Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Had this one in a few days ago. Lenovo Y560 with Core i7-740QM and ATi HD5730. No longer installed the display driver and showed artifacts when moved around too much.

First of all, i immediately noticed that the hinges were broken and had a lot of play. The guy who brought it in (friend of the owner not the actual owner) assured me that wasn't a problem, as it's been like that for over 2 years because it's been dropped then. Well, as it turns out, that wasn't a problem in itself, but it was the CAUSE that led to all the problems...

When i started to take the thing apart i was inspired enough to hold the display, otherwise i wouldn't be here talking about this. The hinge supports had cracked from the base and the hinge feet were pretty much wobbling freely inside the bottom case. Turns out the left hinge sits under the edge of the mainboard where four of the VRAM chips are, and not too far from the GPU. If i would not have held the display, without the top cover to support it, the hinge foot would have broken the board in two! What you see in the pictures with the two VRAM chips that look like they've been a little scuffed is the result of the hinge foot pushing into them.

It was now immediately obvious why this board started having video issues - on each display opening, the left hinge would flex the board near the GPU. If you keep flexing and flexing and flexing, the soldering will give way someday, right? That's exactly what happened.

Also due to the very weird board shape i had to get creative when supporting the board... And if you haven't seen it thus far, that's my ghetto BGA station. Let me not mention that i didn't have the right stencil and had to reball the chip by hand... that took bloody ages. My new pack of stencils is still on its merry way from China. I'm somehow missing a picture of the solder side of the chip - when i got done with it, i guess i was more curious whether it's actually going to work, not in the mood for taking pictures...

But in the end, it all went fine. Before assembling the thing back together, i glued the hinge feet to the bottom case with more 2-part epoxy than required to fix a shovel. That should keep them in their place.

The laptop passed the highest load i could possibly throw at it (IBT + FurMark) and while temperatures were very high in this scenario, the cooling system was also spitting out very hot air, indicating there is good thermal transfer. With normal workloads it didn't break a sweat. This laptop is not used for games anyway, it is used for creating and showing multimedia presentations so it's gonna be fine.

[spleenharvester]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

Also worth noting I've seen this on several Dell D8xx/D6xx laptops. Silly design.

[momaka]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

That's one reason I don't like doing laptop repairs - they are built like shit these days. Silly design indeed.

Kudos on doing the rebal manually without a stencil. I have done that only 2 times, but on smaller chips, and it is indeed a good mental exercise (that is, trying not to loose your sanity when you knock a row of balls you just placed).

And if you haven't seen it thus far, that's my ghetto BGA station.

Nice. Mind if I ask what are you using for the bottom and top heaters? Personally, I've had good success with an electric stovetop burner for the bottom heater - it spreads the heat nice and even and I have very good control of the temperature.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

Nice. Mind if I ask what are you using for the bottom and top heaters? Personally, I've had good success with an electric stovetop burner for the bottom heater - it spreads the heat nice and even and I have very good control of the temperature.

If you haven't guessed from the pic, the bottom heater used to be a toaster. I use a triac driven by a 555 timer thru a zero crossing optocoupler to control its power. It's cheap, dirty, but very effective. A bunch of balls made of tinfoil, kapton taped to the edges, serve as board supports. I've been telling myself i'll make some proper supports for... well, ever since i built the thing really. But for the most part, it works great. The tinfoil balls are also easy to tape down in any arrangement, so i can always have them placed close to the chip, and avoid any board warping.

The top heater is the very same hot air wand i use for pretty much everything. I made a stand for it as you can see in the pic, and i have bought that 41x41mm BGA nozzle with a net for more even air distribution. It's been serving me well so far.

It's all about how you use the tools you have, really, and i guess i've proved myself that many times already. The key to successful BGA reworking is good flux, even heat, appropriate temperatures and time. As long as you don't have hotspots and you don't keep the chip too hot for too long, there's not much to go wrong in the desoldering and resoldering process, aside from the occasional moved SMD part here and there. That's why i take pictures of the board before starting work on it. The only part that still makes me nervous sometimes is cleaning the board.

