Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

[Agent24]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Also, fact is that ALL 8000 series GPUs are faulty. And all 6150/7000 chipsets too. And yet you see a lot less failures in desktops. They still fail, but not at the outrageous rate the mobile chipsets have been failing. Which means there is something laptop makers have gotten wrong, and IMO that is inadequate mechanical support of the GPU heatsink and low quality thermal interface material. If the chip is bolted properly to the heatsink and the solder balls and board do not run significantly hotter than the heatsink, the solder will not fail. It's simple physics here.

I think it's because laptops typically have worse cooling than desktops, as they are much smaller and designed to run quieter.

[Scenic]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

It's a combination of heat and a faulty chip.

They fail a lot more often in laptops because their cooling isn't anywhere nearly as powerful as what a desktop card gets. The constant extreme temperature changes in laptops (room temp when off and well over 60 or 70°C when on) just accelerates the failure.

I've seen my fair share of (semi-)dead desktop Geforce 8400-8600 cards aswell. The ones with the tiny cheap coolers or the entirely passive cooled cards die first, while the ones with a proper sized cooler are usually still going.

My stepdad for example has a MSI Geforce 8600GTS with a rather big (2 slot) heatpipe cooler that pushes the hot air out of the case. Still no signs of failure or glitchy-ness. The generic (Manli ?!) 8500GT I had as a test card on the other hand died with pixel-salad on the screen after less than 2 years. It had a ridiculous little active cooler and always ran pretty hot (around 60°C in idle)

Last time I tried to use it the computer acted as if there was a graphics card (didn't beep), but the card didn't display anything anymore

edit: added pics. Yes.. the Manli 8500GT came with the lovely Sacon FZ pest.. That wasn't why it died though as I had replaced those.

[Agent24]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

I've got an 8600GT with some weird symptoms, namely checkerboard patterns through all 3D objects and certain video acceleration methods.

Found a thread on Nvidia forums (I think) where the common element was that everyone had used the TV-out function soon before they had the issue - me included.

Still don't know what to make of that one! I am dubious of blaming it on the solder issue or faulty chip because even with the stuffed display it's still rock solid even when running games, and as far as I know all the dud ones crash if you push them.

[Scenic]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

The Manli 8500GT had random symbols (in the BIOS) and colored pixels (in windows) appear out of nowhere, but was otherwise stable.
Got worse over time till you couldn't really tell what the hell you were looking at. Kept crashing in that state too. Later on it just didn't display anything (monitor not coming out of standby)

[Agent24]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

BIOS and Windows has no issues on mine.

It's only 3D stuff etc.

Run a 3D application windowed, and you get the checkerboard pattern in that window and that window only. Nothing wrong with anything else on the screen.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

So, how long was it? 2 months? I can do better...

Anyway, after the officially worst day of the year i was playing some STALKER to calm my nerves. And guess what? About an hour later, BAM... colored lines over the picture. Not again...

I took the thing apart and thought it isn't a good idea to put it in the oven again, so i warmed up the hot air station. And fortunately, although my nerves have seen better days, my intuition still worked. I looked at the two video RAM chips on the top of the board. I thought, "Has anyone messed with those before? Methinks not." The GPU is on the bottom, and the board was reflowed GPU side up, so those RAM chips were on the bottom when the board was reflowed in the oven. Also, unlike the other two chips on the GPU side, these have no heatsinking of any kind... Hmm. I put some flux paste around the chips, turned the hot air to 200C and got the flux to go under the chips as well. Then i cranked up the heat for a minute or so, waited for the board to cool down and gave it a test run. What do you know... working fine.

I proceeded to do another few minor tweaks while i was at it, such as cutting away a piece of plastic that obstructed half of the GPU exhaust vent, removing the stupid tinfoil between the copper heatsink and the GPU (they say it's phase change material, but i don't buy that crap... it was regular aluminum foil stuck to the heatsink with pink gummy stuff). Removing it dropped GPU temp by 2 deg C. Not anything to write home about, but still, an improvement.

I also probed the two RAM chips which i have reflowed. They run at 50ish C under FurMark without the top cover installed, and it's not unrealistic to assume that temps are a good 10-15C higher with the laptop fully assembled. I noticed that one of the chips ran hotter than the other, because it was next to the GPU VRM. I also noticed that it had left a nice brown mark on the sheet of clear plastic which serves to insulate the top cover from the motherboard. I proceeded to cut away the plastic in that area and put a little thermal paste, so the chip gets a bit more heatsinking from the top cover. It won't make a world of difference i'm sure, but every little bit counts. The other chip comes right under the ribbon cables so there wasn't much i could do about it, but that one runs cooler so i hope it'll be fine.

The patterns when it failed this time were identical to the way it failed before, so it looks like the issue eluded both the guy who reballed the board and myself - the GPU itself was fine all this time, it was the RAM which failed.

Will i be taking it apart again in 2 months? We'll see. Summer's coming so things are guaranteed to get crispy. The saga continues.

Oh, and to make the worst day of the year even worse, after i fixed the $^#*@(% board, i managed to complete another level on STALKER and then the game has decided to crash every time i try to save. Cool.

[momaka]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Sucks to have a bad day like that. At least you got your laptop fixed (maybe for good too ).

I think I may have the same problem with a bunch of Radeon 9500 Pro/9700 video cards I bought about 6 years ago "as is" (I've kept them for this long because I didn't know what the problem was before, but this year I started working in a computer and game console repair place, and we do reflows and re-balls regularly, so I learned a lot there). Anyways, I did a ghetto heatgun reflow on one of those video cards about 2 weeks ago and it worked. On that card, I reflowed the GPU chip and the RAM chips on top. Now last week I reflowed 2 more of these video cards at work (just the GPU and only 2 of the RAM chips on top). Guess what - those 2 video cards did not work (one still displays artifacts and the other doesn't even get detected at all). It would be interesting if it's the other 2 RAM chips that are causing the problem. I guess we'll find out when I give these 2 cards a blast with the heatgun .

[Wester547]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

I still have a Radeon 9500 Pro also - it's a trooper - it's survived since 2003 and it also survived sliding across the floor (inadvertently) and having its bracket slightly contorted (but not so much so that it doesn't fit into an AGP slot). However, this particular one was never used for 3D rendering much (which may expound upon why it's still kicking). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was of the belief that the Radeon 9500/9700 series cards (or the R300 series) were from before the lead-free solder (and BGA) era - what about those cards exactly makes them "desolder" (or rather the RAM chips also?) (I know too many heat/cold cycles can do that, but...)? I used to have another 9500 Pro too but it began having artifacts in Summer of 2009, even when booting Windows. Not a surprise though - I worked it heavily from 2003 until then and it didn't have more than a small fan and heatsink assembly (which means it gets too hot to touch under load with its stock cooling system).

[momaka]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was of the belief that the Radeon 9500/9700 series cards (or the R300 series) were from before the lead-free solder (and BGA) era

They are indeed from before the lead-free solder era (however, both the GPU and RAM are BGA). My guess would be it's just the heat-cycles that kills them as they tend to run hot. The stock yellow thermal compound that ATI used is not very stable at high temperatures. As the fan on these cards slows down/dies, the thermal compound hardens and eventually the GPU overheats. But other than that, they do seem like pretty tough cards.

[Wester547]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Thanks for the response - that is interesting (it seems the Radeon 8500/R200 is also BGA). It looks like BGA debuted as early as 2000/2001, so I wonder what the first BGA graphics chips were.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

I wonder what the first BGA graphics chips were.

The first to not have lots and lots of legs on the sides.

Anyway... my game got fixed by restarting the level from the beginning and i finished it last night. Slept pretty well, and now i'll be off to tackle the original issue which screwed up my day yesterday.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

HAH stalker. I played that on steam and it kept crashing on me over and over and over to the point it wasn't playable (which is wierd cause I played through it one time before with only a few crashes)

someone is re-making stalker with cryengine 2/3. I lost the original website but here is the article. last I checked it was 90% done

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/07/mo...n-cryengine-2/

[Agent24]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

I have the Non-steam version, works just fine.

[momaka]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Thanks for the response - that is interesting (it seems the Radeon 8500/R200 is also BGA). It looks like BGA debuted as early as 2000/2001, so I wonder what the first BGA graphics chips were.

I think BGA is a fairly old technology, actually. AFAIK, it didn't become popular (in computers) until the mid 90's, though. I have an old Matrox Mystique 220 from 1997 that uses BGA for the GPU. It doesn't even have (or need) a heatsink but it still works fine after all of these years.

By the way, don't mean to hijack the thread, but I reflowed the 2 Radeon 9500 Pro/9700 video cards with the heatgun, and now those work as well. Still not sure if it was the RAM or the GPU, though. I had to take off the eletrolytic caps for the reflow, so I didn't want to experiment around and just reflow the RAM chips only to find out that the video card wouldn't work and then have to remove the caps again. So that's why I reflowed everything at once.

[Agent24]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

I have an old Matrox Mystique 220 from 1997 that uses BGA for the GPU. It doesn't even have (or need) a heatsink but it still works fine after all of these years.

And that is the reason why it still works, old stuff generally runs slow and cool.

[Wester547]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

I think BGA is a fairly old technology, actually. AFAIK, it didn't become popular (in computers) until the mid 90's, though. I have an old Matrox Mystique 220 from 1997 that uses BGA for the GPU. It doesn't even have (or need) a heatsink but it still works fine after all of these years.

My old 64MB DDR GeForce 2 MX 400 (64-bit RAM) doesn't even have a heatsink either, and even under full 3D load, it never becomes hot, only warm to touch at the most (the core, that is - the RAM chips feel even less warm), even in hot weather. It's been in use since the end of 2001 - it might be a drudging and inept card but as far as I'm concerned, when it's that reliable, it's a winner. Not sure if it's BGA or not, though. It's also been clocked at stock frequencies, always. Never tried to overclock it or downclock it. By comparison to another 64MB DDR (128-bit RAM) GeForce 2 GTS I have, which has a heatsink and a fan (both small, the stock cooling system), it becomes warm even in idle and too hot to touch during 3D load (only the heatsink does, though - the RAM chips are never too hot to touch, interestingly...). I suppose cleaning out the heatsink and fan would aid that, but even so...

[Agent24]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Well, the MX series of GeForce cards are the low-end and are pretty slow, so not really surprising it would run cooler.

Same thing as the old SE type Radeons. (I've always called them Slow Edition, in fact, that's probably where the name came from!)

[brethin]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Back on topic somewhat I disagree with this general statement somewhat.

If the problem is the that BGA is no longer making all conatcts due to (Heat and the use of leadfree solder) then a proper Reballing with leaded solder is your best option and will last the longest. A reflow in this case is just like resting a circuit breaker when it trips, you need to fix whats tripping it.

[mattbrad2]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

Back on topic somewhat I disagree with this general statement somewhat.

If the problem is the that BGA is no longer making all conatcts due to (Heat and the use of leadfree solder) then a proper Reballing with leaded solder is your best option and will last the longest. A reflow in this case is just like resting a circuit breaker when it trips, you need to fix whats tripping it.

I'll chime in here, since for the past 24 months or so, I've probably re-worked ~200 or more of these DV laptops. I really wish I was joking too. The problem is definitely heat related, leading to micro fractures somewhere between the die substrate and the motherboard solder pads. Where this problem is actually, seems to be anyone's guess. My daughters DV6000 which was among the 1st ones I tried reflowing is still going strong to this day - however, it only stays on long enough for her to get the pbskids fix she needs, then it gets powered off. The lead-free solder is a lot like bending a thin piece of metal back and forth. Throw enough thermal cycles at this stuff, and it'll break. nVidia, naturally, says the problem is in the solder pads on the mainboards. Quanta says the problem is the solder pads on the chip. It's actually quite amusing that no one really, REALLY knows where the problem lies. We can't go back to leaded solder at this point in electronics, so blaming that seems to be a mute point. From experience, reballing a chip with leaded solder and re-attaching it *properly* yields the longest lifespan, but this is still 12-14 months tops. Once one of these chips fails, no amount of re-working will ever permanently fix it. Everyone in the industry once believed the newer chips from nVidia and ATI would certainly solve the issue. We're now seeing they were wrong. I'm starting to see an influx of problems from a much wider range of laptops than 2 years ago. The DV series was merely the start of a problem that seemingly grows daily.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Reballing does NOT mean it'll last long!

a proper Reballing with leaded solder is your best option and will last the longest. A reflow in this case is just like resting a circuit breaker when it trips, you need to fix whats tripping it.

This replacement board was originally reballed with leaded solder when i got it. However, i think it's just the GPU which was done, giving that i discovered it was actually the RAM on the top side giving me grief.

I'm not going to pay to get this board done again. I only need it for about 6 more months anyway. But i have a feeling it'll make it past that.

Everyone in the industry once believed the newer chips from nVidia and ATI would certainly solve the issue. We're now seeing they were wrong. I'm starting to see an influx of problems from a much wider range of laptops than 2 years ago. The DV series was merely the start of a problem that seemingly grows daily.

My other HP, a DV5 with ATi HD3450, still has no problem after 3 years of daily use. The only issue i had with it was the touchpad ribbon breaking in the first week. Replaced that and i've had zero issues since. And that sucker runs HOT. But i did buy that one new.