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What is this and is my 5870 hosed now?
- Thread starter InTheFlow
- Start date
I'd shove that broken piece right back where it broke, hold it in place with a bit of tape.
I'm pretty sure you need -something- there or you'll have issues trying to run the card.
Something similiar happened to me with an old 9800 Non Pro card, and I was forced to tape a piece of ceramic that had came off a transistor. I found that, if I didn't, the card would start artifacting within minutes of booting. I just used scotch tape to keep that chunk of material in its place since I wasn't sure what kind of glue would work best.
I even continued to use the card regularly for well over a year after it happened, too. Your experience might be different though I wanted to share mine.
I'm pretty sure you need -something- there or you'll have issues trying to run the card.
Something similiar happened to me with an old 9800 Non Pro card, and I was forced to tape a piece of ceramic that had came off a transistor. I found that, if I didn't, the card would start artifacting within minutes of booting. I just used scotch tape to keep that chunk of material in its place since I wasn't sure what kind of glue would work best.
I even continued to use the card regularly for well over a year after it happened, too. Your experience might be different though I wanted to share mine.
Thanks for the replies guys.
My idea is to use a tiny amount of plumbers epoxy putty under the center part and before reattaching it, use some of that circuit board 'paint' that you can fix traces with. Hopefully that will keep any electrical connection working.
My idea is to use a tiny amount of plumbers epoxy putty under the center part and before reattaching it, use some of that circuit board 'paint' that you can fix traces with. Hopefully that will keep any electrical connection working.
LigTasm
Supreme [H]ardness
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Don't put anything under it. Lay it down flat and put the ceramic back on, and epoxy over the top, or some kind of clear RTV that can tolerate heat. C usually denotes a capacitor and the ceramic is a heat sink/ EMI sheild, you don't want anything between them.
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I'm glad I checked back before actually doing it. 
The ceramic is not electrically connected, its simply a heat sink? In that case, what about putting a smidgen of thermal paste or thermal adhesive between them?
Why would I heat it up...is the silvery part solder? Wouldn't heating up that small of an area soften the chips around it too?
I don't have the skill necessary to do this kind of soldering. Good idea though!
Thanks for the help ya'll!
The ceramic is not electrically connected, its simply a heat sink? In that case, what about putting a smidgen of thermal paste or thermal adhesive between them?
Why would I heat it up...is the silvery part solder? Wouldn't heating up that small of an area soften the chips around it too?
I don't have the skill necessary to do this kind of soldering. Good idea though!
Thanks for the help ya'll!
The ceramic is the capacitor. Its an electrical component. There needs to be electrical continuity. With it cracked can have an affect on the capacitance. Capacitors are typically used as noise filters so its quite possible it could work without it, but thats a big chance.
As far as heat and solder. If you use a soldering iron theres very little chance you'll heat up the surrounding components. If you use air or a heat gun its possible but for a component of that size and it having only two leads it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to use air.
But if you decide to sell it for parts I would be interested
As far as heat and solder. If you use a soldering iron theres very little chance you'll heat up the surrounding components. If you use air or a heat gun its possible but for a component of that size and it having only two leads it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to use air.
But if you decide to sell it for parts I would be interested
Majeztik12
Limp Gawd
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Solder point needs more lead, less tin. I'd RMA it IMO. Had a similar component problem. Called up manufacture of card and complained about the ROHS... save the planet green lie thing. Tech support guy knew where i was coming from. They repaired it for free! All i did was pay for the shipping.
Well, its a HIS brand and waaay out of warranty. I originally bought it used off eBay so there is no proof of receipt that they'd honor.
What about using some epoxy mixed with a good amount of Arctic Silver 5...that would keep the electrical continuity wouldn't it?
EDIT: Well, I found a soldering tip for my 20/40 watt iron that comes to a point like a newly sharpened pencil. Decided to give the glue/solder idea a go. I used a needle point and put a tiny bit of rtv gasket on the bottom of it. Finally got it placed in the right spot again.
