Graphics Card Repair Guide

[Dashken]

If your expensive graphics card ever pops a capacitor after its warranty expires, is that the end of the road? Fear not! All is not lost.

Let Empire23 show you just how you can turn your dead card into a fully-working graphics card. All you need are a few cheap tools and some chutzpah.

Link : Graphics Card Repair Guide

[peaz]

Wow. That's some serious precision soldering action dude!

[The_YongGrand]

Great article! A suggestion too, make an article about cap-replacement in motherboards!

Personally, I did that on my victim - a K6-2 motherboard and replaced only a few (too bad I didn't replace the others 'cause of no matching capacitors available - must order from Farnell perhaps!!).

If you can get hold of a dental-pick, that'll be very easy to scrape out solder from the holes. Remember the PCB are multilayered, so you gotta be very precise about removing all of the residues out of the hole before putting a new cap in.

Another best way of de-soldering it is vaccumming. Well, that's pretty expensive option, but the quickest way. I thought of using a DC-powered vacumm cleaner, and its end modified with a small nozzle.

edit: Safety - if you have a small plastic container (skip this if it's a video card - the cap is facing directly onto the casing instead), please cover around the replaced caps on the motherboard when you start the comp - sometimes it might burst maybe of wrong polarities, or an unlucky occasion of bad cap.

[empire23]

Originally Posted by The_YongGrand

Great article! A suggestion too, make an article about cap-replacement in motherboards!

Personally, I did that on my victim - a K6-2 motherboard and replaced only a few (too bad I didn't replace the others 'cause of no matching capacitors available - must order from Farnell perhaps!!).

If you can get hold of a dental-pick, that'll be very easy to scrape out solder from the holes. Remember the PCB are multilayered, so you gotta be very precise about removing all of the residues out of the hole before putting a new cap in.

Another best way of de-soldering it is vaccumming. Well, that's pretty expensive option, but the quickest way. I thought of using a DC-powered vacumm cleaner, and its end modified with a small nozzle.

edit: Safety - if you have a small plastic container (skip this if it's a video card - the cap is facing directly onto the casing instead), please cover around the replaced caps on the motherboard when you start the comp - sometimes it might burst maybe of wrong polarities, or an unlucky occasion of bad cap.

Great Idea lol. Now i just need a board with el cheapo caps or something and somebody to supply nice caps. Then it'll probably only be a day's work writing such an article.

For removing solder residue from holes, nothing really beats the wick, because solder has a high surface tension, it readily absorbs into the wick most of the time. Why most modders don't use this? Well i dunno. But it does have a high cost of about 15 bucks for a small reel. Just wet the board with some flux and then use the baby.

OR, the 100 percent and effective cheap method. Cut one of the capacitor's legs reaaaly short. Blob the solder on the pad, straighten the capacitor, hold the soldering iron's the pad and push long cap leg into the hot solder as far as you can. Then just heat up the other pad and bend the cap in, and slowly see saw the capacitor in a repeat of the above steps until it's firmly seated. Cheap, and Effective. Although the getting burned part and holding a capacitor, soldering iron and a motherboard at 90 degrees all at the same time may not appeal to some lol.

Enough practice and you can easily finish a capacitor in 30 seconds.

[Thunderstroke]

Hi there

I just wonder,,where can i buy parts for my card, it is a radeon 9600XT 256mb ddr (128bits).
What I miss is one of the tiny, tiny,,reeeal tiny part beside the memorythingy Its componentnumber on the card is R867 and the number ON the missing part is 560, and is located on the left corner on the opposite site of the fan,,(backside),,btw all the 8 memorythingys have this component. Seems like you ppl know what you are doing so you probably know what this components name is to .......(like capasitor is one partname).

Oh one more thing......ATI have just given out a new driver (included ccc) and its supposed to support overcloking this time (it wasnt on the betaversjon) for VISTA.
It can be found here:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/v...n-vista32.html

Once again Thnx for a great guide on how to fix damaged cards.

[The_YongGrand]

Originally Posted by empire23

Great Idea lol. Now i just need a board with el cheapo caps or something and somebody to supply nice caps. Then it'll probably only be a day's work writing such an article.

