Asus X55VD no video, then no nvidia and crazy fan
Got this thing in. Only started up sometimes. Guy who brought it in suspected the video chip. i7 Ivy Bridge, 8GB DDR3, nVidia GT610M (kinda a waste of power, as the Intel HD4000 is mostly on par with it), Intel HM76 PCH.
Took it apart, gave a quick blast of hot air on the nvidia die, no change, still no video. Did the same for the PCH, again, nothing. So the chips weren't faulty.
Flashed BIOS. It lit up, booted, but did not see the nvidia chip. Checked voltages, the nvidia chip did not even receive power anymore. Flashed a few more dumps. Still no change, Intel HD4000 only and then the fan went crazy. Flashed the original dump out of curiosity - guess what, it worked with that. But still no nvidia and the fan was still spinning maxed.
So there was nothing wrong with the BIOS, yet flashing it made the machine boot up... or did it. The BIOS is close to the PCH. On the other side of the board, but still close enough for the solder balls of the PCH to get some heat from the desoldering/resoldering of the BIOS chip. I was on to something here...
Reflowed PCH on my rework station. (don't have 0.35mm balls right now, sorry...). Fan went back to normal, and like magic, the nvidia GT610M popped up too in Device Manager. There we go.
I made a nice copper heatsink for the PCH. After 4 hours, the temperature at its surface is 47C. That's with the vents blocked (laptop in bed). A bit on the warm side but nothing to worry about now... I don't wanna know what kind of temperatures it ran at before. Of course, the PCH does not report its internal temperature on this board.
There were even two standoffs on the board to screw a heatsink onto it, but the nice guys at Asus have decided not to include the heatsink.
I'm not really blaming them however, as i've seen the same with Acer and Toshiba. Looks like Intel is starting to pull a nvidia...
Took it apart, gave a quick blast of hot air on the nvidia die, no change, still no video. Did the same for the PCH, again, nothing. So the chips weren't faulty.
Flashed BIOS. It lit up, booted, but did not see the nvidia chip. Checked voltages, the nvidia chip did not even receive power anymore. Flashed a few more dumps. Still no change, Intel HD4000 only and then the fan went crazy. Flashed the original dump out of curiosity - guess what, it worked with that. But still no nvidia and the fan was still spinning maxed.
So there was nothing wrong with the BIOS, yet flashing it made the machine boot up... or did it. The BIOS is close to the PCH. On the other side of the board, but still close enough for the solder balls of the PCH to get some heat from the desoldering/resoldering of the BIOS chip. I was on to something here...
Reflowed PCH on my rework station. (don't have 0.35mm balls right now, sorry...). Fan went back to normal, and like magic, the nvidia GT610M popped up too in Device Manager. There we go.
I made a nice copper heatsink for the PCH. After 4 hours, the temperature at its surface is 47C. That's with the vents blocked (laptop in bed). A bit on the warm side but nothing to worry about now... I don't wanna know what kind of temperatures it ran at before. Of course, the PCH does not report its internal temperature on this board.
There were even two standoffs on the board to screw a heatsink onto it, but the nice guys at Asus have decided not to include the heatsink.
I'm not really blaming them however, as i've seen the same with Acer and Toshiba. Looks like Intel is starting to pull a nvidia...
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