Hi all, being a pc tech only part time, and only taking the amount of jobs i can cope with, it may suprise some of you to know that i am about to quote for my first hp dv series re-ball, i would like to know how or what you guys advise to your customers in regards that its not a definite fix, and the issue may re occur.
HP DV series = no reball.
There was a company that I spoke to that used to do them as there was a replacement chip manufactured that cured the issue, however china found out about this issue and flooded the market with 2nd rate chips, the chap told me that now there is no gaurentee what you will get so he doesnt do this particular GPU any more (Nvidia 8400M)
There is another one that is prone to the same kind of failure but I cannot remember the name of it.
WOW Ok Since I do these everyday and we offer 90 day warranty, and we have less than 1% in warranty return I guess I can comment here on this? The warranty is only for piece of mind, that's it. I'm sorry to those who have used other company with bad results, but so many bad things go on in this business it is unfortunately not even funny. From swapping boards without customers knowing, taking parts off of boards to fix more important clients boards, to straight up taking your board and giving you a bad one to replace yours. Always mark your boards, we take down every serial number and imperfections on the board or unit always.
So I will attempt to clear up some issues...If this is your first re-ball don't do it on a customer machine practice first, most people will take 200-300 boards before they learn, it isn't necessarily about the equipment although it does make a difference in the time you spend doing it. You must learn how to Profile(meaning being able to use any machine and understand the heating process and what the chip essentially needs to come free from the board). The most important is the testing of the chip and preparation of the chip. People order new chips from China, China does not make these chips they come originally from Taiwan. With that said, China re-balls these with lead free solder so 90% of the people doing first time re-balls end up failing because they don't know this. You must take the solder balls off if even if the chips are new(they have to comply with ROHS) so they cannot sell lead solder balls on parts directly to the US. Now with re-balling... preparation is of key importance, not only for the chip as well as the board, and tools you are using to do the job. The best way to learn is hands on, but if that is not an option depending on the chip your first re-ball won't work there are a lot of variables and steps that need to be taken just to do the re-ball. We use 3 different machines on a regular basis, they are as follows: T862++ (which is designed for SMD/SMT removal NOT BGA), Zephyrtronics (Manual), ATCO AT-707 SEMI-Auto, We have also used the Shuttle Star SV-550 for training.
We address some of these issue in this video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyiv4PxpEo4&feature=plcp We are not by the way "video production pro's"!
The next thing to address is the comment about the chip being second rate, unless you buy it new you are getting a refurbished chip(meaning they are just pulling them off working or non-working boards and re-balling them). Now the key is knowing how to test these chips and know they are good? Also these chips all have date codes depending on the chip you will see number usually on the right side of the chip first line below the name, starting with 07*****, or 10******. What this means is the year these chips were manufactured 2007 or 2010. But this doesn't mean they revised and or modified and made a special run of chips, they simply don't do this they are new revisions of the chips but the same.
You must also take steps to insure that the machine will run cooler, we have a method for this as well. The most common video chip failure for HP is the following: NF-6150-N-A2, MCP67M-A2. Both of these chips failures are the most common with HP, but MCP67M-A2 is the worse out of all the chips, in fact these chips new if you can get them run about $70-80 a piece which is absurd. This chip(G86-603-A2) stated above by Big Jim actually comes on quite a few different laptops and is not as bad as long as it is new. In our practice when we have to replace a chip it is only done with a new chip and we still re-ball it ourselves.
Hope this helps...
