Linus Attempts BGA Graphics Chip Repair! - Rossmann Repair Group, New York City
Linus Attempts BGA Graphics Chip Repair! - Rossmann Repair Group, New York City
2016-04-13
so a short while ago a gentleman by the
name of Luis Rossmann watched my video
where I baked a video card and made a
video response outlining what I've been
ITTIA Thai buzz he sent a lot of bad
words and a lot of mean things very
often the issue that somebody's having
when they have no video or something is
today it is not an issue that you're
going to fix by taking a heat gun to it
by putting it into an oven by burning it
so I showed up here in New York City at
his shop to either get an apology out of
him or for him to restate that in fact
he is right and show me his super fancy
soldering rework multiple thousands of
dollar setup that is actually how you
repair graphics cards or other PCBs
properly let's find out which one of
those things it's going to be
okay so employees only means nothing to
me so I guess we'll just go ahead and
head inside look at all this stuff like
Linus's paradise broken max knock-knock
so here we are the way I see it bears uh
there's a couple of there's a couple of
options here you can either apologize
and say I was right and you were wrong
or there's a much more likely scenario
where you show us the supercool piece of
machinery that you use to properly
repair all of this stuff so this is Luis
say hi to the line is Tecton sparks I'm
sorry for your right answer
oh no no that's no problem so guys this
right here is where the magic happens
one does not repair PCBs in an oven one
uses one of these that is to say if one
can afford it how much just one of these
cost at seventy three hundred dollars
about seventy three hundred dollars and
Louis here is gonna walk us through the
ins and outs of how this bad boy works
including you said you obtained a donor
board do I actually get to operate it oh
yeah you're the one who's gonna be
putting this on that's the whole point
of having you come here is the reduce my
work look fantastic let's do it okay so
I think we all saw this coming um he's
not apologizing and he is definitely
showing me how to do it the real way so
this right here is a piece eh that was
sourced from somewhere because you can't
actually buy this stuff directly from
the manufacturer that's one of your
frustrations right and grew so maybe it
works maybe it doesn't and then behind
me we've got a PCB from a mainboard that
was literally thrown and had its PCH pop
off so without knowing if that works and
without knowing if this works we are
going to resolder this BGA chip onto
that PCB I'm going to do it and it is
not going to involve an oven and it is
hopefully going to work but if it
doesn't then that will be pretty fun
yeah it'll be fun either way okay so
step one is we want to tighten up these
little retainers that use the mounting
screw points
and without ruining it too hard they use
the mounting screw points on the PCB to
hold it in place as securely as we as we
can
next we pull out this fancy-pants camera
so we get a live feed right here of the
solder points on the main board next
step we turn on the manual vacuum right
here we take our PCH we orient it
correctly which I mean is there some
guesswork involved there Google Image
Search and try to find the gif that's
above 50 by 50 pixels like I did five
minutes before you came here perfect so
we put this sucker on the little vacuum
right there hoping that it doesn't come
off there we go so we've got a ring of
LEDs on the top we've got a ring of LEDs
on the bottom that makes sure we've got
great illumination from all angles both
down here and up here and then what
we've got on this display are two
superimposed images so the brown version
is the one below and the blue version is
the one above and the idea is that we
use our horizontal and vertical
adjustment knobs here as well as our
angle adjustment knob right here to try
to align all the blue dots with all the
brown smudges below them uh-huh so as
soon as I aligned it there it stops
aligning up there feel free to step in
and correct what I'm doing at any point
in time you can give yourself more
lights and conceal hey there we go and
zoom in and out huh you got a choice how
far you can we go I honestly can't tell
but you have no way of checking if it's
right until you just yeah you don't know
if it's right until you put it on I'm
just looking at one corner at a time so
you see that one's online yeah when the
other one looks okay this is a pain in
the ass this but really
so is this pretty aligned
that's pretty aligned those okay get
yourself a thin layer of flux on there
okay four is the next step Viva we'll
need Z gloves so now we put just a line
of flux just right down the middle yeah
so with the flux in place we use this
cleaner and wipe as you can see we are
in a completely professional cleanroom
environment here so now we've got to
check and see if our chip moved out of
alignment from messing around with it
this thing messes with your eyes after a
while man let me tell you are we back on
I think that's actually good okay I
would say this is good okay so next we
move our light out of the way and we
actually lower the chip whoa that goes
really fat uh it's gonna suck
oh okay see see right now it's touching
the board once it's touching the board
then you turn the manual vacuum off and
then you go back up okay how you can
move the camera around and try to get it
to focus so you're almost in focus okay
there you go
so now we can see the balls I can't I
can't make heads or tails of this image
though you got to be kidding me here
okay the point of this is just being
able to see when the solder melts so
this allows us to see under it enough to
know when we should apply heat and when
