Copper shim question – Do you add copper shims or pennies?

December 17, 2011 by DoubleClickItToFixIt.com

This section will try to answer the most often asked questions I get.

Copper shim question – Do you add copper shims or pennies?

Your issue with the onboard BGA chipset is heat related. HP DV2000, DV6000, DV9000, TX1000, Dell D620, D630, D630, D820, D830 systems with Nvidia chipsets have the known BGA issues that I can fix by reflowing them.

Now, the question above is asked to me constantly. I personally do not use copper shims.

Copper shims and pennies before 1981 do not fix your issue, but do more to hamper it.

You will have three things that can happen. These are an electrical arc, an overload, or a soldering issue.

Your chipsets on your laptop 9 out of 10 times are fine if that have not been worked with in anyway and can be reflowed properly. The chipsets have capacitors located on the top and these capacitors are actually made of ferrite. When you apply Artic Silver and the copper shim in direct contact with your chipset you have stress fractures or arcing. Heat will cause the chipset to move up and down, by design, and will cause the copper to flex causing the capacitor to complete a circuit arcing between the chipset, the shim, and the heatsink which has copper in it. Placing a plastic spacer does not help any since the heat will melt, deform, or damage the chipset in its own right.

Now your chipset may get an overload and burn it out internally with no outer signs. Usually on a DV6000 system you will see a three capacitor cluster on the motherboard overload, and burn the planing of the motherboard. Overloading will cause the chipset to pull more power in the board causing stress on other chipsets such as the MAX8774, Max8724E, and MAX8734A.

The simplest issue is that your chipset will heat and the shim causes the solder to glob or puddle on the underside of the chipset. There is a reason the CPU is 5mm and the GPU is 3mm with no need to place a copper shim in to damage that design no matter how poor it may be now or before.

For more details on helping your system not overheat please check this question:

Copper shim issues and how to fix it

What if my need is not listed?

As an electronics technician, laptops and desktops are not the only items I work on. If you have a specific need that is not isted above, please feel free to email me at james@doubleclickittofixit.com or call 706-307-9689.

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Reflow and reball of PS3, Xbox 360, and laptop system boards after being fluxed and heat gun/hot air gun attempted.

July 28, 2011 by DoubleClickItToFixIt.com Leave a Comment

Here is a new video that I produced displaying a few systems, mainly PS3 and Xbox 360, that were worked on previously by a few home users. The system boards were fluxed, hot air heated, heatsink damaged, and more issues. This video displays greatly why hot air videos on Youtube and tutorials are damaging to a system board. Now, I receive a number of emails saying “But what if I use aluminum foil wrapped around my board then ….” My answer to them is always check out this video because I was told some of these boards were wrapped in foil and heated with a shrink wrap hot air gun from Lowes.

Are reflow services all you perform and will a reflow fix a blinking jack on a… Compaq CQ50?

June 20, 2011 by DoubleClickItToFixIt.com Leave a Comment

Are reflow services all you perform and will a reflow fix a blinking jack on a… Compaq CQ50?

I get asked this question fairly often, and the answer is no. We do not simply repair systems like the Compaq CQ50 that are affected by the Nvidia chipset issue; as a side note, the issue is not just related to Nvidia chipsets since it also affects Intel GPU based systems along with ATI GPU based systems also.

As an example we received a local drop off service for a Compaq CQ50-139WM laptop system that displayed a flashing DC jack and no power to the system.

The DC power jack blinked in a uniform fashion to indicate an error code, but error codes are not detailed by HP or Compaq for blinking DC power jacks, to our knowledge for the Compaq CQ50 or any system. The Compaq CQ50 was delivered due to the belief it required a reflow service for the chipsets since the laptop is a common system to be affected here recently with a chipset failure, but upon further inspection this system is an Intel based laptop (506519-001) with an Intel based processor (SLB6M) and Intel based GPU chipsets (SLB8Q and SLB95) which are rarely affected by reflow issues.

Usually we test the memory to verify that the memory is not dropping the voltage since the DDR2 slots are reversed in the Compaq CQ50 line of laptops, but a blinking DC power jack does not indicate a short, no power, but indicates a reset from a power rail failure, a blinking DC power jack.

Currently, we have a system with an Intel motherboard from a Compaq CQ50 laptop, a blinking or pulsing DC power jack, and memory that is not found to be failed.

Our only option is disassembly of the laptop to verify the issue from the circuit level diagnostics using our Fluke based testing equipment. We use a simple Fluke 117 RMS digital multimeter to test most motherboards in our shop. The multimeter can give you the best diagnostics for the laptop from our tests.

One hour later, our Compaq CQ50 laptop is disassembled and is lying ready for the troubleshooting we perform. For our testing, we only use HP branded OEM power supplies. The difficulty with using a non-branded power supply from China or a Targus adapter from Walmart is that the power supplies are variable rate and variable wattage which could lead to issues with diagnostics. A variable rate power supply may not supply the correct or higher level of Amps while still supplying the correct wattage which could lead to a false positive while diagnosing your system on the bench.

Before we even test the laptop again with power we test the power rail which is located by the DC power jack. We test the mosFET labeled U1 with a signifier of 4407 on the chip which is a known mosFET to fail in both HP DV6000 and HP DV9000 Intel based and AMD based laptop systems regularly. The chip reads 0.000 which shows our test equipment is working properly to begin. The way we test this chip is across the VCC and the Ground legs to measure the reading.

Now we plug the DC power jack in to signify that the power supply is good and blinking. We achieve this test outright by plugging the adapter in.

