Oh Noes!!!

[pentium]

I was doing a lookover of my recent recapped mobo, the gigabyte I mentioned in a previous thread and got a scary surprise.
Two or three of those little resistors or capacitors that are the size of a pinhead have broken off the board and gone missing. Should I fear the worse or just expect a slight loss in performance?

[arneson]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

You will have to fix that or suffer the consequences.

[pentium]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

I don't know their resistances though.

[arneson]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

Do you happen to have a resister sub box? Or two?
Just a thought.

[999999999]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

It depends on where they were, their purpose.

If you can get a good tight shot (picture) of the area and one a little further back for some context, it couldn't hurt.

It's possible "some" being missing would only reduce stability, maybe not below the threshold for the settings the board is running with now, or maybe enough to make it instable or not even post- so to that extent, I suppose it could be considered a loss of performance if you had to underclock something to regain stability (if it would help, depends on what it was).

Other such parts may be dedicated to a specific function and if you don't need that function, they may not matter (though torn traces might short against something, sometimes). Others are more critical, like the regulation subcircuit, having some resistor(s) missing could fry your CPU immediately. Usually caps missing are not that big a deal, with the tiny surface mounted ones they usually scatter those around and they're in parallel with others or filter bus noise that may or may not be a problem in any given system.

So look at where they were. If you can't get a closeup picture of that board, note the subcircuit they're in, and find another board (or forum member with board) that has this chipset the subcircuit supports. Quite often the layouts of boards change, but the basic reference design (or close enough) per chip is used and you can get a pretty good idea what values you need.

[stretch0069]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

are you sure they are broken off??? there are quite a few places where components just aren't placed...for one reason or another.

[pentium]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

are you sure they are broken off???

I can see what looks like half of a mini capacitor on the board. the areas are not shiny like the places where parts were never installed.
As for a picture.....I'll get back to you.

[pentium]

Re: Oh Noes!!!

****CLOSED*****
The board is suffering from other troubles which didn't fit in this section.
Look in the forum replacing bad caps for my latest thread and pictures.