Reball reliability issue

[geekdad]

Hello Everyone,

I have been repairing circuit boards for a while with pretty good reliability. I have one unit that is a problem though. I have kept this unit for testing, since I am particularly interested in why it has such low reliability.

Failure mode is always the same - glitchy display after 4-5 weeks of use. 2-3 restarts after initial error the unit boots with a black screen.

I have reballed the GPU 3 separate times. Each time it is a complete process of removing the chip, removing the solder, ultrasonic cleaning, and then reballing the chip, chip placement on the board, etc. I use lead solder balls.

I have changed material lots for both the solder balls and the flux; in case it was something wrong with them. My best guess is that the GPU itself is faulty, and the reflow thermal cycle is "fixing" something in the chip package temporarily. I have ordered a new GPU to replace the current chip.

I'm interested to hear what you think it may be.

Kind Regards,
Adam

 

[KevinC867]

If you're working with the NVIDIA 8600M GPU, then yes - the problem is internal to the GPU. Specifically it's in the bonding of the die to the BGA package. See this article: www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GPU-failure,6248.html

 

[yjchua95]

Hello Everyone,

I have been repairing circuit boards for a while with pretty good reliability. I have one unit that is a problem though. I have kept this unit for testing, since I am particularly interested in why it has such low reliability.

Failure mode is always the same - glitchy display after 4-5 weeks of use. 2-3 restarts after initial error the unit boots with a black screen.

I have reballed the GPU 3 separate times. Each time it is a complete process of removing the chip, removing the solder, ultrasonic cleaning, and then reballing the chip, chip placement on the board, etc. I use lead solder balls.

I have changed material lots for both the solder balls and the flux; in case it was something wrong with them. My best guess is that the GPU itself is faulty, and the reflow thermal cycle is "fixing" something in the chip package temporarily. I have ordered a new GPU to replace the current chip.

I'm interested to hear what you think it may be.

Kind Regards,
Adam

If you're working on a 15"/17" early/late-2011 MBP, there's a manufacturing flaw in all of those logic board that causes the AMD Radeon card to fail. There is no permanent fix to it other than re-soldering a new Radeon GPU it.