I plan on doing the soldering part tomorrow night so that the gasket material can get fully cured. For those of you who've soldered this small of an item before...any tips on how I should do it? My strategy at this point is to just 'tin' the tip and place it on one side, then the other. I think if I try putting the solder on the part directly, I'll have a glob covering the whole thing.
Edit #2: In case anyone else is wondering, I found this link for how to solder these things.
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I would avoid using AS5 on a video card. It is slightly electrically conductive and can fry a card if you get it on the PCB. Anyway, I'd follow the advise others have given, use a bit of epoxy and solder to put it back on there. I see no benefit in applying a thermal compound there.
Does anyone know what cap I need for a replacement? I measured it with my multimeter and it is exactly 1 mm (h) x 1 (w) mm x 2 mm (l). I'm not sure what the technical name is for them. When I search for capacitors I get a bunch of results for the round cylinder type ones but nothing for the 'little guys'.
The capacitors you need to look for are SMD/SMT capacitors. the Round ones are thru-hole typically. The size looks its either a 0603 or 0805 size capacitor. Now whats going to be difficult is getting the capacitance rating, voltage rating, and tolerance.
If you had some SMD tweezers its possible to measure the capacitance and get an idea. If you check places like Mouser, Digi-key, and Newark they sell smd components.
hopefully I didn't confuse the shit out of you.
If you had some SMD tweezers its possible to measure the capacitance and get an idea. If you check places like Mouser, Digi-key, and Newark they sell smd components.
hopefully I didn't confuse the shit out of you.
SMD tweezers are new to me. I have a pair of tweezers to use to hold the little guy but I imagine you are talking about something else...
Is there a way to get the needed measurements with a regular digital multimeter?
Thanks for the help!
SMD tweezers are like digital multimeters for SMD components. A digital multimeter typically doesn't have anything to check capacitance. Part of the problem is measuring the capacitance is difficult when its part of the circuit it will throw off your the measurement. So you would have to remove a good one, measure it then put it back on.
And SMD tweezers are expensive for the most part.
One thing you could try but I doubt they would do it is contact the company and see if theres a way of getting what the capacitance rating is. You would want to see if they would get in contact with their engineering department. Its a longshot but may be worth a try.
Thanks for the additional info qbanb8582. There is no way to properly 'mend' the ceramic part that broke, correct? I'm concerned that just re-soldering the cap that broke back on isn't going to be a true fix since I can see some ceramic left there. I found several places on ebay that sell the caps but they sell hoards of them so i'd need to know which actual one I'd need is. AMD might know too since its a reference design. Anyone have a contact at AMD's engineering department?
Thanks for the additional info qbanb8582. There is no way to properly 'mend' the ceramic part that broke, correct? I'm concerned that just re-soldering the cap that broke back on isn't going to be a true fix since I can see some ceramic left there. I found several places on ebay that sell the caps but they sell hoards of them so i'd need to know which actual one I'd need is. AMD might know too since its a reference design. Anyone have a contact at AMD's engineering department?
You can try to must mend it, it may work it may not. But there is no proper way to mend it. As far as whats left you can desolder that so you would have a smooth solder pad to solder to.
hossdaddy
2[H]4U
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LOL tape! Really? Not 2 part epoxy? Solder? Or call the manufacturer to see what they say?
Speaking of...what happened to mine? Isn't there supposed to be a shiny pad on both sides? (Pics are below)
I'm glad Jalidi shared his experience...no reason to argue with success, IMO.
Another good idea. I think it might be too late for wire glue though...where did the other solder pad go...is it underneath?
Ugh...well, I'm thinking about just powering her up to see what happens. Before knowing that the pad was gone I attempted to get a little solder to stick there but it just stayed on the iron tip.
