![]() ![]() ![]() This is unlikely to occur, but can happen if stickers were left on the motherboard.Īfter 8 minutes, turn the oven off and open the oven door. Ideally, you should leave the kitchen while any fumes are still present.Ī couple of times during the procedure, have a quick look through the oven door (without opening it) making sure there is no smoke or flames visible. Make sure your kitchen is well ventilated at this stage, turn on the extractor fan to full power and/or open an outside door and windows. Then place the baking tray with the laptop motherboard on it into the preheated oven. If the reflow is being performed because of a faulty graphics chip (GPU) then perhaps wrap the rest of the motherboard in foil to protect it, leaving just the GPU exposed on both the top and bottom of the motherboard. It is a good idea to wrap additional foil around the more sensitive parts of the motherboard, like areas where there are capacitors and the CPU socket. Place your motherboard, with CPU socket and GPU facing upwards, on top of the foil balls. Roll up some kitchen foil into balls, between half an inch and an inch wide, and place them on a baking tray. If your oven does not have a digital temperature display, perhaps use an internal oven thermometer to make sure the oven is in the right temperature range. Then preheat your household oven to approximately 200☌ or 385☏. Remove the CPU, heatsink & fan, RAM, BIOS battery, wires, speakers, stickers, plastic sticky guards, foam spacers, absolutely everything that can be removed from the motherboard. It is very important that the motherboard is completely stripped down before attempting this procedure. This might sound a bit crazy, baking your laptop motherboard in an oven, but if performed correctly, it can achieve the same end result, remaking the solder connections which may have been broken. It seems to be particularly common in the NVIDIA chips used in some HP laptops, especially the following models Pavillion dv2000, dv6000, dv9000, dv9500, dv9600, dv9700 and Compaq Presario V3000, V6000. But on the other hand, if the motherboard is broken anyway, and would otherwise be thrown out and replaced, then performing a reflow won’t make the problem any worse.Ĭertain makes and models of laptops seem to be more prone to these GPU problems than others. If performed incorrectly, a reflow can damage your motherboard even further. In other words, you would only ever try this on a laptop motherboard that was so completely faulty that it would otherwise need to be replaced. Please be aware that a reflow is a repair method of last resort. In this case, it is likely that there is a broken solder joint around the graphics chip (GPU). It is possible that a crucial connection has been broken by weakened solder.Īnother common example is a laptop that will appear to power up, but there is no graphics output to the LCD panel or to an external screen. A typical example is a laptop motherboard which is receiving power, lights come on to confirm this, but it just won’t power up. ![]() There are a number of scenarios where performing a reflow can be successful. The idea behind performing a reflow is that it melts the solder, allowing it to form a solid block again and joining up the electrical circuit. This weaker solder joint can fracture causing tiny broken connections in the circuit, invisible to the naked eye. It can change from being a solid block of solder into more of a honeycomb structure. The solder used in laptop motherboards tends to degrade over time, becoming brittle and weak. Why would you perform a Reflow on a laptop motherboard? The term ‘reflow’ describes a process of briefly melting (reflowing) the solder on an electrical circuit board, in this case a laptop motherboard. This article describes a reflow procedure that can be performed at home in a conventional household oven for a common laptop motherboard repair of the broken graphics chip. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |