ASUS proart Studiobook h7600ZW; Had DC in port replaced and all the sudden it isn't charging but is the charging sign is on!

[Scarfycake]

Hi all,

I sent my ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED (H7600, 12th Gen Intel) to the local repair guys to have a very simple DC in port replaced. I sourced the part myself on accessoires-asus (french company) after struggling to find the right part in the UK. It looked completely the same to the installed part from what I can tell. Originally the only issue with the laptop was a bad / loose DC connection, and so the computer and battery acted completely normal aside from a very poor connection that would fail at certain angles. After the repair was completed I brought it home and used it for a while, problem solved, but soon realized the battery wasn't charging at all! although the battery notification was reading that it was plugged in and it evening display a time till fully charged display (clocking upward, with a sense of humour I suppose).

Slowly the battery was depleting with use and the charger did nothing. I tried starting it with the battery unplugged, no luck. I check battery connections as well, no luck. I have now sent it back to the repair guys and they are stumped and currently working on it. I'm doing the best I can to help out by posting here. The repair guys said there is voltage leaving the DC port, but I haven't seen this with my own eyes so who knows.

What could possibly be happening here? it is an entirely new problem compared to when I was using the laptop before. Could this be caused by a low quality DC port if that is even a thing? Or is it else where in the mother board. I saw some repair videos on different manufacturers devices (like hp) where the problem ended up being a shorted diode and a faulty EC chip. But again, no problem before the installation of this DC port. We are ordering another one currently to give it a try, but I am not sure that's the problem.

I am including an image of the component and the component on top of the faulty component prior to install. I do not have images after the install but can ask the repair shop for some if needed.

Please help!

[mon2]

Hi. The laptop is an Asus so the schematics are well guarded and rarely available to the public. However, on a positive note, the designs are similar so with enough feedback, we may be able to determine the root cause for ideally a positive resolution.

1) In Windows, is the battery detected correctly? Does the battery gauge actually change while the board is in 'charging mode' ?

2) Would you have test equipment like a multimeter? Or perhaps your repair shop can perform some tests?

Each battery pack features 2 lines for communication with the main logic board and this is called the I2C or SMBUS interface. I2C was created by Philips and they demanded royalty for the use of the name so the rest of the industry created the 'SMBUS' equivalent but the interface is the same. This interface has the SCL and SDA lines. Using these 2 pins, the details of the battery pack can be extracted or configured like the serial #, battery vendor, charge current, etc.

With no power to the board. Meter in DIODE mode. Red meter probe to ground (yes RED probe). Black probe to the point to test.

Test each contact pin on the LOGIC BOARD where the battery connects. We are after the DIODE mode measurement for each pin and this will include the SMBUS lines. Checking to see if perhaps one of the SMBUS lines is defective which will cause the battery functions to fail. Sometimes, the vendor will place ESD (electrostatic discharge diodes) onboard and through mishandling, these parts can get damaged and they will short out the referenced lines.

3) Moving forward, it will help a great deal to take close up pics of the logic board so we can review the parts from the DC connector onto the charger region of the board. We need to understand which charger IC is onboard. Probably a BQ (Texas Instruments) controller and will have a 'BQ' in the part number. Need this detail to study other similar designs. Personally do like Asus but engineers are not risk takers - they will follow reference proven designs as supplied by the silicon manufacturer.

4) If available to you (Amazon?) - order a fresh battery and test again. You can always return it if the battery is not required. A battery can fail but if we see 2 batteries behave the same then the focus is on the main logic board.

5) I am not aware of an adapter power rating sense circuit with Asus products. That is, Dell and HP do extract power adapter stats to gauge if the adapter is worthy enough to power the logic board AND charge the battery. In the BIOS - is there a message that notifies the user of the power rating of the power adapter?

[Scarfycake]

Thanks for the great response. My laptop is currently with the repair guys but have sent them a screen cap of your response.

I'll let you know what they say.

[mcplslg123]

Asus does uses adapter power rating sense circuit in some of the newer gaming boards.I've come across one where injecting 20V on dc -in dont led dc-in fets gate biasing resulting in no 20V on CLR. Had to order a adapter ID dongle(like dell,HP) and after using it fet gate biasing was correct and 20V reached CLR. Wasted almost 4 hrs figuring this out as i literally took this as charging circuit fault. Btw, dont remember the model now.

[Scarfycake]

While the repair shop is getting back to me about the above tests. I want to reiterate that the computer was 100% functional (aside from a loose DC port) prior to the swapping out of the DC port. The problem with the non-charging (while the charging indicator reads it is charging) has begun immediately after the installation of the new port, with no use in between.

