Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

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My pointless and worthless repair is a 5V 3A switched mode power supply adaptor.

What happened to it was a leaky main cap, and when I plugged, unplugged then quickly plugged back the adaptor, somehow that made the PWM chip blew itself up.

The chip is OB2358AP. It cost about the same as a brand new adaptor, which is around $1.

I replaced the chip and the main leaky cap.
It's been running fine since then.

I also have another pointless and worthless repair.
A GTX 560 SE with missing components and ripped pads. Being an old DX11 card with only 1GB GDDR5, it has zero value, but I repaired it anyway.

It's also running fine in one of my computers but I don't like the blower fan design, because it fails to cool down the VCORE mosfets. One of these days I will probably 3D print a shroud for it, that will allow me to mount a standard 90mm graphics card fan which I salvaged from a dead RTX.

[momaka]

My pointless and worthless repair is a 5V 3A switched mode power supply adaptor.

What happened to it was a leaky main cap, and when I plugged, unplugged then quickly plugged back the adaptor, somehow that made the PWM chip blew itself up.

The chip is OB2358AP. It cost about the same as a brand new adaptor, which is around $1.

I replaced the chip and the main leaky cap.
It's been running fine since then.

Good save!

I don't think you can get a decent 5V 3 Amp power adapter like that for $1 new from the store.
The one shown above is built very well - it has an input choke, proper fuse and thermistor, an and proper X2 and Y2 caps.
All the cheapo adapters I can get new here (for more than $1, mind you) are gutless wonders with 1kV ceramic caps between primary and secondary, and a bunch of other cost-cutting measures.

I also have another pointless and worthless repair.
A GTX 560 SE with missing components and ripped pads. Being an old DX11 card with only 1GB GDDR5, it has zero value, but I repaired it anyway.

For someone as far behind as I am on the hardware curve, I'd say a GTX 560 (be it SE or not) is still a very decent video card.
What's funny is I find GTX 460 and 560 cards can now be found on Ebay for very cheap... yet try looking for a high-end DX 9.0 card, and the prices jump back up, sometimes to absurd levels. Not sure what the retro PC crowd is smoking these days, but a GTX560 is perfectly capable of handling any XP games at high res without the cost of an arm and a leg.
Also, many modern game requirements are stupid high nowadays for no reason. (Well, it's not for no reason... the reason is that coders / game devs are not willing to optimized anything for the PC, because it's expected that people that play games will always have good hardware. But Xbox and PS4/5, it's a different story.)

It's also running fine in one of my computers but I don't like the blower fan design, because it fails to cool down the VCORE mosfets.

The core appears to be running nice and cool, though - after all, 52C for GPU @ 100% load is not bad at all. I have the EVGA version on these cards (just regular GTX 560's) with the single fan in the middle, and those heatsinks designs suck even more. Sure my VRM MOSFETs might be getting cooled... but what good is that when the GPU core is running miserably hot?
No thanks, I'll take a refference blower -style cooler any day. It also removes heat from the system (PC case) rather than just re-circulate hot air inside the case.

BTW, you mentioned you fixed your card, but I see it's stuck in 1x PCI-E mode in GPU-Z. Is that because you're testing with an extension PCI-E cable (like those meant for mining rigs) or an error in GPU-Z? I have some dead/dying cards that also run only in 1x... or sometimes in 4x... but it's not due to bad ceramic caps near the PCI-E connector, I already checked. Most likely, it's a dying GPU in those cards.
That said, if yours is connected directly to the motherboard's PCI-E 16x slot and still running in 1x only, check the other "non-damaged" ceramic caps to make sure they are not shorted.
Whenever I see broken ceramic caps on a video card, I always assume it was not handled properly and thus any ceramic cap could be shorted. So for the ones on the PCI-E conn., I always check them all for short-circuit and proper capacitance. They should be either 100 nF or 220 nF.

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Good save!

I don't think you can get a decent 5V 3 Amp power adapter like that for $1 new from the store.

I've seen better design from a $2 adapter believe it or not, and yeah, I bought this awhile back for $1. Price don't change for small power adapters like this.

The core appears to be running nice and cool, though - after all, 52C for GPU @ 100% load is not bad at all. I have the EVGA version on these cards (just regular GTX 560's) with the single fan in the middle, and those heatsinks designs suck even more. Sure my VRM MOSFETs might be getting cooled... but what good is that when the GPU core is running miserably hot?
No thanks, I'll take a refference blower -style cooler any day. It also removes heat from the system (PC case) rather than just re-circulate hot air inside the case.

Yup, the core is cool and dandy but the mosfets aren't, they get very hot. I have two of these cards, with a reference blower and with a big fan in the middle. Both has the same core temp, but mosfets are not running hot on the one with the big fan.

BTW, you mentioned you fixed your card, but I see it's stuck in 1x PCI-E mode in GPU-Z. Is that because you're testing with an extension PCI-E cable (like those meant for mining rigs)

Correct. I took the screenshots with the card running on a 1X PCIe slot mining riser.

And btw, a decent DX 9.0 card which is ATI HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 imho, cost about $3 but with a no display symptom, lol.
If I do a retro gaming, I'd snatch that up and repair it.

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Card runs at X16 PCIe 2.0 on an old AM3 motherboard

[eccerr0r]

Have not forgotten:

Why did I bother... I'm currently using secondhand units from a thrift shop that will never have this problem.