When trying to put some new thermal paste on the CPUs I sadly knocked off the tiny chip shown in the picture on the top right. Can anything be done? Also would anyone know what this chip is responsible for? I think it says c4464 on it. I’m not very good as soldering but I could possibly buy a heatgun to try and use? The computer still boots without the chip but I get application crashes sometimes, which i’ve attached. Anyone got any ideas?
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Knocked a chip off of Powermac G5 CPU, can anything be done?
- Thread starter PowerHarryG4
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Solder it back on. Look up Louis Rossmann if you need any soldering pointers.
Would I be able to without proper kit? The chip is smaller than a grain of rice, I’m not sure if I’d be able to. I also don’t know if the chip only works in one direction.
You can do it. Get your iron HOT then place the chip where it needs to be. Then put the tip of the iron on the chip for 1 or two seconds—just long enough for the heat to transfer through the chip into the solder that's on the board. It shouldn't matter which direction you place the chip as long as it is making contact with the board. You can do it!!!
@PowerHarryG4 do you have a soldering iron? Which tip would you suggest for this type of work? @micahgartman
You don’t need anything too small—just be sure to not touch any of the surrounding chips. My iron is as big as a horse and I can get around a PowerBook board pretty easily. Go get ‘em, boys!
Ah okay I was thinking i’d have to solder the sides. So doing it this way I don’t need to add any solder? I think I may be able to do this.
There should be plenty of solder on the chip and on the board. Just get 'em nice and hot and they'll weld right back on 
The component that fell off is a capacitor. Passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) don't have a direction, so you can solder them either way. The size of that capacitor doesn't look like it's too small (0603 size), more like 1206 or 0805.
Don't use cheap soldering iron, they output around 40-90V AC through the tip. The cheap cheap ones don't even have a proper temperature regulator, they have a circuit same as in dim lights (Triac, potentiometer etc..). Use a quality isolated one (Weller, Hakko, JBC or those USB like Pinecil V2, TS100, FNIRSI HS-01, Sequre SI012...) or you will damage the other ICs or components on the PCB.
As for solder wire, i would recommend a good brand like "Stannol" or "Alpha Fluitin".
Clean the 2 pads with solder (copper) wick, apply a bit of solder wire to one side, place the component so it aligns with the pads, solder that one end and then fill the other end. When the other end is properly soldered, fill up the first side with fresh solder and that would be about it. I would recommend from 290-310°C for soldering (depends how powerful the soldering iron is).
This is how the professionals do it. Hope it helps you!
Don't use cheap soldering iron, they output around 40-90V AC through the tip. The cheap cheap ones don't even have a proper temperature regulator, they have a circuit same as in dim lights (Triac, potentiometer etc..). Use a quality isolated one (Weller, Hakko, JBC or those USB like Pinecil V2, TS100, FNIRSI HS-01, Sequre SI012...) or you will damage the other ICs or components on the PCB.
As for solder wire, i would recommend a good brand like "Stannol" or "Alpha Fluitin".
Clean the 2 pads with solder (copper) wick, apply a bit of solder wire to one side, place the component so it aligns with the pads, solder that one end and then fill the other end. When the other end is properly soldered, fill up the first side with fresh solder and that would be about it. I would recommend from 290-310°C for soldering (depends how powerful the soldering iron is).
This is how the professionals do it. Hope it helps you!
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I threw out a whole bunch of G5 powermacs I had lying around. Some dual 2.7 GHZ and even a few 2.5 G5 Quad cores. they were useless and slow in todays world. unless you really love FCP 7? or Logic Pro 9?
People can appreciate PPC Macs for the history, nostalgia, and charm even if they’re “useless and slow.” It’s for the fun of it, and if you can’t appreciate it there’s no point in poking your head in and naysaying everyone else.
Just to clarify, passive components definitely have a direction (polarity) in some cases such as diodes and electrolytic capacitors.
