to tear away more trace once the surface resin is gone.

As for the liquid looking residue, it might be flux like the last guy said. Probably not electrolyte, no caps nearby and I think they're all solid state polymer now anyways. Considering its near the solder at a screw hole, its likely just leftover flux. The solder around the screw hole does look chipped however, and if some of those bits got stuck somewhere then it could cause a short. EDIT - I have a similar board, and it looks like the solder pad things don't completely surround that screw hole so disregard that last bit.
 
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Kazzanova said:
Bought the board in 2012, something like September I think it was? Don't know if it is RMA able?

Sorry for not uploading the pics yesterday, had a bunch of family randomly show up and it turned into a BBQ. Just got out of work and took some pics and noticed something else that I didn't see before. Here are the pics, and the something else is on one of the mounting holes. Don't even know what it is, but looks like some kind of liquid caused something?

Also, the stripping of the mounting area happened in an old case I originally had this board in (my old original thermaltake armor.) I moved it from the Armor to a Corsair 500r, and was upgrading to my 4790k and was moving it to my TT soprano case when all of this happened.

Album of pics: http://imgur.com/a/Sh4d7


I have never seen the liquid looking residue stuff on any of my motherboards ever. I wear nitrile gloves when building, always ground myself, and I have never had issues til I dropped this stupid screwdriver on the trace :/
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Just going by the picture Its hard to tell if that did real damage. Usually the edge of the trace is usually nonconductive. I just looked like you scraped the protective coating which shouldn't cause a problem electrically. But without having a meter and it being physically in front of me its just all speculation.

There plenty of PCB repair kits, they're not cheap. I think it would probably be better to see if they'll repair it or get a new one. Maybe check ebay looks like they're going for around $110 or so.

As far as residue its just flux, its done with a no clean flux that may not always come off in manufacturing. Its nothing to worry about, as its non corrosive and non conductive.
 
I was using my note 3, I will have to break out my big camera and try to get some better macro shots. It appears to be superficial, as if I just scratched the protective layer, but I don't see why it would be shorting out otherwise. I will try to take some better more detailed pictures tonight, and if it is just a superficial scratch, I am back to square one on what would be causing it to short :/

qbanb8582 said:
Just going by the picture Its hard to tell if that did real damage. Usually the edge of the trace is usually nonconductive. I just looked like you scraped the protective coating which shouldn't cause a problem electrically. But without having a meter and it being physically in front of me its just all speculation.

There plenty of PCB repair kits, they're not cheap. I think it would probably be better to see if they'll repair it or get a new one. Maybe check ebay looks like they're going for around $110 or so.

As far as residue its just flux, its done with a no clean flux that may not always come off in manufacturing. Its nothing to worry about, as its non corrosive and non conductive.
Click to expand...
 
Do you see copper? It looks like it only scratched the top soldermask which is the protective lacquer layer. To test and confirm you can use the continuity function of a Fluke multimeter and the pointed probes to poke through the top layermask and measure the resistance on opposite sides of the scratched trace. If it's 0 ohm you have a break. It's easy to fix if it's indeed broken . Remove the motherboard from the case, carefully use an exacto knife to scrape off the lacquer exposing about a 2 cm width along the copper trace where the scratch is. Then, melt some solder across the two points. If the scratch turns out to be too wide where the solder doesn't connect you can solder a thin wire across the break.
 
I dunno, this all sounds like it's just a mis-mounted stand off or something. I highly doubt that scratch broke the trace.
 
Jorona said:
I dunno, this all sounds like it's just a mis-mounted stand off or something. I highly doubt that scratch broke the trace.
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Took it out, tried it on cardboard with multiple sticks of ram (different brands/speeds etc,) tried it on 3 different psu's, etc etc. Also stand offs in both cases are already in from factory.

*edit*
New pictures:

Sh4d7



Sh4d7



Sh4d7


Took a couple more shots with a much better camera. Hopefully this will show a better view. I don't see any visible copper in these pictures, but in person I swear I can see a little shimmery something at the very tip of the divot that goes into the trace. I still can't imagine what else this might be, acts like a short but everything else works on it's on separate from this board (minus the 3570k as I don't have another mobo with the proper socket to test, but it hasn't been unseated at all in the move so I don't think it's the problem)
 
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Looking at the higher quality photos, it looks a little deeper then I expected. Its possible that broke the trace and that part of the circuit is now open. Which depending on that it does could cause issues. Only way to know would be to measure from end of the circuit to the other or across the trace. Not sure what type of meter you would be using but 0 ohms isn't an open necessarily.

You could try to repair that trace. If you got good soldering skills you could probably just scrape some of it off and solder a jumper wire. A cleaner option would just get some traces, you'll probably want a calipers to know the width of the trace.
 
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Much clearer pictures and the verdict is the trace is toast. Easy fix though. Just make sure you scrape the lacquer off the trace towards the break so you don't lift the trace and make the break wider.
 
qbanb8582 said:
Looking at the higher quality photos, it looks a little deeper then I expected. Its possible that broke the trace and that part of the circuit is now open. Which depending on that it does could cause issues. Only way to know would be to measure from end of the circuit to the other or across the trace. Not sure what type of meter you would be using but 0 ohms isn't an open necessarily.

You could try to repair that trace. If you got good soldering skills you could probably just scrape some of it off and solder a jumper wire. A cleaner option would just get some traces, you'll probably want a calipers to know the width of the trace.
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I am decent with soldering, but this thing is tiny. I have huge clumsy hands :/ I can always give it a shot, but I am still trying to get in touch with Gigabyte to see if they can do anything for me.


mi7chy said:
Much clearer pictures and the verdict is the trace is toast. Easy fix though. Just make sure you scrape the lacquer off the trace towards the break so you don't lift the trace and make the break wider.
Click to expand...


Thank you!
 
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