For removing solder residue from holes, nothing really beats the wick, because solder has a high surface tension, it readily absorbs into the wick most of the time. Why most modders don't use this? Well i dunno. But it does have a high cost of about 15 bucks for a small reel. Just wet the board with some flux and then use the baby.

OR, the 100 percent and effective cheap method. Cut one of the capacitor's legs reaaaly short. Blob the solder on the pad, straighten the capacitor, hold the soldering iron's the pad and push long cap leg into the hot solder as far as you can. Then just heat up the other pad and bend the cap in, and slowly see saw the capacitor in a repeat of the above steps until it's firmly seated. Cheap, and Effective. Although the getting burned part and holding a capacitor, soldering iron and a motherboard at 90 degrees all at the same time may not appeal to some lol.

Enough practice and you can easily finish a capacitor in 30 seconds.

You can try replacing caps on old and cheap boards first. Normally a Sanyo or Nichicon works well if you want high-quality caps.

How about MOSFETs replacement? They are not that easy, judging by the components shapes and systems.

[empire23]

Originally Posted by The_YongGrand

You can try replacing caps on old and cheap boards first. Normally a Sanyo or Nichicon works well if you want high-quality caps.

How about MOSFETs replacement? They are not that easy, judging by the components shapes and systems.

A bit hard, but here, the quality of a good pair of tweezers becomes invaluable. I for one prefer EREMs and OKs, long ones with very fine tips. The Idea is to heat the solder pad holding down the sink on the MOSFET, and then use the tweezers to prop it up while it's hot. After that it should be a cakewalk.

Originally Posted by Thunderstroke

Hi there

I just wonder,,where can i buy parts for my card, it is a radeon 9600XT 256mb ddr (128bits).
What I miss is one of the tiny, tiny,,reeeal tiny part beside the memorythingy Its componentnumber on the card is R867 and the number ON the missing part is 560, and is located on the left corner on the opposite site of the fan,,(backside),,btw all the 8 memorythingys have this component. Seems like you ppl know what you are doing so you probably know what this components name is to .......(like capasitor is one partname).

Oh one more thing......ATI have just given out a new driver (included ccc) and its supposed to support overcloking this time (it wasnt on the betaversjon) for VISTA.
It can be found here:
http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/v...n-vista32.html

Once again Thnx for a great guide on how to fix damaged cards.

R should mean Resistor. C should mean Capacitor. L means Inductor. EC means Electrolytic Capacitor and so on. So i figure that you're probably missing a resistor.

560 should mean 560 ohms. For example if the resistor reads 56R2, the number behind R should indicate the the amount of zeroes, and thus 56R2 should be 5600 ohms. So the part you are missing is a resistor of 560 ohms.

Ok, now to get something that fits. Generally size doesn't really matter as long as you can mount it, and it's 560 ohms, don't worry, it should work fine.

You can purchase SMD resistors from Mouser.com, Digikey.com and Alliedelec.com. Make sure you measure the resistors, and get one which size matches. Measurements are usually in mm.

When you wanna solder it in, use the slide method of soldering.

1) Blob on side of the pad with a little solder
2) Put the resistor on the surface of the board (not on the pad)
3) Heat the pad and at the same time while the solder is still liquid, slide the resistor into the pad.
4) Solder the other side.
5) Enjoy

Now that wasn't too hard right?

[Thunderstroke]

Ok, thnx for the answer, this made it a kind of easier since it's not a "special" part. You know theres alot of weird things on this boards nowadays But the resistor, They we find all over I can actually go downtown to a tv rep and get that part.
Ill be back to say if i managed to fix the card or sent it straight to heaven

[empire23]

Planning an Addition to the article teaching SMD replacement.

[tweakstur]

I'm also in need of help!



only had my webcam handy, sorry for the bad pics.

Capacitor Reads:

A 56D
180
16v

What kind of capacitor is this and what are its specs? I tried searching around but had no luck what so ever.

PS: Great guide, I will be using it soon as I find the capacitor I need!