Video card repair

[Drakula]

I am not sure if I am posting under the correct sub forum, but I need some help in saving my video card. It was last year that an ATI AIW 9700 Pro that I have been using starting to give weird artifacts when booting up. Looking into similar problems and solutions, I found out that it could be heat related. So off the heatsink goes. However, there was hard yellow thermal stuff left behind and it was impossible to clean off with alcohol. I had put the cleaning on hold for a long time, that is until tonight. Tonight, I tried to scrape off the thermal stuff with a hobby knife that had a flat head blade, gigantic mistake. While I was scraping the yellow stuff off, the knife slipped hard and took out an resistor near the core. I tried to find out if without the resistor would it affect the card, because I remember reading some hardmod technique that require doing so, but was unable to find answer I was looking for.

Therefore, I was wondering if it is possible to resolder the resistor back on and still make it work? Or does the video card met its demise?


Just a reminder, I was not trying to mod the card in any way. Just simply trying to scrape off the original yellow thermal stuff and apply new one since I have read that some with the heat related problems of 9700/9800 fixed the problem after reapply thermal grease/gel/compound whichever one prefers.

 

[Drakula]

Does someone knows the answer to my question? I just want to know whether or not the card will work if trying to solder the resistor back on, because I never did hardware mod before.

 

[igibson]

it should, i've replace a capacitor thats been chewed off by a 2 year old before. i had to get a replacement cap at radioshack
as long as you didn't try to power it or take any other parts out it should come back.

 

[Drakula]

Well, I know if replacing the normal size capacitors or resistors the card should still work. However, the problem I am having is with the surface mount resistor, similar to the one seen in the picture here , and in theory, if solder back, it should work, but I never dealt with such small component before and I am not even sure if the resistor suffer any kind of damage or not.

 

[igibson]

Thats a tough part, you should get a table top magnifying glass and an adjustable soldering iron or one that will max out at 500F which is your ideal temp you need to avoid damage from heat to the component. might be a good idea to get some wicking to remove access solder when you're done. remember to clean with alcohol before and after to remove oils and contaminants. try to limit contact with the board to 3 to 5 seconds after solder melts to prevent board damage. some reverse tweezers to hold the component in place would help too.
you might be able to find a electronic repair shop that could do this for you.
my friend who solders professionally is helping me write this and he usually charges $75/hr so you know what to expect. he said it wouldn't take more than 30min if it looks like the picture.

to find out if your resistor is good hook a multimeter/ohmmeter to it to test resistance. unfortunately, given how it was removed, the resistor is most likely bad. there should be a number on it that you can use as reference to find a replacement.

for all the trouble involved I'd suggest a new card, but my friend says to solder it
good luck

 

[Drakula]

I was planning on soldering it in the first place but was not sure it would work. Given that your friend does professional soldering work, and that he says that it should work soldering the component, then I guess it just might. I probably will try to solder first before trying to get a replacement card.

Thank you for all your help and replies. I was dealing with some other stuffs and this thread slipped my mind. Thanks again for taking your time to reply and ask your friend for me.

 

[Laputa]

It should work, but you can check the resistor to see if it's workin or not with a multi-meter. Sometimes you can even hot wire the 2 joining point, but that's not recommended in the long run.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

Yes you can replace it, however you will need to be one hell of a soldering pro. You should never use a knife to clean a cpu core, use an old credit card instead and invest in some Articlean, it removes thermal compound like nobodies business. And another, just replace the card, you can get the 9700 AIW for $20 on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-AIW-97...VWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem