Laptop PCs

[grobda]

Bit OT but ive had two laptops recently with motherboard faults, owners had been told they were BER.

As a shot to nothing I pulled them to bits and used a heatgun to warm the chipset and graphics ICs, as you would a RROD xbox/ps3. Then put some fresh themal paste on the heatsinks.

Both worked fine after I put them back together, I soak tested one of them by leaving it on pretty much every day for a month and its been fine.

Im a bit bemused that PC repair has got so agricultural

 

[guddler]

I can guarantee you that barely any PC repair shops would know how to do what you did and therefore wouldn't even consider it. PC repair these days consists of swapping major components only. So BER means, not worth buying a new motherboard

 

[Owain]

I've just experienced something similar. My boss at the pc/phone/console repair shop gave me a 24 inch iMac the other day and said that if I can fix it I can have it for £40. So with iMac in hands off home I went. Done a bit of research and discovered that the model I was given was prone to the GPU overheating due to poorly applied thermal paste. So..... Stripped the whole machine and gave it a damn good clear out, it was absolutely crammed with dust and cobwebs. Finally got to the GPU and removed it just to find that the paste was all around the edge of the chip and not actually on the top of it so cleaned the old paste off and applied new. Rebuilt it and now have a lovely 24 inch iMac that still runs cold after hours and hours of constant use. Bargain!!!!

 

[guddler]

Cor! That's what you call a result!!

How recent is it? It has to be Intel as they didn't bring the 24's in until after Intel came along I don't think.

 

[Owain]

Intel Core 2 Duo, granted its not the top dog of iMacs but still a damn good bargain, it runs Lion quite nicely but sadly is just out of date for Mountain Lion.

 

[guddler]

Ahhhh, dammit. I had one of them that I then sold to someone locally. There's went wrong fairly recently and they got the same story of couldn't be repaired. I bet it was the same thing!!

Nice result though.

 

[Owain]

Probably was. It only took about an hour to sort out. Now you know that if you hear of any more and can get them really cheap, grab them lol This particular model still goes for a good price on eBay.