Asus A6000 wont post

[stj]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

you dont just heat it up, you inject flux under the chip first - without flux it will not reflow properly.

[arxaios]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

you dont just heat it up, you inject flux under the chip first - without flux it will not reflow properly.

yes ofcourse without flux is a mess and obviously you need a temperature meter to avoid over heat the chip

[asusa6000]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

any news? have you done this reflow ? any changes? thanks.

[Dman111]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Hi,

I had the exact same problems with my A6T laptop. Turns out the problem is with the Nvidia northbridge chip, not the GPU. (The northbridge chip is the slightly smaller chip in between the GPU and CPU on the mobo.)

I did a reflow on the northbridge on the weekend and made a few mods to the cooling. I was pleasantly surprised when the laptop started first try. I have been running it for about 6 hours each night since then and it hasn't missed a beat!

I'm not sure how long it will keep working, but fingers crossed I can get another year or two out of it.

Cheers
Dman

[bad_the_ba]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

I did a reflow on the northbridge on the weekend and made a few mods to the cooling. I was pleasantly surprised when the laptop started first try. I have been running it for about 6 hours each night since then and it hasn't missed a beat!

I'm not sure how long it will keep working, but fingers crossed I can get another year or two out of it.

I have the US barebones model Z-92T, which is identical to the A6t, other than it is meant to customize and comes with no CPU, HDD, RAM, or WLAN card. I originally sold this to one of my customers, and it came back with a melted power connector, which I was able to repair, along with providing a new AC adapter. After having additional heat issues, it came back once again, and I sent it in to ASUS for warranty repair. They complained a lot, but eventually replaced the motherboard, sent a new AC adapter, and replaced the top plastics around the keyboard because of heat damage. When I got it back in, the customer just wanted a replacement, so I got in a similar MSI notebook and kept this ASUS for myself. All has been working well, but it does get rather hot, so I am careful with it. Because parts are getting more scarce, I bought a dead one of these off of ebay for $80 (stripped of HDD, ODD, RAM, and WLAN card... but heck, just the screens go for that much), which was in better cosmetic condition than mine, and planned on taking it apart to look over the cooling situation. I may attempt a reflow on the dead one, but by now, the plastics on mine are damaged from heat and wear, and I'd rather just make sure I have one good working laptop.
I just have one question for Dman, what cooling modifications did you make? I have seen copper heatsink shims being used on the HP DV6000 and DV9000 series laptops with similar problems, but was just hoping to hear from someone who has had good success in keeping this ASUS cool. It definitely is tight space with a small heatsink over the GPU and chipset, I'd prefer a larger heatsink with a fan that moves a bit more air, but you can't have everything. Oh, and I have flashed the latest BIOS to mine, the working one, which changes the fan so that it is always spinning. I don't like this, because it is much louder than it needs to be, but I know it's keeping the laptop alive.
Good thing is I have the dead one which isn't worth much to me to play with, which I now have in pieces so I can change over plastic parts. and get rid of the cracked stuff on mine.

On a somewhat related note, I just ordered a refurb HP DV9000 motherboard ($139) from an ebay seller that installs one of the copper shims I mentioned. If I send back mine, I get a $30 refund. Price is on par with similar repair and replacement services, but this deal was nice because I can get just the board to replace myself, and don't need to ship them the laptop or the board and have it inspected first. Reflow did not work on this one, as I actually found a burnt/seeping flat capacitor on the board which was beyond my soldering skills to replace. My main reason for wanting this one running is that it has 2 SATA HDD bays, and the ASUS is running on one IDE bay. Hopefully I'll get all the parts and have the HP rebuilt and tested well before the release of Ubuntu 10.04.

[Dman111]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

For those that haven't seen the asus a6000 heatsink, here is a link to a pic:

http://www.pchub.com/uph/laptop/423-...-Heatsink.html

The copper plate on the left of the heatsink covers the GPU. The bare copper is covered by some aluminium foil held on by that terrible hard thermal paste that manufacturers seem to like using. The copper plate is attached to a copper pipe that is, in turn, joined to the fan housing.

Attached to the copper plate and pipe is an aluminium heatsink that also forms part of the fan housing. There is a small square inset cut out of the main part of the heatsink. This covers the northbridge chip. Mine had a small copper plate and one of those rubber thermal pads wedged in between the heatsink and the northbridge.

I don't have an IR thermometer to check but I suspect that the overall temp of the heatsink will normalise between the GPU and northbridge temps. The problem seems to be that there is no airflow over the part of the heatsink directly above the chips. I can't see how there can be much effective heat transference from the main part of the heat sink to the fan enclosure, nor do I think the fan will be very effective in cooling the enclosure (the fan's primary importance is probably to keep the CPU cool).

I have only made minimal changes to this so far - I simply wanted to improve the heat transference from the chips, particularly the northbridge - to the heatsink. I removed the foil and thermal paste from the GPU copper plate because I wanted direct contact between the chip and the copper. I put some thermal paste between the two (some stuff that I got with a Zalman heatsink - I have since bought some Arctic Silver and I'll use that if I mess with the cooling further).

I also got rid of the thermal pad over the northbridge. I would have perferred to replace the copper plate over the northbridge but it seems to be glued in place, and I couldn't prise it up without damaging the heatsink. Unfortunately, the northbridge and GPU chips are slightly different heights, so I bought some copper sheet to make a shim for the top of the northbridge. I put thermal paste on both sides of the shim and wedged it in between the northbridge and heatsink. Lastly, I bent the GPU copper plate down a little to get better contact with the GPU chip.

After flashing the bios with the latest version, my fan also runs at full speed all of the time. The release notes suggest that the update was to fix a bug with the fan speed control, but running the fan constantly at full speed seems to be the same as the HP fix for overheating Nvidia chips, so I have my suspicions.

Anyway, I have been watching the temps while I rebuild the OS (stupidly, I had reformatted the HDD before I found out the mobo may be fixable). My CPU runs at a reasonable 48C after several hours of use and the GPU runs at 58C (ambient temp is 22C-25C). There doesn't seem to be a temperature gauge on the northbridge, but I suspect it will be around the GPU temp. I never checked the temps before the northbridge died, so I have nothing to compare these latest temps with. The good news is it hasn't gone thermonuclear yet. Once I have finished rebuilding the computer, I'm going to do some GPU intensive stuff to see what effect that has on the GPU temp.


I would like to bring the GPU temp down to <50C, if possible, and so I have started to look at after market cooling devices. There are no vents in the chassis near the gpu and northbridge, so laptop cooling pads and usb fans don't seem to be very useful unless I get out the drill and cut a few holes (and dust may be a concern here). And given the need to cool both the northbridge and GPU + the limited space, I haven't had much luck in finding a better heatsink. Perhaps I'll just suck it and see.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

[bad_the_ba]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Dman,
Thanks for the quick reply. Because my spare parts laptop didn't cost me much, I am possibly going to try some mods on the bottom plastic (possibly a drilled metal filtered plate and removal of part of the bottom plastic plate), leaving me with a backup. I found some .64-.7mm copper shims on ebay for a few dollars, which is going to be much less trouble than my finding and cutting copper. I figure on using them between the heatsink and both the GPU and the northbridge chip, removing the crappy foil and soft pad. I am also thinking about doing some reinforcing on the back behind the fan vent because mine has been cracked for some time. I doubt anything I can do to help that will make a difference in temps.
At this point, I have enough money sunk into the laptop that I can't get rid of it... it needs to last me another couple years. But since I have the previously mentioned HP to rebuild, with no cost to me above the "repaired" motherboard I found, I can probably migrate away from my ASUS slowly until I can afford a real replacement. (no, I don't consider an HP model plagued with Nvidia/AMD heat issues a good replacement for an ASUS plagues with Nvidia/AMD heat issues.
The sad part is, I am an Intel partner, and typically recommend Centrino/Core/Core2, etc. This sale was one I tried to get using an Intel setup, and the customer insisted on AMD. Nothing against AMD, because this is more of a manufacturing issue than a parts selection issue, but whenever I go AMD it always comes back to bite me in the butt.

[cekmece]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

You have to know that allready change the motherboard by asus as defective so this one is brand new.I doublecked everything on the motherboard after i took it apart the main power adapter is ok as i measure it with multitester same thing i done with the motherboard the power passes through the variable chips.when i press the power button the leds flashing for about 3 sec and then nothing.the fan of the cpu dont turn on but i can hear the hdd trying spinning as the dvd player.After a lot of studying through internet included this site i understand that my computer cant pass the self on test fase and shutsdown.Could be a defective component?everything on my motherboard looks great as brand new nothing signs of burned or bad caps.When i plug main source the battery leb shows that charging for like 10 min and then nothing.I check power jack is ok ram ok.What else could be?

it was same problem with my asus a6000... your all errors was like my asus...
i fixed this problem... No new fan or no new mainboard...

clean old thermal grease(it is on your processor) and change it with new thermal grease...
sory for my English, i hope you understand me... Hi from Istanbul-Turkiye...

