The curse of the overheating graphics chips

[vince88]

The curse of the overheated graphic chips (here below called GPU or Graphic Processing Unit) is similar to the badcaps plague: a badly conceived and processed device found its way into poorly designed system !
For the GPU curse, it is a perfect storm of
[1] a badly designed GPU e.g. NVIDIA chip with silicon hot spots, combined with the wrong bumping solder balls and defective packaging underfill. If the GPU chip overheats, the balls will crack and disconnect the GPU from the motherboard. Because in most laptop the GPU BIOS interrupt the boot BIOS during boot, the laptop will then not boot even though the laptop lights, CD and fan are working. In some cases, the laptop will nevertheless boot, but the display will be split, full of squares, or some component powered through the GPU e.g. WLAN will not work\
[2] very poorly thermal design of the laptop, causing GPU overheating and therefore ball cracking. For example, most of the laptop I gathered have a single heat-pipe from the GPU to the chipset to the CPU to the fan, instead of a dedicated heat-pipe for the GPU to the fan distinct from the heat-pipe CPU to fan.
I just reviewed the stack of failed laptops; I hope that this list will help people that wonder why their laptops are not booting while all the lights/CD/fan are ON. The list is not exhaustive, but represents documented cases of the overheated GPU curse.. All these failed laptops were quite expensive when first bought, and a significant loss for the small business. Some laptop families e.g. Dell XPS 'M' or Dell Latitude D630 have a 100% failure rate after a few years due to overheated Nvidia GPUs.
When I have time, I will attempt to reflow all these GPUs, even though I know that the fix will only be temporary L

List of Laptops with GPU induced boot problems:

HP Pavilion DV6000 model DV6110US
CPU: AMD Turion X2 64 2x1.61GHz
GPU: Nvidia 7200 Go
Boots, WLAN (powered through the Nvidia chip) not working

HP Pavilion DV5000 model DV5120US
1.8AMD turion-64
ATI Radeon Express 200m
No Boot. All lights ON

HP Pavilion DV8000 model DV8315nr
1.8AMD turion-64
ATI Radeon Express 200m
No Boot. All lights ON

ACER Aspire 5552-3691
AMD Athlon Dual-core P340 2x2.2GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
No Boot. All lights ON

HP Pavilion DV4 model DV4-1222nr
AMD Turion X2 64 2x2.1GHz
ATI Radeon HD3200
No Boot. All lights ON

Dell Inspiron 9400 Model PP05XB
Intel Core 2 Duo 2x2GHz
NVidia
Boots, screen full of small squares of characters

Dell latitude D630 Model PP18L
Intel Centrino Duo 2x2.2GHz T7500
Nvidia GPU Quadro MVS 135M
Boots, two screens split horizontally, then full of small squares of characters. O/S VGA OK.

Dell XPS M1530
Intel Core 3 Duo 2x2.4GHz T8300
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Single heatpipe CS>GPU>CPU>Fan
No Boot. All lights ON

Dell XPS M1330
Intel Core 3 Duo 2x2.4GHz T8300
Nvidia GeForce 8400MGS
Single heatpipe CS>GPU>CPU>Fan
No Boot. All lights ON

Dell XPS M1210
Intel Core 3 Duo 2x2GHz T2300
Nvidia GeForce
Single heatpipe CS>GPU>CPU>Fan
No more Boot. Lights ON and blinking

HP Pavilion DV2000 model DV718US
AMD Turion X2 64 2x2.1GHz
Nvidia GeForce GO6150
No Boot. All lights, CD drive, fan ON

HP Pavilion DV2500 model DV2416US
AMD Turion X2 64 2x1.8GHz TL-62
NVIDIA GeForce 7150M
No Boot. All lights, CD drive, fan ON

HP Compaq Presario CQ50 Model CQ50Z-100
AMD Turion X2 64 2x1.8GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G Graphics
No Boot. All lights ON

HP Compaq Presario V6500
AMD Turion 64 2.3GHz
Nvidia Nforce 630m
No Boot. All lights ON

HP Compaq Presario V6000
AMD Sempron 2.3GHz
NVidia GeForce Go 6150
No Boot. All lights ON

Toshiba M110
Intel Core Duo processor T2250 2x1.7GHz
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
No Boot. All lights ON

HP Pavilion DV6807US
Intel Core2 Duo mobile T5850 2x2.16GHz
Nvidia GeForce GT 740M
No Boot. All lights ON

Toshiba A205-s5812
Intel Pentium Dual Core T2330 2x1.6GHz
Intel Media Accelerator X3100
No Boot. All lights ON

Toshiba Satellite P105-S9337
Intel Pentium Dual Core T27200 2x2GHz
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
No Boot. All lights ON

Dell Inspiron 6400 E1505
Intel Core Duo T2300 2x1.66GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon X130
No Boot. All lights ON

Dell Precision M70 Model PP15L
Intel 2.26 GHz Pentium
NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1400
No Boot. All lights, CD, fan ON

Dell Latitude D610 Model PP11L
Intel Pentium M 760 2.00Ghz
ATI Mobility Radeon X300
No Boot. All lights, CD, fan ON

HP Compaq EVO800C
Intel Pentium 4-M 2GHz
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500
No Boot. All lights ON

[ala_borbe]

Re: The curse of the overheating graphics chips

its not problem with chip balls it chip itself is defective

nice list...

[sanjurahul]

Re: The curse of the overheating graphics chips

need schematic of hp dv2500 pls

[Second lappy house]

Re: The curse of the overheating graphics chips

also mostly found in dell inspiron N5010, N5110, N4010, N4110

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: The curse of the overheating graphics chips

Dell N5010 suffers from a design flaw in the mounting of the cooling system. The GPU side of the heatsink is only secured by a single screw that goes thru a thin strip of stainless steel (not sure, but it does look like steel not aluminum) which is riveted into the copper plate that makes contact with the GPU.

Over time the mounting strip softens and bends, heatsink separates from GPU and thus the GPU dies. I have been getting around this by putting some hard foam on the inside of the bottom case after replacing the GPU, to keep the heatsink tight onto it. None have showed back up so far, in 2+ years.