Should i bother fixing this?

[gg1978]

I just picked up a pair of Opteron 240's. I also asked the guy if he could send me the motherboard as it had been stated to be dead.. In fact the board had been thrown in the trash. The person had stabbed one of the electrolytic caps on the board with a screwdriver. He did remove the stabbed cap, but had no success replacing it with a new 3300uF Ruby MBZ.

I asked if he could ship the dead board with the opterons, as i figured that even if i couldn't fix the board, a server class board like this has a lot of goodies on it that could be used to fix other boards.

So i got the board and opties the other day, and quite to my surprise, it boots cleanly into the BIOS or to a HDD with XP preloaded on it, no issues at all.. Right now it's been running Prime95 on both CPU's, for the past hour so far. Of course being the fact that the Opterons are the slowest ones, (240's) Sledgehammer core, i figure the VRM is not under much load, and the missing 3300uF isn't going to hurt anything, as the bulk of the CPU VRM's are Oscon SEPC's anyway.

As for the board, there is some solder blob stuck on the bottom side. I had ohmed the VRM out with a DMM before mounting the CPU's and RAM, just in case..

I mean i would really hate to kill this thing, given that it works fine so far the way it is.

[stevo1210]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

I also asked the guy if he could send me the motherboard as it had been stated to be dead.. In fact the board had been thrown in the trash.

So i got the board and opties the other day, and quite to my surprise, it boots cleanly into the BIOS or to a HDD with XP preloaded on it

I'm a little confused at the moment. So your board was in the trash and then the previous owner picked it out and sent it to you.... am I correct or wrong there?

Anyway, you've got one nice board otherwise. I've come across offers like this before.... recently I bought a Gigabyte 8iPE667 Ultra (IIRC) for $20.... deemed as dead and turned out to be working perfectly.

In regards to the solder blob on the underside, you can remove it with a soldering iron or a solder wick if it's really stubborn and wont come out.

Thanks.

[gg1978]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

Yeah, the board was sitting in the top of the trash in the can though, so it wasn't cruddy and didn't have anything stuck between the PCI slots or anything.. But it was technically in the trash though..


I had read that such boards are 6 layer, and the blob of solder is on a VRM plane that will be very hard to heat, and there's a via there too, which might be halfway damaged already.. The solder mask has to be gone right there, i'm assuming, as the solder is stuck quite well..

[stevo1210]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

If possible can you take a picture of the solder blob because I am having some trouble trying to imagine what this solder blob looks like.

Thanks.

[willawake]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

yeah i am having trouble also trying to imagine what the trash can looked like.

[gg1978]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

I went ahead and dismounted the board to take this picture, after it had been running Prime95 on both CPU's for ~13 hours.. No errors of course..

Looks like from the close up the solder spattered when heated, looking at the little arcs of solder radiating from the big blob.. Anyway the blob is on the (+) side of the VRM output, and the ground via opposite it isn't looking too hot either..

I"ve seen worse damage to a motherboard and fixed it, but being a 6 layer board, i'm assuming that things are more delicate..

[willawake]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

really need to see it with the solder removed and the flux cleaned. doesnt look bad so far

[kc8adu]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

looks like a cracked joint lower and left too.

[stevo1210]

Re: Should i bother fixing this?

The solder blob doesnt look too bad.... You can remove the blob by using a soldering wick I guess.... I've done it before to a few motherboards. The joints on some components in the photo look like they are cold/broken?

Thanks.