I think this is a pretty big indicator of what is going on. Is it possible for a new DC outlet like this to cause a short or something? like immediately upon plugging in the power source? or is it possible there is an authentication aspect, or like when a person gets a transplant, like the part being rejected by the system? serious newbie to this stuff here, so obviously may sound daft. Or, alternatively, could a part in close proximity to the DC port installation have been damaged by hot air or something? or a simple as a pin failing to make a physical connection?

The only reasons I'm wondering is that a failure in the power rail or something feels like it would be a complete and unlikely coincidence unless it had something to directly do with the installation of a new DC port, which from my understand is a pretty simple and standard procedure.

Thanks!

[piernov]

Some boards have a jack detection mechanism. If the connector is damaged, improperly soldered or there was additional damage caused to the board during replacement it can definitely cause this kind of problem. Of course as always the first thing to try is another genuine power brick of the correct power rating.
That said if the repair shop didn't even test the machine after the repair it's a bit worrying.

[Scarfycake]

Okay I'll keep that in mind and communicate that with the shop.

Also in defence of the repair shop, they thought they had a plug for this type of laptop, but realized they didn't and just asked me if it was okay to bring mine and if all was good take it home. Obviously, plugged it in and said "good as new" seeing a stable connection, took it home, and didn't realize the charging problem till a bit of use. Didn't think to check this problem before leaving the shop.

[mon2]

Ok, in reviewing the tech specs (see attached) - Asus has 2 ways to power this board. The traditional power adapter that you are using / was repaired. The more current method is to use the USB Type C power with power delivery.

Suggest for your repair shop to test the battery charging using a 100W or higher power delivery adapter WITH a quality 100W or 240W rated power delivery cable.

Test and post your updates.

[Scarfycake]

I just had them try to charge with the USB-C and he said it worked. a 130W charger he said.

Obviously the machine gave a notice of "low power input, increase power for quicker charge" type notification, but he said he noted % going into the battery.

What does this mean for me? can I operate the laptop to full performance using this mode of charging? it is a thunderbolt 4 input. and from what I've read online it seems like they max out at 100W in for laptops which is a lot lower than 240W. But maybe I'm totally wrong.

Thanks for the suggestion! at a minimum, sounds like I will at the least have my laptop available to use!

[mon2]

Excellent! A bit of positive news. The power delivery specifications have been evolving since PD 1.0. During my last trip to China, everyone was hyping the latest models with 240W power delivery. Suggest for your repair shop to test, if available to them, a 240W power delivery unit. Certainly you can do the same through Amazon - stick with a branded name like Anker or similar. Be sure that it is truly UL certified - many on Amazon are not. This imposes a fire hazard and your insurance will not cover any potential damage.

Curious to know if 240W quenches the raised message. Believe that it will. It is vital that you pair the 240W charger with a 240W quality (braided) power delivery cable. Otherwise, the E-marker that exists inside the USB C cable will not be able to pass through the full power from the 240W adapter to the logic board.

Either way, with a 240W unit, you are somewhat future proofing your home with support for multiple USB-C charging at the same time.

[Scarfycake]

Have been doing some research and been in contact with the repair guys since I last messaged.

I can't seem to find a 240W power delivery unit that uses USB-C. I can find cables that are rated for 240W, but most of the docks that advertise 240W actually only do a max of 140W and just split the 240W for multiple charging. I could totally be wrong, but that's what appears to me.

He also said that with a 130W USB-C plugged in, he was getting 4.5 Amps and it charged from 45%-90% in an hour. Don't know if that is good or not.

Also that it sounds like he is saying they are stuck on solving the DC port problem. He says that there are a few pins on the component which are not part of the electronic circuit board and that if he could understand where they are meant to connect, he could solder a wire, but without a schematic he is lost. I have sent over a schematic I found for a ASUS ROG G531GT only because the DC port looks like it connects to the board in almost identical places.

Also for what it's worth he says he doubts its a short and brushed it off when I brought it up.

Regardless, I'm getting the sense that this is leaving there field of expertise, and am going to pick it up tomorrow morning.

Is there any information I should try to collect from the laptop once I have it back? Sound like we can rule out the battery being the problem. I have a sneaking feeling there is something wrong with the port I ordered, but I'll have the original part in my possession tomorrow to compare with pictures I took before.

