Louis Rossman style repair shop for regular laptops?

[odonono]

I made a post over on reddit about how my windows laptop only works when plugged in now, because I dropped a screw driver on the connector pins where the laptop battery plugs into, causing sparks. I put a brand new battery in but still the same result, so something on the board obviously got fried (however, there's no visible burn marks, so no clue what was affected). I honestly wouldn't care, but my laptop is power throttling even with the internal battery unplugged (turns out this is a common problem on laptops with poor batteries or missing batteries). The GPU won't go above 40W when the TDP is 80W, so game performance is affected.

I tried installing Linux, reinstalling windows, and also using throttlestop, but it still power throttles. However I can get the GPU to operate at full power if I reinstall the nvidia drivers on windows (it reverts to throttling after restart), so that gives me some hope. I have the vague notion that I may try dumping the BIOS and editing the files to unlock the BIOS for some extra power setting features to hopefully fix the throttling.

Before editing the bios though, I'd like to find a repair shop and get a quote. Does anyone know of reputable repair shop that can do board level repair like Louis Rossman does over on youtube? Thanks!

[sam_sam_sam]

I watched a couple of his videos and I personally do not think you are going to find someone who can do what he claims that he can do
Do I think he is full of himself not really because the school of hard knocks give you education no amount of money can give you this type of confidence in what you do

I personally would use his services maybe depending how important is to you to have it working again but be aware that you are going to pay a lot of money for issues that he has not seen before

Saying this I do have something that is that important that I would be willing to give him a blank check and you really do not know how much the repairs are going to cost I personally would have a hard justification for that kind-a expensive for a used piece of equipment that might be able to be replaced with a new more up to date version now if is for a very expensive piece of equipment that has a very specific use and nothing else would work then it might be worth if the person is honest with you about if it can realistically be repaired and what odds that this thing will go well

Because this is one case where trying to get a quote is unrealistic at best and if you are given a quote the question will be would the person hold to the quote no matter how many hours it takes to get it working correctly and properly the problem is that you probably would have no ground to stand on if you had to sue this person for a bad repair experience

What I have written is in part is an example of what might happen if the person giving you the quote does not account for issues that are unknown at the time of the quote that is being made and not until the equipment was taken apart were the unknown was revealed and then the person tried to get more money because the amount of time that was spent to correct all of the issues I have to talk to this person that you can not do business like this because you will lose credibility and customers because of this practice

This person took my advice and stuck to the quote that was given but do not count on this type of outcome

[dmill89]

I'll add to what sam_sam_sam said. One of the biggest issues with getting that kind of component level repair on a windows laptop are the economics of it.

Rossmann's business model (and others like him) largely works due to Apple devices and "authorized" repairs/replacement parts being absurdly expensive, and their use of soldered storage in newer devices (some people will pay nearly anything to get their files back). The fact that many Apple devices have common failure modes/know flaws which can significantly decrease diagnosis time when you know what to look for also helps.

While there are shops that do component level repairs on windows devices (though I don't have any specific ones I'd recommend, and it will largely depend on region), in most cases the cost of labor will quickly exceed the cost of a replacement motherboard on most windows laptops (especially if they are a couple years old or more and used boards are available) for anything beyond "simple" repairs (such as a bad port or cap/resistor/mosfet that has obviously failed). It quickly becomes more economical to just replace the board when you're paying someone else (generally $60-$100/ hr. on top of parts cost) to do the work, and if they haven't worked on that specific device before (far more likely on windows devices with their vast spectrum of different brands and models than with Apple devices that have a relatively small hardware ecosystem) it could take hours (that you'll be billed for) just to diagnose the failure.

[odonono]

Thanks, so it sounds like board level repair for windows laptops isn't economical like it is for apple products, so it will be more expensive than a new motherboard. I guess I'll try dumping & unlocking the BIOS so that I can (hopefully) fix this unnecessary throttling. Is there anywhere on this site or elsewhere to discuss bios modding?

[sam_sam_sam]

You can use YouTube videos for guidance but I caution you about weather or not they know what they are doing it helps to know something about the subject in advance so you can determine weather or not they might be full of crap or they know something about the subject at hand

Yes you can go the route of buying motherboards on eBay but I caution you about this as well because I have done this myself and I have been somewhat burned before myself in that the listing says that it came out of a working condition before the motherboard was removed from the computer yes it post but it was issue was that one of the memory card was flake-e and did not want to work with the other memory card that was also there this is a known issue with memory card from different manufacturers this should be avoided if possible

I once bought a bear-bones computer which means NO hard drive no CPU no memory and listening says that it functions correctly well not exactly it would not post even after removing the CMOS battery but because the computer case was in very good condition I did not really care because a motherboard for this brand and series was very easy to get so I just replaced it and called it a day the cost of this motherboard used runs about $25.00 to $50.00 which when the cost is higher sometimes it comes with memory cards 2 megabytes to a total of 4 megabytes which is not bad for the extra money if they work because I use them to testing motherboards with low memory cards and see how well they function with the operating system that I am going to use