I'm tired of people who bought cheap and nasty IR machines spreading false truths and scare stories like "you fix 20 model xx of laptop and think you've mastered it, and then you break 3 model xx of laptop in a row and have to figure out what the hell happened". When you're not getting repeatable results it does not necessarily mean you're doing something wrong - maybe your tools aren't producing repeatable results because they have faults. I'm way too tired of seeing otherwise good boards needing new chips because some nasty IR machine with uneven heat made the chip's edges warp upwards so it's never going to get soldered down properly again. We call such a chip "barcă", which translates to "boat". Well, at least a "boat" chip can be replaced.

Just don't get me started on cheap IR rework stations - i've read enough garbage about them to make my head explode. The two most common issues though, seem to be uneven top heat and wonky thermometers - apparently, the Chinese have managed to make rework stations that cost $800 to $1500 read temperature 10x worse than a $10 DMM, seriously now. Now, i'm not exactly using $10 DMMs to measure temperature, but i bet they'd still be better than some of the stations out there, and i'm absolutely not kidding.

Fact is, if everyone knew what i used for reworking they'd prolly sh*t their pants laughing, but also fact is, i continue to produce repeatable results with my bodged-together equipment, and that's what matters at the end of the day.

[spleenharvester]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

That station is quite something haha. Well fair play, if it works it works - I could never get my ghetto reball station to make repairs last more than a few months.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

If the laptops i've fixed failed again, i'd be the first to find out. If the chip's good and it's really the solder which was problematic, it's gonna hold up.

The best example is my Acer 5742G which i've had for a little over an year. And i just reflowed that one, not reballed. Have had absolutely no issues. That laptop was also damaged due to mechanical reasons - it had been dropped hard. Shattered screen, slightly damaged case, cracked soldering on GPU and power circuits. After resoldering A LOT of things, it's been nice and stable and continues to be to this day.

On the other hand, laptops which have overheated usually require a reball or even chip replacement. And i think everybody on here knows about the nvidia issue already.

[momaka]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

If you haven't guessed from the pic, the bottom heater used to be a toaster.

That's what I thought it was at first, but wanted to ask/confirm, because I know you have very creative solutions to everything .

I use a triac driven by a 555 timer thru a zero crossing optocoupler to control its power. It's cheap, dirty, but very effective.

Hey, all of the Chinese hot air stations use that method and it works just fine (usually other stuff breaks on those stations, like either hot air heater - as you've seen.. or just bad solder joints from the factory).

I was thinking of doing something similar with a light dimmer... but I'm not getting a good range on the control... but that's for another topic. I wonder if it can be done with a MOSFET/555 PWM combo circuit too (provided you do rectify and filter the input for the MOSFET... cause you know, MOSFET's probably won't take the AC too well ).

A bunch of balls made of tinfoil, kapton taped to the edges, serve as board supports.

Still sounds more elaborate than my setup
I simply put the boards on a small oven grille above the stovetop burner. But I've only done desktop graphic cards so far - particularly RAM chips. The GeForce 7900GS that I popcorned that still ended up working is a miracle IMO.

The top heater is the very same hot air wand i use for pretty much everything. I made a stand for it as you can see in the pic, and i have bought that 41x41mm BGA nozzle with a net for more even air distribution. It's been serving me well so far.

Nice!

The key to successful BGA reworking is good flux, even heat, appropriate temperatures and time. As long as you don't have hotspots and you don't keep the chip too hot for too long, there's not much to go wrong in the desoldering and resoldering process

+1
Now explain that to all of the people on YouTube making videos about "How to do a proper reflow" . I was there at one point (trying to reflow with a heatgun) so I know. It's not that you can't... you can, but it's not proper (although, if you are creative and working on leaded hardware, you can get good results). And in some other cases, you are completely right - bad uneven heat from a cheap Chinese IR machine can be even worse than anything.

I'm way too tired of seeing otherwise good boards needing new chips because some nasty IR machine with uneven heat made the chip's edges warp upwards so it's never going to get soldered down properly again. We call such a chip "barcă", which translates to "boat". Well, at least a "boat" chip can be replaced.

