G5 Dual 2.5GHz - G5 is dead

[Zotaccian]

Performed reflow with heat gun, absolutely nothing changed altough at first machine was pretty much dead except for the power. After couple reboots and resets it went to that same state, chime with memory on the outer slots and then three blinks. I heated the U3 chip to 240C for some time, one thing I didn't do was that I didn't take the heatspreader off and maybe I should have? However, if I do, how can I reattach it? It seems to be glued or something.

I haven't yet gotten the ram which should be 100% working, but the fact that it refuses to even chime when the ram is in other slots wonders me. I don't own hair dryer, I could maybe try with heat gun over ram slots, just need to be careful.


EDIT: I am tempted to try the oven trick.
RAM slots, CPU sockets and those two stands (cubic), can all those survive the heat? Should I cover any parts with foil or is it enough if I remove all parts which obviously cannot take the heat, use coffee cups etc?

EDIT2: I will also try (before anything else) heating the area between memory slots, after Googling it has helped some people so I was wondering if it would be possible that the chip is fine but there are fractures on that area. Also soldering each pin on the backside of memory connectors is one option.

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Performed reflow with heat gun, absolutely nothing changed altough at first machine was pretty much dead except for the power. After couple reboots and resets it went to that same state, chime with memory on the outer slots and then three blinks. I heated the U3 chip to 240C for some time, one thing I didn't do was that I didn't take the heatspreader off and maybe I should have? However, if I do, how can I reattach it? It seems to be glued or something.

I haven't yet gotten the ram which should be 100% working, but the fact that it refuses to even chime when the ram is in other slots wonders me. I don't own hair dryer, I could maybe try with heat gun over ram slots, just need to be careful.


EDIT: I am tempted to try the oven trick.
RAM slots, CPU sockets and those two stands (cubic), can all those survive the heat? Should I cover any parts with foil or is it enough if I remove all parts which obviously cannot take the heat, use coffee cups etc?

EDIT2: I will also try (before anything else) heating the area between memory slots, after Googling it has helped some people so I was wondering if it would be possible that the chip is fine but there are fractures on that area. Also soldering each pin on the backside of memory connectors is one option.

I would oven it, and everything can survive the heat, however you have to strip everything off like the plastics on the back side of the board, the two wires for the airport/bluetooth cards and the modem.

 

[Zotaccian]

OK, I think I'll try it tomorrow, I still haven't gotten the RAM but I'm pretty sure it is here tomorrow if it has been sent as promised, I want to test with that before the oven trick, just to make sure.

 

[Zotaccian]

Got the RAM, made no difference. The machine is now in dead state again, meaning that not even the three blinks.

I guess it's time to bake.

EDIT: Haha, well, no baking this board since it doesn't fit into my oven.... so I guess I either heat gun it, try to solder ram contacts or give up and sell for parts. The more I work with this G5 the more I appreciate ATX design.

EDIT2: For reflowing the U3 chip there is one problem, the heatspreader. I don't know what has been used to attach it but it really does hold it tight. Problem is that even though I heat it to 240C it doesn't mean that the chip package itself is at that temperature as the heatspreader has some empty space under it.

EDIT3: Well because I'm starting to get pissed off I used flathead screwdriver and some force, it did come off. Now I can give this junk one last try, I will also heat that AMD chip just in case, probably those RAM slots too. Then put this together, if no boot then thats it. I got probably working PSU and that Radeon 9600 card plus some RAM. Case has suffered some damage so no on is probably interested in that.

EDIT4: All caps look good on PSU. The PSU has been opened before me, I think these screws on PSU should have the security bit and seems like these did have, before someone opened this.

 

[Zotaccian]

The machine has not chimed at all today. Performed reflow, still remains dead.

I'll sell this for parts, too much trouble and time spent already

 

[MysticCow]

Going to oven it? I did mine for 7 minutes at 300*F with 4 coffee mugs under it. Put a foil ball on top of the chip so it has some weight to push it down. Works great still to this day. But I am still SOL on ram, max for me is 4GB. If I put in anything more it freezes up.

That reminds me of the XBox towel trick.

 

[Zotaccian]

If only I had proper reflow station I have though buying one very long but I dunno where to start studying that "art".

When I did the reflow on this G5 the second time, I tried my best to support the board and I also isolated the chip by placing aluminium foil around it. I dunno if solder just bridged and this is why it does not work anymore. The U3 chip gets hotter still so something is happening but that's it.

This project was pretty much doomed from the start and only got worse:

1) Machine has been reported as faulty
2) Case damaged during shipping, machine has probably been dropped
3) Locking pin is missing from G5 cover, someone has tampered this before me?
4) Some signs on heatsink / CPU's which make me suspect coolant leakage
5) Motherboad heatsink lock pins are damaged, someone removed heatsink before me?
6) Can't attempt reflow with oven which would have given relatively solid temps and probably most importantly, no airflow to the chip
7) Noticed that power supply has also been opened before me

On the other hand working G5 machines are not expensive so if I really wanted one I could just go and use some more money and buy fully working one

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

I might have a spare logic board. I am unsure if it works, but I would let it go for the cost of shipping. I got three PM G5s in a package deal and used two of them to make a good one. This third one is just sitting. I have no CPUs nor RAM for it.
Is yours the June 2004 model? Maybe you would want the case too? It has some scratches but no dents.

 

[Zotaccian]

I live in Europe so I think shipping costs are too high (not sure though how much they are)
Fully working G5's are not very expensive altough they are usually bit slower models.

Currently I am thinking about buying a real rework station and trying to learn how these things are really done. Attempting to do a job which requires extreme accuracy with tools which are not designed for the task at all is a bit risky, as I recently saw, again