Then we move to testing the laptop system with the power adapter plugged in to the DC power jack with our Fluke 117 multimeter. The multimeter gives different readings from the same position telling us the mosFET may be damaged internally. The mosFET is a P-channel mosFET. The gates within the chip are switching on and off giving us the variable up and down ratings.

To be absolutely sure, we have to do a thermoelectric test by using our infrared thermometer. By using our thermometer we can get a reading of the chip and if anything internally is failing within the chip. The chip specifics state the chip to be in tolerances requires a 25C rating or a 77F rating. With this we test our infrared thermometer to check the office and get a rating of 76F for our room temperature in our office.

Then the chip after being plugged in to get a reading from the multimeter showed a rating of 86.5F

After attaching the power adapter to the DC power jack and gathering a rating we had a reading well outside the range for failure specifying this chip is the issue with the laptop.

Below is a video of our test displaying our findings with narration and explanation for those wanting to test or get a better understanding of the steps we took to test the unit.

Compaq CQ50 DC jack issue

Joost Kamphuis HP TX1127EA System Repair on CNF7191YFZ

January 18, 2011 by DoubleClickItToFixIt.com Leave a Comment

James Howell
DoubleClickItToFixIt.com
7472 Nashville Street
Ringgold, GA 30736
706-307-9689
http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com

Joost,

This email will serve as an update on the status and repair of your systems sent in.

Currently I have listed the following machines sent in for repair by you:

HP TX1127EA with the serialization of CNF7191YFZ

Now, with the HP TX1127EA with the serialization of CNF7191YFZ has been evaluated and is ready for further authorization. The system is labeled HP Spare 441097-001. The system required a reflow on the Nvidia GeForce GO6150 (NF-G6150-N-A2) and Nvidia NF-430-N-A3 chipsets.

This service did not fix your current system due to the copper shim being in place. The shim damaged the chipset which will need replaced.

A power adapter was found within the box.

Your system displayed a typical penny fix copper shimming repair. In your specific case this was performed with a one euro cent piece. The previous repair was performed with a copper shim. This copper shim was disposed of by us. Please read our link here for a better explanation of why copper shims are not used by our repair facility: http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/update-this-is-why-you-do-not-use-copper-shims/

You also need to update the video drivers from Nvidia.com and the BIOS from HP if one is to be applied once the system is repaired.. Please advise your end user to purchase a cooling pad to help insure the removal of heat from the system.

If you need more help in explaining these areas to your end user, please visit http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/helpful-hints/

Pictures of the repair can be viewed at http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/img

UPDATE: ANOTHER eBAY SELLER WITH A COPPER SHIM REPAIR FAILURE!!!!!

December 19, 2010 by DoubleClickItToFixIt.com

I have stated time and time again to my users why I do not use copper shims. This is a prime, grade A example of what can, will, and does happen with copper shims.

This laptop came in from an owner whom brought their laptop to me from Dalton, Georgia. A copper shim was placed on his system from a laptop repair center from the United States that he used off of eBay. I am not naming names of the offending company, but I will post the pictures.

DO NOT USE COPPER SHIMS! As the pictures display, this copper shim damaged the system. In previous examples the system displayed a damaged and cracked chipset. This system displayed a overloaded capacitor issue. This happens when the power coming in the system is modified due to the chipset not failing due to the copper shim. In short, the copper shim does not let the chipset overhead or fail then the power just amps up and causes a system failure.

This failure occured within the MosFET area labeled AO4407 and a three capacitor cluster. This failure is unrepairable due to the planing within the layers in the motherboard.

If you need your laptop fixed, check this link: http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/pricing/laptop-bga-reflow/

Shantelle Polk HP DV6408NR System Repair on CNF7272MC2

November 11, 2010 by DoubleClickItToFixIt.com

James Howell
DoubleClickItToFixIt.com
7472 Nashville Street
Ringgold, GA 30736
706-307-9689
http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com

Shantelle,

This email will serve as an update on the status and repair of your systems sent in.

Currently I have listed the following machines sent in for repair by you:

HP DV6408NR with the serialization of CNF7272MC2

Now, with the HP DV6408NR with the serialization of CNF7272MC2 has been repaired and is ready for return. The system is labeled HP Spare 443775-001. The system required a reflow on the Nvidia GeForce GO6150 (NF-G6150-N-A2) and Nvidia NF-430-N-A3 chipsets.

No power adapter was found within the box.

Your system displayed a typical penny fix copper shimming repair. The previous repair was performed with a copper shim. This copper shim was disposed of by us. Please read our link here for a better explanation of why copper shims are not used by our repair facility: http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/update-this-is-why-you-do-not-use-copper-shims/

You also need to update the video drivers from Nvidia.com and the BIOS from HP if one is to be applied. Please advise your end user to purchase a cooling pad to help insure the removal of heat from the system.

If you need more help in explaining these areas to your end user, please visit http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/helpful-hints/

Pictures of the repair can be viewed at http://applelogicboardrepairservice.com/img

Your system was shipped without a prepaid Fedex label or account for return shipping. You have two options to make payment and have your system shipped back. Payment can be made by check or money order delivered to our shop or you can pay by COD when the Fedex truck delivers your package. The service requested was a reflow in the amount of $125 plus shipping which is estimated at $16.38. Your total check should be for the amount of $141.38. If you pay by COD, your shipping will be included in the amount plus a COD handling fee determined by Fedex based on the payment choice they accept from you. These fees range from $5 to $25, and are solely determined by Fedex and Fedex alone. You have 30 days to make this payment from the time this email is sent. Payment can be delivered to our new office at the above address if you are mailing a check.

If you have a laptop that requires a reflow, and you would like to receive a service purchasing options are listed below.