Yeah, I was going to comment the same but also add that this one does not have a preferred direction. It looks like a basic ceramic cap to me. A great first part to learn to solder with.
Of course, that's why i didn't include them, it's common knowledge if you work with electronics!
Even some ceramic, film and tantalum capacitors have "polarity" mark, but it's not so much important. That polarity mark indicates the outer foil side inside the capacitor.
Diodes (anode on the " + " , cathode on the " - ," the " - " is shown with the line) are a different story completely, same as electrolytic capacitors (line indicates the GND, " - " or Ground). You must be always careful with these!
You can do it. It's really not hard, certainly for a component like this.
Quick check though-- what would you do if you didn't try to solder it. Before we encourage you to do something that might destroy the board (probably won't, but mistakes happen), it would be good to know the loss wouldn't be too big...
As far as what it does, it's probably just part of the power supply that keeps enough charge close to where it's used so if the circuit suddenly draws power it can take it from that capacitor in less time than it takes for it to make it from the main power supply. It's called a "bypass" capacitor, or filter capacitor because it removes the high frequency current demand. The symptoms you're seeing would be consistent with that-- works fine some times, crashes for no apparent reason (the unapparent reason is a sudden demand for power that causes a brownout without that cap in place).
That square black chip with all the pins is a Linear Technology 3731 voltage converter. I can't be sure without testing the board, but I'm guessing this is the 10µF on the Vcc line. Vcc is on the side of the chip closest to that cluster of parts. You want that part there, it's probably not going to work to limp by without it.
In the end, the point is to get the ends of that part electrically connected to the board. That's all there is to it. Better tools make it easier, but this isn't anything too fancy so the stakes are lower. You could add solder to ensure a good connection, but you might be able to just reflow the existing solder if it's not worth buying more. If you add solder, don't over do it.
Things to be careful of-- make sure the board isn't connected to anything when you solder it. If the tip is active, as @NikolaPPC warned, or grounded as is common with other irons, you could push current through a board if it's connected to anything. The other thing is don't just look at the component you're soldering, but the ones around it-- you want to make the connections you're trying to without making any other ones... ;-)
You want enough heat to heat the solder, but not so much you that you lift the copper pads off the board.
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Thanks for the info. I think if I didn’t try to solder it I’d probably just leave it alone, I tend to collect these old macs but I also do like playing around with them and tinkering so it would be nice for it to work properly. I think the good thing about this if I did damage it, is it is just the one cpu board. Meaning the motherboard and the other cpu would be fine so could be repaired if I found another quad G5 cpu. Also right now it’s mostly unusable so i don’t have too much to lose doing it.
However, I think seeing as I’m not too experienced and I have a pretty cheap soldering iron, I have a couple people I know with a decent soldering iron and some more experience so I might ask them to take a look at it with me.
Do you mean C4664? C suggests it's a capacitor (as already noted). Often times these capacitors are used for smoothing out the supply voltage to integrated circuits. Without looking at the schematics we cannot say what it may be used for.
I'd offer to solder it back on for you but shipping to the States is likely to be cost prohibitive. It's an easy repair if you have the correct tools.
I'd offer to solder it back on for you but shipping to the States is likely to be cost prohibitive. It's an easy repair if you have the correct tools.
I bought a soldering iron to give it a go but I don't think it's worked. I tried just holding the soldering iron onto the chip to see if I could heat it up and that would be enough, but I couldn't get that to work. I tried adding a bit of solder and and then putting the chip ontop. Here's how it looks, obviously it's a bit messy haha. I tried booting it up but i'm getting the same error so it's obviously not making enough contact. Any thoughts? should I take it off clean up the solder and start again?
Attachments
I tried taking the chip off and redoing the connection however, I think the chip may be damaged, either by my soldering or when the chip was knocked off the board. I bought a multimeter to test my connection and the chip isn't reading the same resistance as the same chip on the CPU board. Is there any chance of a replacement for this?