whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

[salvador437]

Hi I'm new in these, first of all i have to say that this is a very nice web site, and every body look's with a lot of experience, these is the question that cross my mind and i think will be help full to know.
whats is the best estimate time of live wen you do a graphics chip reflow ???
and the time of live for the reballing ??
I hope you guys can help me, thanks in advance for you attention and time.

[mockingbird]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

It depends. The solder cracking depends on how many times the chip goes through a hot/cold cycle. You can do two things to prevent this after a reflow:

1) Make sure the fan runs at full RPM even after the GPU usage drops. Make sure the fan spins a few minutes after the computer turns off.
2) Clamp the heatsink from the underside in a way that if the GPU solder does fracture, the connection will still be there because of the pressure.. This is done with the Xbox360 and it works quite well (MKI method).

Reballing will last forever if the old lead-free solder is wicked away and new leaded solder is used. This is expensive and the last time I checked, and in the case of video cards, I seriously doubt that reballers will be able to obtain BGA stencils for ATI or Nvidia GPUs (Though I may be wrong).

[Rulycat]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

I guess if you slapped a massively overkill cooler on it, it would minimise the hot/cold difference, and cards would last longer.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

I guess if you slapped a massively overkill cooler on it, it would minimise the hot/cold difference, and cards would last longer.

If it's a laptop, don't power up when it's cold. The initial heat spike at power up gives the most damage. Also, replace those stupid thermal pads with a machined (or handmade) shim of aluminum or copper, with good quality thermal grease on both sides.

[shovenose]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

If it's a laptop, don't power up when it's cold. The initial heat spike at power up gives the most damage. Also, replace those stupid thermal pads with a machined (or handmade) shim of aluminum or copper, with good quality thermal grease on both sides.

to add to this, one easy way to heat it up before booting is to stick it in the oven at 300degrees for 10mins...
JK! DONT DO THIS

[Flababa]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

It depends. The solder cracking depends on how many times the chip goes through a hot/cold cycle. You can do two things to prevent this after a reflow:

1) Make sure the fan runs at full RPM even after the GPU usage drops. Make sure the fan spins a few minutes after the computer turns off.
2) Clamp the heatsink from the underside in a way that if the GPU solder does fracture, the connection will still be there because of the pressure.. This is done with the Xbox360 and it works quite well (MKI method).

Reballing will last forever if the old lead-free solder is wicked away and new leaded solder is used. This is expensive and the last time I checked, and in the case of video cards, I seriously doubt that reballers will be able to obtain BGA stencils for ATI or Nvidia GPUs (Though I may be wrong).

Reball kits are available through eBay (Hong Kong sellers), along with stencils for more common devices like xbox360 GPU's, and random PS3 components to fix RROD / Yellow light.

The (right) tools to do so make it cost-prohibitive for the average user. That's the killer.

[mockingbird]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

Reball kits are available through eBay (Hong Kong sellers), along with stencils for more common devices like xbox360 GPU's, and random PS3 components to fix RROD / Yellow light.

The (right) tools to do so make it cost-prohibitive for the average user. That's the killer.

I've never heard of the need to reball PS3s. I have a feeling those things are not 'RoHS Compliant', and thus have a low failure rate. also, they're actually manufactured in Japan, and not in China like the 360s. (Not to say the 360s have a poor design, they're actually well engineered and well made).

I once got a quote of around $150 for someone somewhat local to reball my 360. I doubt he was really going to do my CPU, but I'm sure he had the GPU stencils. For that price I can basically buy a slim, which don't use RoHS solder and have a much better cooling/clamping system. Unfortunately, you cannot mod them I hear.

[Flababa]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

Yeah, apparently reballing can fix the yellow light on a PS3. You're right about the 360 repairs though. $150 is too much, and most places won't do the CPU. 99% of the time it's not needed.

Maybe you won't say it, but I will. The 360's were poorly designed for extended use. (my definition: longer than 3 hours per session, in summer conditions) The newer models are much better, from what I can tell.

Anyhow, back to the point: Reballing is considered permanent. You should seek that out for a real fix.