we should stop applying heat to solder
the connections okay so hit me with your
best shot good start then you hope that
nothing blows up seriously so at this
stage we're actually ready to use the
infrared heating elements all around to
heat the general area and then the two
heating elements on the top and bottom
to solder the chip to the PCB but it's
not as simple as just you're good at 200
degrees Celsius in a oven which I
noticed they have an oven this is high
quality right here yeah I noticed you
you do have computer parts in your oven
was that just to make fun of me when I
got here exactly um what do you do is if
you want to clean them off after you're
done ultrasonic it you put it in here to
get rid of the moisture before you do
anything like this you also have
in an oven at just around the boiling
temperature of water just to get rid of
any of the moisture that built up in the
chip suppose you get things like popcorn
and there I thought I was getting my
apology after all all right so what we
do here is we have these profiles and it
comes with some pre-programmed but
they're not very good so you kind of
have to trial and error it or use your
experience or share share online to
figure out what exactly the temperatures
are for the period of time and the ramp
up and ramp down for each of those three
heating elements and then once you've
got a profile you press Start and hope
nothing catches on fire and hope that
the solder melts
so once they melt if the profile is set
to run a little long we can manually
stop it and then start a manual cooling
cycle in order to cool everything back
down to a reasonable operating
temperature wow it's really hard to tell
so is it is it is it is it melted stop
so we're stopping it now we're deciding
it's melted even though it's really hard
to tell okay
manual cooling and now you get to watch
the balls dry okay it's important to dry
off your balls when you're done any kind
of repair on them so now that the
cooling cycle is done we lift this bad
boy up that all it lifts up oh there it
goes then mr. shark grabs the PCB and
whoop whoop come on and we put it - that
was it we're not gonna let it cool down
smart want to take a look at this is the
part of the class where the teacher is
like you know this part is kind of good
but this is but your attendance is
excellent the suspense you want to find
that one
hmm you want to look and see what it
looks like sure yeah let's do it all
right so let's have a quick look here so
what we're trying to see is whether the
balls got soldered to the pads your
guess is much better than mine at this
point in time let's see if it works
so we're just gonna fire it up and yell
oh yeah so here we go moment of truth
we're gonna find out if a fan turns yeah
come on baby I believe in you hmm
oh we got a flash of light
we've got five volt so it's powered got
3.3 volt on another test patch yep good
oh yeah yes my bad luck rubbed off and
we didn't fix it but test subject 17 a
contributed to the betterment of our
scientific knowledge in some way that
Who am I kidding we didn't learn
anything today but uh thank you guys
very much for tuning in to this episode
of how according to Louis Rossman one
would actually fix something that had
been if it had been damaged by you know
something like micro fractures in the
solder joints or whatever the case may
be because remember whether it's a GP
you like I very temporarily resurrected
in the oven because that won't last very
long whether it's a GP or whether it's
something else there's a hundred things
that could be wrong with it other than
that and you actually have to know
what's wrong with it before you can
attempt any kind of repair so while I
actually stand by the oven method as a
way to put off buying a new video card
while you save up for another few weeks
if you are completely out of warranty
and you don't happen to have a $7,500
rework station it is not the real way to
actually fix anything and I'm glad that
I got to at least try to do it properly
so thank you very much for going through
this process with us and being a good
sport about the whole thing and thanks
to you guys for watching whoa I
transported back to our studio to bring
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description remember guys if you dislike
this video go ahead and hit the dislike
button but if you liked it hit like
leave a comment saying hi to Luis you
could do that too you can also check out
his channel he's got a lot of videos
that are basically tutorials about how
to repair your stuff by rants about
Apple and the way that they lock out
small repair shops from being able to
repair their products whether it's
refusing to put alignment guides on
their PCBs whether it's refusing to
provide pin outs for the chips whether
it's refusing to tell you what exactly
some stupid unlabeled thing is or
whether it's just their business
practice in general he's got rants about
me
so if you're into that kind of thing
he's got at least one really good rant
about me and what an idiot I am
so check that out and also don't forget
to subscribe don't forget that if you
like our videos you can hit the like
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kickback whenever you buy stuff or you
can even give us a directly monthly
contribution through our community forum
now that you're done doing all that
stuff you're wondering what should i
watch next maybe check out the video
that started this whole controversy
where I baked a video card and did
manage to resurrect it however
temporarily it might
then handmade this gentleman Matt in the
process so mad that I had to come all
the way here to New York to make him
feel better
hopefully that's not how you feel better
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