Mothereboard Repair??

Has anybody ever tried repairing a dead motherboard?

More specifically, remove leaky capacitors and solder new ones on?

It's not that I'm too cheap to buy a board, it's just that I don't want to go through the hassle of redoing the hard drive because of replacing the mboard. And the board I have has been obsolete for a long time. And it is a deluxe board with lots of nice features. If I could find the same one, I'd buy it. (Gigabyte 8KNXP)

I'm considering trying this. Just wondering if you guys have had any experience at it?

TOAST! is what you would end up with not knowing the exact values of any caps involved as well as not finding them in any local electronics supply store.

Components on boards are manufacturered according to the need of the original design of the board for the manufacturer to see assembled with the rest. The caps will see a specific value when ordered in bulk.

At one time when more board frequently saw identical ICs used those many years back a surface mount kit would allow swapping out a bad chip. These days with every board different it's far easier to select a newer model and see an upgrade having a newer board with similar maybe better options.

PC eye said:

TOAST! is what you would end up with not knowing the exact values of any caps involved as well as not finding them in any local electronics supply store.

Components on boards are manufacturered according to the need of the original design of the board for the manufacturer to see assembled with the rest. The caps will see a specific value when ordered in bulk.

At one time when more board frequently saw identical ICs used those many years back a surface mount kit would allow swapping out a bad chip. These days with every board different it's far easier to select a newer model and see an upgrade having a newer board with similar maybe better options.

Click to expand...

Well, I do know my way around electronics - I have been fixing stuff since I was a puppy! I'm one of those guys who takes apart things clearly marked "No User Serviceable Parts Inside" and fixes it.

Having said that, the cap values are clearly marked on the side. I scrap out a lot of boards every year, as I do repairs, upgrades and so on. I don't see why, if I'm very careful, that I can't pull a good cap of the same value off another old board and swap them out. Or just run down to my local electronic store and buy a half dozen of the same value.

Now if it doesn't work, the board is dead anyways. It was working fine until one of them "blew its lid" Yes, I realize that with a cap gone that other components could be fed the wrong voltage and blow out too but I think it would be a nifty challenge to try!

BobsYourUncle said:

Well, I do know my way around electronics - I have been fixing stuff since I was a puppy! I'm one of those guys who takes apart things clearly marked "No User Serviceable Parts Inside" and fixes it.

Having said that, the cap values are clearly marked on the side. I scrap out a lot of boards every year, as I do repairs, upgrades and so on. I don't see why, if I'm very careful, that I can't pull a good cap of the same value off another old board and swap them out. Or just run down to my local electronic store and buy a half dozen of the same value.

Now if it doesn't work, the board is dead anyways. It was working fine until one of them "blew its lid" Yes, I realize that with a cap gone that other components could be fed the wrong voltage and blow out too but I think it would be a nifty challenge to try!

Click to expand...

You could try and if worst comes to worst you will be in the same boat and have several dollars less in your pocket. I have never heard of anyone replacing damaged parts on a motherboard and it working. Tell us if you're successful.

If you have the right type of desoldering gun sure. The solder used on mobo's is not regular lead solder. It is either Hard Solder or Water-Soluble Flux solder (I am not sure). At any rate the melting point of the solder on mobo's is higher than that of regular lead solder so as long as you have a gun which can reach fairly high temps there should be no reason you can't replace some caps.

Lax said:

If you have the right type of desoldering gun sure. The solder used on mobo's is not regular lead solder. It is either Hard Solder or Water-Soluble Flux solder (I am not sure). At any rate the melting point of the solder on mobo's is higher than that of regular lead solder so as long as you have a gun which can reach fairly high temps there should be no reason you can't replace some caps.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that info.
I just learned something about solder!

The actual best place as Lax somewhat pointed out for seeing a board repaired or rather refurbished as the term goes is sending into the manufacturer since they are already setup and equipped to replace any failed components. You may .17microfarad stamped on a cap but it won't mean the identical .17 in a store even comes close voltage wise.

Certain standard values more common between different items like a home stereo, satelite receiver, cable box, and then a main board might just see one or two items while the remaining are manufacturered in bulk according to a specific circuit design having their own value. One thing to remember besides voltage differences however is that there are also various types of caps to consider being made with different materials.

Caps surrounding the base of power supply transformers are generally ceramic. When they let go KABOOM! poof! a cloud of smoke surrounds you! That will set them all off as they totally vaporize since they are linked together there.

Those generally see a higher voltage as a rule there then on a board where 12v is divided countless time into micro volts and milliamps. Grabbing a good one off of another identical board might work in theory but... besides a weak cap going toast at some point you never know if something else has already gone or will go along with it. That's the unknown factor there.

As far as the temps for soldering irons used in manufacturering try 750 or hotter and cleaning off with denatured alcohol afterwards. That's not Radio Shack brand tin solder used there.

BobsYourUncle

I've looked into repairing boards more than once over the years, and I guess as to whether or not it's worth it depends on the type of damage, costs, and time. Unfortunately unless you really have an incredibly irreplaceable board, or have an inner zen need to know and cherish the satisfaction of a job well done, replacing the board is probably the most resource effective move.

For the most part you see all new components and no risk of doing more damage taking a used component off of one board and trying to substitute it for one gone bad. The methods of manufacture used generally insure no user servicable items while the manufacturer is already tooled for any refurbishing.

The idea of seeing if you could repair a board yourself would seriously depend on two things for the most part. For one being formerly trained in and familiar with electronics, knowing how to trace circuits and certainly use a scope.

The second is finding any replacement parts like running across the exact same make and model board seeing a totally different problem where salvaging good parts is possible. Certainly being familiar with the soldering techniques used by assemblers will play a large as well.

PC eye said:

The actual best place as Lax somewhat pointed out for seeing a board repaired or rather refurbished as the term goes is sending into the manufacturer since they are already setup and equipped to replace any failed components. You may .17microfarad stamped on a cap but it won't mean the identical .17 in a store even comes close voltage wise.

Certain standard values more common between different items like a home stereo, satelite receiver, cable box, and then a main board might just see one or two items while the remaining are manufacturered in bulk according to a specific circuit design having their own value. One thing to remember besides voltage differences however is that there are also various types of caps to consider being made with different materials.

Caps surrounding the base of power supply transformers are generally ceramic. When they let go KABOOM! poof! a cloud of smoke surrounds you! That will set them all off as they totally vaporize since they are linked together there.

Those generally see a higher voltage as a rule there then on a board where 12v is divided countless time into micro volts and milliamps. Grabbing a good one off of another identical board might work in theory but... besides a weak cap going toast at some point you never know if something else has already gone or will go along with it. That's the unknown factor there.

Click to expand...

Most of that is completly wrong but I,ll just point out a few. If the capacitor has the same part number/company it will work, the voltage for the same part number will not vary. The solid capacitors are filled with a solid organic polymer while older caps. were liquid electrolyte. The newer caps. dont explode and when the older ones did it did not vaporize. It would blow the top or bottom off and crap would go all over the board near the cap.

StrangleHold said:

Most of that is completly wrong but I,ll just point out a few. If the capacitor has the same part number/company it will work, the voltage for the same part number will not vary. The solid capacitors are filled with a solid organic polymer while older caps. were liquid electrolyte. The newer caps. dont explode and when the older ones did it did not vaporize. It would blow the top or bottom off and crap would go all over the board near the cap.

Click to expand...

For one you don't even have the first glue to what is seen when testing and what I was even referring to. But that's your usual "open mouth first and insert foot" routine.

As I mentioned before since you can't read apparently is that various caps are made out of different materials depending on design. Since you can't read however I'll repeat that ceramic caps are used at the base and strung around certain types of power supplies you don't even have the first clue on.

When a ceramic cap goes it is designed to simply vaporize rather then sending debris all over. It's funny as H when assemblers gather around !!! stunned when a string of caps goes and smoke just wants to linger there for a minute or so.

As far as part numbers? When you simply dissect a board and run down to a local supply store you won't simply find replacements with Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, DFI, Abit, EVGA, Foxconn, etc. replacement numbers. SORRY! And certainly you can request individual components from any and simply get the "no" for an answer since they will automatically specify sending the board into them for repair or replacement.

You just make stuff up and create your own false circumstances to back up your B/S. Local supply store, who would think that other than your own stupidity. Your a low scale no-nothing. Your foot has never been anywhere other than in your mouth, I guess thats why you talk from somewhere else.

I don't have to make up anything little to your limited vocabulary shown there. When you are actually in the electronics field long enough you will see quite a bit when testing various types of equipment and something lets go like a bad batch of caps!

Radio shack will have you basic caps that WILL indeed match what is on the board. Just make sure you copy down all the information correctly. Radio shack however has the "old style" I guess you could say, liquid caps and not the "new style" solid caps (AFAIK). But like said, it is probably easier to just replace the board in general.

Most of what you will find at a store like RS will be for hobbyists along with certain select replacement items. While caps may see the same value stamped on them those are not custom ordered by a manufacturer to meet a certain requirement for a particular design.

More or less you would be walking blindly taking a gamble or simply end up seeing more damage done. You won't find 750w soldering irons used for assembly work at RS either. A 25w or even 75w cheapie sold there would only make a mess of things.

It's not my intention to make this a cost effective deal. Really, the biggest reason was to effect a quick repair on a much needed computer. I have 6 users who are on this regularly, especially my wife.

I have no problem buying a board and replacing it. I just didn't want the hassle of the hardware crunch that happens when you throw a different chipset at the mix. Windows doesn't like that. It will BSOD in short order. The only one that I have ever had success with is the VIA chipset.

I also like the challenge of doing something that others tell me can't be done. Just part of my makeup I guess. I once built a TV out of scrap parts because somebody told me I couldn't. I followed it through with an old scope and got everything right and it worked for many years. I finally tossed it because it was black and white.

Sending the board to Gigabyte is out of the question. Not interested in doing that. I need it now. I figured I'd dig through my old board collection and find something with the same value caps. Swapping them out isn't rocket science.

If it works, cool! If it doesn't - Oh well the boards dead anyways - toss it out.

Since I posted this I have been looking at other options. I may throw a new board and CPU in there and take my chances trying to ditch the old system drivers and such.

I wonder if there is a way to do that from the repair console or something. I don't know - I have never tried before. Ideally if I knew the file that contained the system drivers and hardware settings I could delete it and have it find all the hardware on first bootup with the new board. That would be a lot easier. I'm running a mirrored RAID so I could play with one HD and hope for the best.

BobsYourUncle said:

I wonder if there is a way to do that from the repair console or something. I don't know - I have never tried before. Ideally if I knew the file that contained the system drivers and hardware settings I could delete it and have it find all the hardware on first bootup with the new board. That would be a lot easier. I'm running a mirrored RAID so I could play with one HD and hope for the best.

Click to expand...

If you do go with another board and you dont want to reinstall everything. Go into Add & Remove programs and uninstall all the drivers listed for the board/Chipset/Sound and so on. Then go into your Device Manager and right click on any devices to that board and click uninstall. Replace the board and boot into Safe mode the first time and see if it boots. If so restart in normal mode. If it boots install your new drivers. If not just boot to your XP cd and just do a repair install. It will save all your programs and files.

StrangleHold said:

If you do go with another board and you dont want to reinstall everything. Go into Add & Remove programs and uninstall all the drivers listed for the board/Chipset/Sound and so on. Then go into your Device Manager and right click on any devices to that board and click uninstall. Replace the board and boot into Safe mode the first time and see if it boots. If so restart in normal mode. If it boots install your new drivers. If not just boot to your XP cd and just do a repair install. It will save all your programs and files.

Click to expand...

Kinda hard to do that with a dead board.

The challenge is that if I put the new board in and boot it up, I know it won't even get there. The HD will show up as not there because my mirror RAID drivers will choke it first. I could bypass that by using only one drive. But it has been my experience that I won't be able to get far enough in to delete all the drivers and such.
I need to be able to do it without booting to the drive. I can slave it to another computer, but then I don't know the name of the file to delete that contains the system properties info.

With a mirrored array you have to assume that data and files there will be lost if you are unable to access them now. If it was simply single drives you could easily slave them in seeing a fresh copy of Windows on a new host/boot drive once a new board was in. You still may be able to savage some things using data recovery tools however.

Having experience with a scope and having one onhand would help but not simply be enough for seeing anything swapped over as replacement parts. Finding the exact same make and model board would be the success story for that attempt provided you had the correct soldering station as well as solder to start with.

The same model in working order would simply require a repair install while seeing no loss of data/files from the board swap. The only thing being effected would be the Windows hardware profile.

PC eye said:

With a mirrored array you have to assume that data and files there will be lost if you are unable to access them now. If it was simply single drives you could easily slave them in seeing a fresh copy of Windows on a new host/boot drive once a new board was in. You still may be able to savage some things using data recovery tools however.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I have to disagree with you on this.

On a mirror RAID, there are two identical drives. They can be separated and one drive can be slaved and the data pulled off.

I know this for fact because thats how I salvaged my data on the last computer that went down. I was running dual mirrored RAID's on a pair of 200's and a pair of 80's on the same machine. I slaved one of each, read them as a single drive and pulled all my data off intact. In fact, I also used MS Backup as well in case I missed any files. I since restored that backup to an alternate directory to offer myself the opportunity to grab stuff as needed.

Actually, let me clarify "slaved" I ran them as a secondary master.