Generally, people tend to say a reflow can work for 1-3 months, without getting into any details on usage / climate. It's really up in the air from what I can tell. It could fail the next day! (or you could get unlucky, and the solder balls could merge...in which case you're boned)

[mockingbird]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

Yes, you're right, I'm always worried when I turn on my 360 of it overheating, but this never happens albeit I rarely use it and when it is heavily used, it is in a cool basement room.

I disagree with you about the design. It is inherently sound. There are two things you can do to extend its life. You can do the voltage fan hack, or you can dump the nand and change the fan threshholds. I've been wanting to do the latter since the fans simply do not spin fast enough early enough at default settings. I'll probably dedicate some time to it when I have to open it up again to flash LT+ for AP 2.5 when it comes out. Much more elegant than a fan hack. When the fans spin fast enough, I guarantee you will never have to worry about premature capacitor failure, or extreme hot/cold cycles, and you should be able to play demanding games for hours at a time.

[salvador437]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

Thanks very much you guys, you are bin a lot of help for me on trying to clarify my question, because I got a HP tx2000 tablet notebook with the graphic chip problem,
what I going to do is remove the old thermal paste and apply solder paste on the side of the chip and continue to reflow (trying that the solder paste go to anther need the chip) and see if is possible to mod a clamp or something to put more pressure to the chip and finally applying new god quality thermal paste.

[mockingbird]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

Don't heat with solder paste, you will make a mess.

[Flababa]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

From what I understand, the power going to the fans isn't regulated by software. It's hardlined at 5v, with 12v rated fans.

The reason most people opt for the voltage mod, is so they can add a fan speed controller. That way you don't have all that fan noise playing in the winter. (my basement is a cool 65F in the winter without the stove running)

Also, solder paste? You mean thermal paste or flux right? Buying solder paste will 100% ruin your board / gpu. Just a heads up. ;x

You'll want liquid flux (no-clean?) for the reflow, and then a decent thermal paste for when you put the heatsink back on.

There's tons of videos on youtube on how to do it. (more or less)

(solder paste is sometimes used to describe simple paste flux, but if you want to avoid confusion, calling it *fluxtype* flux is good. ;x)

[mockingbird]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

No sorry, I meant not to smear thermal paste on before, because heating it will cause it to all runny and messy all over everything. It's not dangerous per se, AFAIK, Arctic Silver (Except for Arctic Silver I) is not electrically conductive.

No, the fan is regulated by software. It's not hardwired, and they're supposed to spin faster when the temperature goes up. The threshholds that MS programmed are just way too conservative (This is according to Grim1873 at the Xbox-Scene forums).

[shovenose]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

fan control on a laptop is controlled by the bios. there should be some fan-related options in the bios of the hp, like "always run fans" or something

[ratdude747]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

i doubt it. OEM bios generally skips features like that... if it were asus, abit, gigabyte, ect. , then yes, you could set it.

[shovenose]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

my hp core2duo had a setting in the bios that would set whether, at low temps, the fan would spin slowly or not at all-i chose not at all, the fan was a sucky whiner-but that crap junk is far dead, its piece spread all over the owrld i bet!

[mockingbird]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

fan control on a laptop is controlled by the bios. there should be some fan-related options in the bios of the hp, like "always run fans" or something

Fan control on laptops is coded into the DSDT table of the ACPI module in the BIOS. The operating system has to read this table correctly and have good ACPI support to use the BIOS' fan schemes.

I learned this when I installed Ubuntu on my Toshiba. The fans do not spin early enough and my temps are too high. I tried disassembling and fixing the errors in the DSDT. I even had to recompile the kernel because custom DSDTs are not allowed in the newer kernels. This did not solve the problem. Either the x64 Debian derivatives have poor ACPI support or I have to compile the Thermal as part of the kernel and not as a module, but my gut feeling tells me that this incompatibility has something to do with this "Phoenix" bios. (Anyone remember their CTRL-ALT-ESC to get into their bios during the 286 days?)

Works great in Vista though.

[stj]

Re: whta's the best life time of a graphic chip reflow?

arctic silver is slightly capacitive, you dont want it between the pins on a low votage chip.