Hello
Few months ago i have upgraded my iMacs HDD 500GB to OCZ Agility 3 60GB. I knew it can be too small for me however was not that bad, as i could observe a huge overall system performance boost. It was perfect until i realized i want to start developing apps for Windows Phone which requires Windows 8 that can be installed via Bootcamp. In order to do it i had to upgrade my SSD again. I have bought OCZ Agility 4 256GB. That gave me a lot of space for osx as well as microsoft windows. I have bought the 2.5" version, why? Answer is simple: i found more SSDs in 2.5" size than 3.5", even if there was equivalent one to what i needed (3.5") it was more expensive than 2.5". Strange.
In order to mount it i had to buy "2.5" to 3.5" SSD to HDD Black Metal Adapter Mounting Bracket Hard Drive Holder" from eBay. Cost 3.49 pounds.
SSD was screwed to the adapter using screws provided.
Replacing process took ~45 minutes.
Now i have dualboot: Mac osx and Windows 8. I can start programming windows phone apps now!
My adventure with electronics started in 2001 when my cousin went to vocational high school concerned with electronics. From that time i was helping him as much as i could and gathering the knowledge he had and what i could read online. During that time i have started to diagnose and service computers, which im doing with passion until now. In the vocational high school i gathered all the basic as well as advanced knowledge about electronic devices, components, their characteristics as well as the way of using measurement and repair tools. In 2008 i have acceded to the vocational examination which to pass requires the score of 75% and up which i passed on 95%. From that time I'm spending all my free time for it and studying at the same time Mobile and Wearable Computing on Aberystwyth University (Wales, UK). I have graduated this year with 2:1 degree. Currently looking for job in hardware concerned with electronics.
Its getting more and more efficiently. The heating profile i have updated to the tools i have seems to work for me without destroying any electronic elements and what is the most important.. ending up with fixed xboxes! Now i feel like i need more and more. Looks like its kind of addictive.
Recently i have bought some Xbox from a local private seller, saying it has red ring of death, i said its excellent for my practice. Straight after i gave him the money he disappeared in no time! That was at least suspicious. I said fine, its only 10 pounds.
After i brought it to my house i started to disassemble the box and found that it was opened before. When i came to the point in which motherboard appeared i found it that its surface is strangely flexed. I took the heat sinks off and found that someone tried to do some 'reballing' or maybe reheating with a very poor skill. I think whoever done it, seen some of the Xbox rumors on one of the Youtube videos according to poor designed X-clamp, and some modifications that 'work better than stock one'. Here is the video that userTheHGCGamersClub describes why its a myth and junk.
Now i want to show what i found in there:
Let me describe what it is, why and where it was used and from what components its build with.
This thing is built with a two coins (british coins, i think maybe 2 pens coins, which are kind of copper ones). There are stick together with insulation tape. This think was between the memory chips and the xbox cover to which motherboard is screwed to. It was below GPU and CPU chip as well. I dont know what the inventor of this idea was thinking about, should it fix x-clamp or create better thermal conductivity or... who knows. However, this flexed the motherboard so badly, that at that point i was sure it wont ever work, but still i could practice some of the rebelling things. I will show you the picture of motherboard as well.
You can see that some of the attempts has been done by previous owner. The job was not neat at all. Even the red glue was kind of epoxy one which was really hard to take off (usually it takes few seconds using heat, im sure the owner has no idea what kind of glue to use). Has he got any ideas what is he doing by the way...???
I have cleaned the GPU as good as i could and took of the GPU. You can see hear what i found below:
Here we can see that the surface started to corrode. Usually no-clean flux is used (i think its used by everyone now), as it can be left and will not corrode any of the electronic parts on the board. Here, was used other type of flux that needs to be properly cleaned after rework as will lead to corroding. It would not work too long.
Reballed chip (not too clean as i did not bother too much knowing theres only few percent chances it will work):
After cleaning, reballing and heating the GPU back, effect was not different that i expected, it did not work. Im not surprised at all.
I dont know if it was someones job who did it first time or some pseudo company from ebay, its terrible job. However it made my day and I'm laughing to these day how bad work someone did!
I was practicing few months (~4 months) to prepare for repairing my iMac which went faulty. The problem was a manufacturing defect of Nvidia GPU chip. Every chip produced before 2008 was with that fault. So i have bought new chip with date 2010 (means free from any defects). It was laying on my desk until i gathered much skill to try to replace old one. As i said it took quite a long time which gave me huge patience lesson, 4 broken Xbox360 and 3 PS3. Still quite a good result considering the fact that I'm working on a very low end machines.
First attempt, i took of the old chip:
I did not bother to clean it properly (only core to make it easier then to take chip off by a suction pen), board was cleaned as properly as possible.
Then after old chip was taken off, I took all of the old solder from board and prepared it for putting new chip.
Chip in place ready to heat it up!
In this attempt, after new chip was in place, i tried if the process was successful, however iMac did not want to power on. I have read i should take it off and reball it again which i did, this time with lead solder. After all, i cleaned it all but this time, i did not put it back in, but left it to dry on the preheating device in a 120C for 20 minutes (as i used ISO PROPANOL Alcohol, wanted to make sure nothing left under chip or other parts soldered to the board). Pic of the graphics card with a new chip:
It worked! And i think i found the problem which emerged after first attempt, i think there could be some alcohol left in the board, causing short circuit. Anyway lead solder is better choice in solution in which temperature rises up and down very fast and often.
Pic of iMac working!:
I have done any stress testing to make sure it really works. It passed all! :)
Summary:
Chip cost me 60 pounds, repair cost 4 months of practice, many devices has been destroyed.
All devices needed to fix it cost around 300 pounds.
Its still better than buy 'NEW' graphics card from ebay with old 2008 chip which will eventually fail.
Still i want to continue reballing as its my hobby now, which i really enjoy!
More reballing stuff soon, this time I might post some video if i will sort out some good camera.
1/3: Desolder the GPU from the motherboard, remove old solder.
2/3: GPU chip after applying new lead-solder balls.
3/3: GPU soldered back to motherboard. (i know it should be cleaned properly at the beginning however there was a 99% chances i will damage GPU, motherboard or both, therefore i did not bother about it too much). However it worked! HA!
It was done 2 months ago.
All this practise I am trying to master, will help me to repair my iMac's 2008 nVidia 8800GS. It needs chip replacement as it was produced before 2008 and any nvidia chip produced before 2008 needs replacement due to manufacturing defect.
Buying new 'graphics card' will cost around 300-400 pounds (and i dont know how long it will last),so I prefer to repair it by myself. Chip cost is around 60 pounds.
Repairing process of my iMac's GPU will be posted as soon as i will boost my self convenience up a bit.
However, I have quite a big soldering background, as I'm doing it from 2002, so it should not be that difficult. We'll see later on...