[foxpro]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

I have registered just to inform you that my A6000 laptop had the same issues.
No video on post, just fast blinking lights, blue mail and 3 green power lights, then turn off after 2 seconds. I've tried disconnecting everything that is not needed for boot-up. I didn't solve the problem until now:
I can confirm that I have solved the problem with reflowing the motherboard, more exactly the MB chips: nVidia GPU and Sis bridge.
What I've done: I've practically removed everything from the motherboard, that includes removing the motherboard from the plastic housing, removing everything from the MB, including 2 cooling and CPU, DDR, WiFi card, Modem card, battery and normally all the cables and isolator materials that were lightly glued on the MB. Then I have protect the whole MB with the aluminium foil, leaving only empty and unprotected two mentioned chips nVidia GPU and Sis bridge and small area around them (around 1cm from the chips). Put the MB in the already heated oven (220 celsius degrees) and leave it there for about 8 minutes. Then turned the oven off and opened it for about 30 minutes without moving the MB. Its important to not move the MB until it cool-off.
The foil did protect some plastic connectors like CPU socket and DDR socket and oven heating did no damage to them.

I have assembled then the Asus A6000, (put new cooling paste on the CPU) and... it turned on. It works now for about 40+ minutes, I don't know if anything else is wrong, cause I put only memtest for now.

The point of my post is that it was probably the nVidia GPU that was faulty or better say it has lost connection with the motherboard at some node. Reflowing solved that, I don't know if reflowing has done other damage, though.
cheers

[marcellodj]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

270c=mobo R.I.P

[Wizard]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Ditto on cooling design is lacking on some Asus notebooks. I had seen a Z7100 die since the GPU Nv Go6600 died out. Very hard to find now for this non-standard MXM card.
Two dies stacked in center and four memory chips at corners of BGA package. Complex package ever.

Reason this happened is the heatsink is a wide shallow channel (no internal fins), fan at one end and exhaust at other end, four screws at extreme ends, so there is NO positive compression on the GPU die so all you depend on is springiness of the MXM card to maintain pressure on the heatsink. Bad thermal contact is what caused this.

Cheers, Wizard

[Hotiron]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Hi arxaios. Did you ever get your M/B fixed?

[pamr4]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

The problem of nVidia chips (GPU+chipset) can be fixed by reballing. It's the only solution. Of course nVidia is aware of this.

[Hotiron]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

My guess is they used some form of really crap lead free solder.

[severach]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Lead free solder, excessive heat, and the BGA package are only parts of the problem. The lifetime can be extended by reflowing. Reballing can extend it further. The nVidia problem can never be fixed without purchase of a new part. The nVidia chip itself is defective and the heat from reflowing or reballing often patches the chip die up a bit longer. You only think you fixed it because you don't know what's inside the box.

If you're stuck with an nVidia POS then reball with leaded solder and improve the heat sink as much as possible.

Start here with some red pill: Inquirer: HP pays half for Nvidia's graphic problems

Too bad only Apple, Dell, and HP were covered in the nVidia class action. Too bad only HP owners got anything worth getting, a low end replacement for a low quality defect.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

HP wasn't the only problem, any system without proper cooling with these invidia chips is much more prone to the black screen issue

we used to send them into a guy, he said he 'fixes' them, we later realized he just replaces the motherboard with an intel one. He probably reballs them on his own time, but who knows

[Hotiron]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Lol I take it that was the wrong Link. But hilarious all the same.
Thanks severach for cheering up my day.

[Hotiron]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Is there any way to determine which chip has gone bad eg: video, southbridge, northbridge.
I was on you tube when mine died, Coloured garbage on the screen for 0ne second followed by instant power down and would not switch on again (Asus A6m) The fan is good as is the processor. (tried in other machine)
I have stripped it down and and there is no sign of bad caps or mosfets so I guess it has to be one of the BGAs....

[kc8adu]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

just bought a g51j off cl cheap.
had a cracked mlcc near the cpu.caused a short on vcore.hdd was toast too so likely dropped.while the op's problem is no doubt a bga issue i always look for drop damage.its very common.

[Hotiron]

Re: Asus A6000 wont post

Doh! Thanks for that I'll just go and shoot myself now for being an arse!