Great i hope it works for you, I had a R 23 break off of my 5770 and now it doesn't work, well part of the R 23 the top part broke off and i was going to see what that does apperntly its a heatsink and it removed my fingerprint on my left index finger... Next time i wont go touching stuff i have no idea what it does.
Flyinfinni
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Just putting the piece that fell off back on there is not going to work. If that has "worked" for others then its likely because the card works without that cap or they got extremely lucky. The only real way to fix it is to buy a replacement cap and solder it in place (likely now requiring soldering a bit of wire or something from the trace to the end of the cap where the pad has been pulled off). You'll probably need to contact either AMD (since its a reference card) or HIS or whoever actually has their name printed on it to find out what the actual capacitance value is.
To mannyman- there is a big difference between a resistor (R23) and a capacitor (C2444) obviously. Generally, you are much less likely to have a functioning card after losing a resistor than you would be after losing a capacitor since there are more capacitors in the filtering portions of circuits like that than resistors. Drop a resistor and you lose a relatively low-impedance current path. Drop a cap, and you are losing a (generally) very HIGH impedance current path, which, for all intents and purposes is pretty much not a current path.
To mannyman- there is a big difference between a resistor (R23) and a capacitor (C2444) obviously. Generally, you are much less likely to have a functioning card after losing a resistor than you would be after losing a capacitor since there are more capacitors in the filtering portions of circuits like that than resistors. Drop a resistor and you lose a relatively low-impedance current path. Drop a cap, and you are losing a (generally) very HIGH impedance current path, which, for all intents and purposes is pretty much not a current path.
Well i knew it wasn't a cap, But the top part of the ceramic R23 broke off and i cannot find it so it no longer works...
Flyinfinni
[H]ard|Gawd
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Well i knew it wasn't a cap, But the top part of the ceramic R23 broke off and i cannot find it so it no longer works...
Yeah- thats a bummer. It IS easier to figure out the required value for the resistor though since you can measure the value with a simple multimeter. I would imagine you could get a replacement and make it work again.
hossdaddy
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did you call the card manufacturer and ask them?
Spare-Flair
Supreme [H]ardness
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You could always put a replacement ceramic capacitor there and reflow the entire card and let that take care of the hard work.
Watch this awesome video with those same capacitors just haphazardly stuck on and misaligned and the reflow process doing all the work. That said, it might be difficult without an existing pad for the solder to wick toward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5lksMvmqQc
Watch this awesome video with those same capacitors just haphazardly stuck on and misaligned and the reflow process doing all the work. That said, it might be difficult without an existing pad for the solder to wick toward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5lksMvmqQc
Resistors are in Ohms.
No worries at all. The 'derail' actually added to the discourse, IMO. Anyways, I decided that attempting to do more with what I had was too far beyond my skill level (soldering back to a trace). Am cutting my losses.
The good news is that the card works fine. Not sure if the fact that its water cooled makes a difference with that but for whatever reason, it still works. I'm going to continue to test it before my new ones arrive to see if I can get it to fail. If not then I'll sell it on eBay and see if I can't get a little something for it at least. The broken cap makes it worth less but if it still works then its worth more than for parts only.
I started by running the Call of Pryipet benchmark. Anything else ya'll recommend that I put it through?
Thanks to everyone who helped me with this!
The good news is that the card works fine. Not sure if the fact that its water cooled makes a difference with that but for whatever reason, it still works. I'm going to continue to test it before my new ones arrive to see if I can get it to fail. If not then I'll sell it on eBay and see if I can't get a little something for it at least. The broken cap makes it worth less but if it still works then its worth more than for parts only.
I started by running the Call of Pryipet benchmark. Anything else ya'll recommend that I put it through?
Thanks to everyone who helped me with this!
vulcangodoffire2000
n00b
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um. how about takeing the part in to a repair shop....hand them the simd resistor and find the value. then let them solder a replacement on. 20 bux. ive had to do it cost 20 bux and 30 seconds.