[mon2]

Here is a suitable cable (we have used UGREEN branded cables in the past - we actually had numerous models made overseas but not they are not rated for 240W use) -

UGREEN 240W USB C to USB C Cable PD 3.1 USB C Cable 48V 5A Fast Charge Nylon Braided USB 2.0 Type C Cord Compatible with MacBook Pro Air, iPhone 15, iPad Pro, Galaxy S23 S22 A54, XPS 13 15, 6ft : Amazon.ca: Electronics

I think you are correct - the heavier duty units appear to be splitting up the power adapter. The truly new specs do push out higher current on a single port so we can logically conclude that Asus does not use higher than 100W power delivery. It is vital that the repair shop is pairing up the power adapter with a 100W rated cable. The charge rate you posted is excellent. You have a workable option using the Type C port for charging.

Highly suggest to always DISCONNECT the type C power adapter -> plug into the laptop -> then plug in the adapter. The type C ports are just fragile in nature and we do not want the tiny contacts to cross short.

[Scarfycake]

Great. Thanks for the tip on disconnecting, I will follow your advice. Just order a charger.

Also I have one crazy offshoot theory but I am an amateur in electronics, maybe I can slide by....

So obviously I found the schematic above... I found the DC in section (attached below) and it maps on eerily to the DC jack in my laptop.

My port has 10 Pins, 4 of which have a little copper (or something) strip which look like they communicate to the board. The guy at the shop said his main concern was that to two set back pins don't actually solder on to the board, and maybe there were connected some other way that was damaged.

The schematic looks like it shows 6 ground pins (the pins which hold it in place) and then four pins which, for lack of a better word, "do stuff". What interested me is two of them are for "detect" and "CS", and the other two look like the power circuit. This would map on to my issue where the charger is being detected however the power is not flowing.

An absolute shot in the dark. But do you know what any of the other symbols mean? like +V_DCJACK or A/D_DOCK_IN?

Thanks again.

[Scarfycake]

Diagram of where pins are. Ground in red and pins with little strip of copper in orange

[mon2]

In post # 13 - you have posted a partial schematic. Would you have the complete schematic for this unit? Can it be posted in the schematic forum and linked in this thread?

It will help to debug your case. Specifically - review the label on the right side of the first connector schematic (post # 13). This signal has a '#' suffix which means the signal is ACTIVE LOW.

If this signal is a logic '0' = ~0 volts = ground, then the logic board will enable charging. If the pin is floating then there is probably a pull-up resistor on the same signal - then the battery charging will DISABLE.

PS: I think the truth table they have posted is reversed. That is, when the AC adapter is connected, this signal is LOW, then the charging will ENABLE and vice-versa.

[Scarfycake]

Post number #4 on this thread:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...531-gt-rev-1-5

If the back pins are floating, does the repair guys idea make sense of connecting them to the board via a wire? Does this schematic provide and answer on where those wire should be connecting?

A lot of this is pretty over my head, but I will share all your responses with the repair guy as well.

[mon2]

Locate a solder blob on the board marked as PSL8900 in the schematics. Carefully measure the voltage to ground of this point.

From my understanding, this signal point should be at 0 volts IF the power adapter is plugged in.

If the power adapter is not plugged in, this signal will be a logic '1' = ~3v3 and then the logic board will throttle and charging will stop.

Suspecting that this signal is at logic '1' at all times.

Logic to come to this conclusion:

a) once the power adapter voltage is at the proper voltage threshold, the ACOK signal (which is open collector type) will be floating.

b) once ACOK signal is floating, PR8901 will pull this floating line to a logic '1'.

c) with this line being at '1', mosfet @ PQ8905A will enable.

d) Once PQ8905A is enabled, then signal AC_IN_OK# line will be pulled to ground = logic LOW. This logic LOW signal is fed into the EC controller to sense that the power adapter is plugged in AND is suitable.

e) If mosfet PQ8905A is DISABLED, this will present a logic '1' to the EC due to the pull-up resistor (100k ohms) that is @ R3063.

Perhaps the replacement connector is presenting a problem or most likely, during the operation of replacing the connector, some tiny SMD part was removed by accident. Either way, we can review more after the above voltage measurement.

The parts that can impact the status of ACOK are the parts camped on the ACDET pin # 6. Will be interested to know the voltage on pin # 6 of PUB1 with and without the power adapter connected.

The above is to be performed with the older barrel jack connector - not the Type C power adapter.

[mon2]

A few more comments:

1) The schematic for the standard power connector offers only 2 contacts for mating with the power adapter -> the + and the - (ground). These are the only 2 pins that end up mating with the logic board.

2) Respectively, best to focus on the nearby parts that may have been removed by accident during the rework. Suspecting it will be in the region that is working with the ACOK signal as reported above.

3) You should be able to send in the laptop for a similar service to Asus. Suggest to contact them for a quote on the repair if the above does not pan out. Fairly confident that the above mosfet review will offer positive results.