"barcă" sounds funny too
Hey, better the chip than the board. I tried doing a big ATX motherboard on an IR station and the board ended up looking like a "barcă" itself - but that was my fault because I didn't support the board properly. Luckily, it still (dis)functions the same way. CPU socket needs replacement (bent pins inside a 939 ZIF socket - imagine the moron who was able to damage that).

apparently, the Chinese have managed to make rework stations that cost $800 to $1500 read temperature 10x worse than a $10 DMM, seriously now.

IDK, I've had very good luck with those cheap $5 type-k temperature meters from eBay (the Lutron TM-902C, that is). If you get thin thermocouples for them, they are very accurate and fast responding. I can easily say that's the best $5 I've spend on test equipment.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

I use the ordinary thermocouples that came with my multimeters. I bought an Omega and it was the cat's meow, but i accidentally broke it. Silly me. And since that thing ain't cheap, i make do with those "normal" thermocouples.

They can get annoying, because they're difficult to place and sometimes make a mess (accidentally pull them and move parts). But i've learned to have patience and spend a few minutes setting them up and making sure they can't move.

I have the Uni-T UT60E and UT70A. Cheaper DMMs like the DT9208A can be way out. Better get a dedicated temperature meter than measure with the cheap DMMs.

[momaka]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

They can get annoying, because they're difficult to place and sometimes make a mess (accidentally pull them and move parts). But i've learned to have patience and spend a few minutes setting them up and making sure they can't move.

Yes, the Al-Ch wire is quite springy and can dislodge components when you accidently let go of it and it moves on the board. I've had it happen only once or twice, but was lucky it didn't do anything too bad.

If you run it through that thin bendable steel conduit (like the type they use on those USB LED spot lights for laptops), you can bend it and position it any way you want. Bonus points if you ground the conduit so the thermocouple doesn't pick up stray noise from any nearby mains wires.

Better get a dedicated temperature meter than measure with the cheap DMMs.

That's what the Lutron TM-902C is.

The only problem is if you get the cheaper ones on eBay, they will come on that slow boat from China. But well worth the wait still.

[reizal]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

Had this one in a few days ago. Lenovo Y560 with Core i7-740QM and ATi HD5730. No longer installed the display driver and showed artifacts when moved around too much.

First of all, i immediately noticed that the hinges were broken and had a lot of play. The guy who brought it in (friend of the owner not the actual owner) assured me that wasn't a problem, as it's been like that for over 2 years because it's been dropped then. Well, as it turns out, that wasn't a problem in itself, but it was the CAUSE that led to all the problems...

When i started to take the thing apart i was inspired enough to hold the display, otherwise i wouldn't be here talking about this. The hinge supports had cracked from the base and the hinge feet were pretty much wobbling freely inside the bottom case. Turns out the left hinge sits under the edge of the mainboard where four of the VRAM chips are, and not too far from the GPU. If i would not have held the display, without the top cover to support it, the hinge foot would have broken the board in two! What you see in the pictures with the two VRAM chips that look like they've been a little scuffed is the result of the hinge foot pushing into them.

It was now immediately obvious why this board started having video issues - on each display opening, the left hinge would flex the board near the GPU. If you keep flexing and flexing and flexing, the soldering will give way someday, right? That's exactly what happened.

Also due to the very weird board shape i had to get creative when supporting the board... And if you haven't seen it thus far, that's my ghetto BGA station. Let me not mention that i didn't have the right stencil and had to reball the chip by hand... that took bloody ages. My new pack of stencils is still on its merry way from China. I'm somehow missing a picture of the solder side of the chip - when i got done with it, i guess i was more curious whether it's actually going to work, not in the mood for taking pictures...

But in the end, it all went fine. Before assembling the thing back together, i glued the hinge feet to the bottom case with more 2-part epoxy than required to fix a shovel. That should keep them in their place.

The laptop passed the highest load i could possibly throw at it (IBT + FurMark) and while temperatures were very high in this scenario, the cooling system was also spitting out very hot air, indicating there is good thermal transfer. With normal workloads it didn't break a sweat. This laptop is not used for games anyway, it is used for creating and showing multimedia presentations so it's gonna be fine.

bro.. you have lenovo y560 bios.rom?

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

Did not save the from but i know i've seen one somewhere. Will get back to you.

[ktmmotocross]

Re: Lenovo Y560 hinge breaking - watch out for board damage!

unique. u dont using board holder? what about board twisting?