Got in way over my head with Supermicro server board and upgrade.

[FeerBaron]

Last year I bought a server. It's worked fairly well but had some issues. Some pcie slots didn't work and Xeon v4 is a bit slow and missing AVX 512. Came to realize that the next version up, with skylake uses mostly the same chassis.

A board popped up on ebay one day being sold for parts. A working board like this is over a grand at best. This particular one was about $125 and I decided to gamble.

At first it seemed simple enough. According to the description it looked like some mechanical damage.



Found the missing 560uf cap and thought I was set. Ordered the processors/heatsinks and cables I needed for the conversion. I could always send them back, right?

The board arrived and so did the cap. The first bad omen was that it came in the box with an invoice for a colonoscopy machine part.




But the thing was here and it was magnificent.



Figured that I had the component level parts so might as well start. I unbent the TPM pins and got to work on the cap. That's when the problems started. No amount of heat would budge the broken leads. I ended up heating the board with my rework station at full blast while touching the leads with my iron at the same time. They finally came out but sadly the holes didn't clear. I was using temps in the 400s according to the tools and it made me scared I would damage the board.



I did not try putting in the new cap, for while taking breaks, I discovered more damage. Another cap was similarly ripped off. Still in relatively high spirits, I took off the remnants.



This one came out cleaner than before, but it's also near the edge. Working on it got me examining that area more closely.



More broken parts! My confidence sank. I don't even know what those are and looking them up has proved fruitless. I can deduce their values from parts near them. They are labeled 560 with a string of letters below.




So what are they? Are the 199sz different from the 16DQD? Are they diodes? Coils? SMD caps? Will they be as hard to remove due to the thickness of this board? Finding C8190s value is probably impossible too. Can I ignore it? Bridge it? Can I even get the through hole caps in? I never had this much of a problem on desktop boards or other electronics. The fear uncertainty and doubt runs through my veins.


At that, will this board even work or is it just treated so badly because it was a no post and garbage? Do I just give up at this point and send back what I ordered like a total failure?

The pics on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/BoKkqBR


What would you do?

[sam_sam_sam]

One thing that you need is to have a temperature control hot air gun with air flow control at a minimum for these types of boards
What I have learned by doing this type of work is that you need a desoldering gun as well and use both of them together for better results you have the desoldering gun on one side of the board and hot air gun on the other side with moderate air flow with a small tube to constraint the air flow to one area above the component pin that you are trying to remove

To remove surface mounted components you should think about using a a tweezer style type of soldering iron that is temperature controlled as well do not be tempted to buy a real cheap one because the quality of them is questionable at best spend around $100.00 for better quality one you will not regret it they are very easy to use but you will need to get a dentist type pick to hold the component part in place when installing a new replacement part

It is advisable that you use a helping hand that allows you hold the board in a upright position to hold the board in one place so that can do the work that needs to be done

If do not want to buy one already built you can build your own which I am about to do for my self because I have several computer motherboards that I need to recap you can use the aluminum frame rail that are generally used for 3D printing platforms and you use the clamps that hold material in place

If you do not want to use the clamps you could just use a flat bar and use circuit board standoffs which might be easier for some type of circuit boards

The main thing that you want to achieve is that you hold the circuit board in place so that you have access to both sides of the circuit board at the same time as I explain earlier in this post

Use something like this and mount one side of the clamp to the rail and the other side is left free

https://www.ebay.com/itm/26301262916...Bk9SR_rkpuioYw

Here is the aluminum rail type of material that I am referring to


https://www.ebay.com/itm/12615191367...Bk9SR46FwuioYw

They make slotted nuts for these aluminum rails that slide in the slots and work very well but one word of caution is that you do not over tighten them because they can be stripped out the threads in the nuts

You these to join the rails together to make an “A” frame that can stand upright me personally I would make two of the “A” frames so you make the circuit board stay in one place while you work

What you are after is to use the hot air gun to heat up the area around the joint and then when you think that you have it hot enough then you use the desoldering gun to heat the other side of board when you think that side has heat enough to be able to suck out the solder and the component pin from the board then push the trigger button to turn on the suction

You have to do it several times to get the hang of doing it this way however it does require that you destroy the capacitor so that you only have to compound pins showing be careful doing this so that you do not damage the circuit board doing this this

But only do this as a last resort if can not remove them the normal way

You also need to remove the flux residue from the circuit board as well they do have flux residue remover which if you buy the right brand works very well or dental pick with a very small point can also be used if done carefully I use this method when there are no surface mounted components on the back of the circuit board

One final note when you buy motherboard circuit boards I would highly recommend that you make sure that you can see both sides of board and if the seller does not have good quality pictures ask them to take better pictures so that you can enlarge the photo to see if there is any issues with the board in question if the seller dose not want to do this move on to another seller you will find a seller that will have good quality photos of the board that they are trying to sell

I have bought several computer motherboards and complete computers from sellers and I have been very lucky with the way I look at photos that the seller has for there listing

If you paid more than $50.00 for this board and you have not done anything to this board yet I would recommend that you return it and get your money back because to me there is nothing worse than going behind someone else's who has butchered a board this bad to me it would be questionable whether or not it could be repaired or not but the real question is how much time is it going to take to get it to work correctly and properly and will it be worth it in the end

I preferably get a factory style recovery disk kit so you can have of systems working correctly and properly and to me is easier than searching for the driver from the manufacturer website I have personally done it both ways before but I have better results with the factory recovery disk kit

You might want to look at this listing this is what type of listing I look for when buying a computer motherboard

https://www.ebay.com/itm/39509117736...Bk9SR-6JheyoYw

One thing that I also do is either I try to find a factory style recovery disk or make sure that all of the drivers are available for the motherboard in question so that you can get it up and running with no issues

“A board popped up on ebay one day being [“sold for parts”] . A working board like this is over a grand at best. This particular one was about[ $125] ”

These are [ RED FLAGS ] To stay away from because unless you have good quality pictures of the exact motherboard in question for that amount of money I would go to another seller if and it says something like I do not have a way to test it I might take a chance but the picture quality has to be very good so I can thoroughly explain the board for signs of someone tampering with in attempt to repair it

I hope this helps you out with what you are trying to do

[sam_sam_sam]

One note about sellers that are selling their goods for extremely high prices either they really do not want to sell their products or they try to rape you out your money

[FeerBaron]

Well I appreciate the long reply but I think you overestimate how easy it is to just "go to another seller" or even find one of these boards. The system is https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc...4029GP-TRT.cfm and the board is https://www.supermicro.com/en/produc.../X11DPG-OT-CPU


The only other options for sale at the moment have broken socket pins. I also left it for a month sitting while the weather was bad and I was busy so I can't go back and return the board. Shame on me for not inspecting, I assumed seller wouldn't miss other damage. I was expecting replacing a single cap at worst as pictured. He had lots of pics but not of that part of the board, I think they missed it.


I do have a rework station and a soldering iron and I turned them up to high temperatures without the cap legs budging. I did not clean all flux off after removal because another cap is going in there, hopefully, maybe. The board itself is 2.5mm+ thick. Those ground pads and thermal mass is huge. I had tried using a small nozzle on the rework station to no avail. Ended up taking it off and running it at full air with no tip. Used both soldering iron and rework at the same time to budge the leads. To clear the holes I will try a little air to heat up the board and a large flat tip with a heated desoldering tool on the other side and see if that works. If only to practice and see if I can. As ugly as it is now, I don't think anything is broken there.

Hot tweezers won't do me much good here as the diodes? are gigantic, those will need air. Since they are only on the surface I think they will move. I measured them with the diode test and they give .225v fwd voltage so I think they must be those. Unfortunately I still can't find similar parts online. If that's the case I am sunk.


Here they are in all their glory.



Its strange nothing comes up for 560 online, nor the letters. The one with the busted off plastic at least measures correctly so it still works. The missing one is well.. missing and it's by CPU2. I can attempt to run on 1 CPU and with the mechanically damaged one maybe, but I feel like I would just be taking my working server apart and doing work for nothing.

[diif]

I would use low melt solder and a decent soldering iron to remove those components.
That looks like a Panasonic SP-cap 560uF

[FeerBaron]

Thank you. On image search they look to match up. I will attempt to order some equivalents. I think those will come off much easier than the through hole. There is some hope yet.

[FeerBaron]

When life gives you lemons:




The board starts up and works. Unfortunately, I think I found the reason it was removed from production. No GPU will power from it. The server refuses to start. When I measure the power connectors they all output like 11.9 volts. I can't find any shorts either. It's like under load it's not enough current and whatever distributes the power fails. Since the business end is fine, I just externally powered my 4 GPU and am testing it. Still needs resizable bar and there isn't much more memory bandwidth than the broadwell board.

[FeerBaron]

Ok.. I found that the EPS power connectors are shorted when the system is off. Maybe this is normal? Resizable bar worked on the board. https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEF