T43p GPU busted? (Picture warning)

[thinkpadhole]

This is gonna be a bit on the long side, but bear with me here.

I recently bought a good condition second hand T43p 2668-H8G without a HDD, but I managed to salvage an old Hitachi 5k100 80GB drive from my brother's old laptop, which unsurprisingly didn't agree with the machine and resulted in the (in)famous 2010 error until I flashed the custom BIOS on the machine and showed it who's boss. While installing Windows XP on it and configuring it, it soon became apparent that the machine also has the infamous heating issues that plague the T43 line of ThinkPads in that the fan was constantly on with a lot of noise compared to my almost silent T42, pulsated every 4 seconds or so, + TPFanControl showed temps for CPU and GPU being around 70 celcius idle with curiously the GPU temps always being higher than CPU temps, the usual stuff.

So I opened the machine up and removed the fan assembly and of course all the original thermal paste had dried up ages ago, the weird part was removing the part that covered the GPU; At first I thought I somehow broke the fan assembly because a separate piece was left over the GPU shield, but inspecting it further it seems that part of the fan is actually composed of two parts; The elognated copper part that goes over the GPU section, and a separate copper plate under it which holds the thermal pad. I had to pry that copper plate off the GPU aluminum heatshield with a flat-head screwdiver by force as it didn't dislodge any other way thanks to some... black goop or something and the before mentioned pink thermal pad. Why the hell is the fan assembly designed like this, Intel?! Once I had that done the only thing I could thought of doing was just gluing the copper plate back to the fan assembly proper with some sturdy crazy glue, which I'm sure just lessened the heat conductivity of the GPU section of the fan assembly. Next comes the GPU itself and the heat shield, by per Adda's instructions on this post I at first tried to remove the heatshield with dental floss, but it just kept breaking after a short while so I resorted to the flat-head screwdiver again to lift the heatshield off, which dented it a bit but otherwise everything seemed okay. While the fan was removed, I also applied this fix to the fan, which worked nicely as all the rattling noise was gone, so kudos to AdaSch.

After that I cleaned off all the old paste with contact cleaning fluid and tissues, reapplied thermal paste over the memory chips and the GPU core, reshaped the heatshield a bit to be flat again, attached it back over the GPU *firmly*, tried to bend the fan assembly a bit too but poorly, added thermal paste over the heatshield and CPU, put the fan back in it's place and reassembled the whole laptop. Then I booted the machine and immedietly I noticed something was wrong; The IBM startup logo had some garbled lines over it and so did the Windows XP loading screen, and shortly after that it returns a blue screen which also contains the same graphical errors: http://oi58.tinypic.com/ra1dh1.jpg
I tried resetting a couple of times and it's always the same thing, then I went to BIOS and there it's the same thing, except worse: http://oi61.tinypic.com/6jq150.jpg
Next I booted XP into safe mode just to see is it just some weird driver problem, but it still looked the same: http://oi57.tinypic.com/k03tif.jpg
So apparently at one point while fiddling with the machine, I broke something somehow, here's a picture of the GPU: http://oi60.tinypic.com/34iiq93.jpg It looks okay to me aside from the thermal paste remains, although there seems to be some kind of dent or something on the GPU itself visible on that photo, maybe I scraped the chip with the screwdiver or something while removing the heat shield even though I tried to be careful or I pressed the chip too hard when reapplying the shield, I really don't know.

So basically, am I completely F'd here or is there some kind of fix to this, reflowing maybe? I'd be super P.O. if I broke my "new" ThinkPad just when I got it set up and the fan working correctly, please offer me some help if you can.

Thanks.

[Adda]

I'm not surprised, that GPU has been through a rough patch to put it mildly.

When removing the heatshield, cut the heatshield off like you would slice a cheese.
Put the dental floss under the edge and pull it under the heatshield.
If you try and "saw" it off, the floss will break.

The fix is reballing or new mobo.

Edit: also, if you got the older V3200 GPU, the heatshield doesn't fit, the middle of it won't touch the GPU.
So unless you have thermal pad of some sort to put in there, you can't refit the heatshield.

[thinkpadhole]

Yes I read the post, I tried to cut it but it didn't seem to work much so I tried to saw it which also didn't work, I guess I was just impatient or the old thermal paste was REALLY tough.

Reballing, you absolutely sure the problem is in faulty soldering now? The GPU was working fine before I crapped it, I ran XP on it for a day when I downloaded all updates and such, no problems there, and the last owner never had any problems with the machine either. I've read the T4x series GPU's failing randomly is due to faulty soldering and that is what the reballing is for, but user error is a bit different IMO if I physically broke the chip somehow, which I don't know if I did.

I also read the GPU differances thread, yes, my V3200 GPU is the older type with 4 memory chips around the main GPU chip and there is a high differance between them, however I don't quite see how the heatshield wouldn't fit when under on the side that goes to the GPU it has a little pedestial on it which at least looks like it makes contact with the GPU chip instead of there just being a void due to the memory chips being taller than the GPU chip, and whatever crack there would be left would be filled out with thermal paste making a seemingly solid connection.

[Adda]

If it worked before you tinkered with the cooler, but did not work afterwards, then the GPU must not have been able to withstand the breaking and prying you put it through.
Your pictures look exactly like a GPU with bad solder joints.

Gluing a broken cooler back together doesn't work either, if it has broken apart, it is done and you need a new one.

The old thermal compound could have hardened, I donno, both the machines I have removed the heatshield on had rather soft thermal compound.
One of them looked like it has been running very hot, but not hotter then other T43p's.

With the older V3200 GPU's, if you put a thin layer of paste on the GPU, and put the heatshield back on, and remove it again, there will be no paste on the underside of the heatshield.
If put put a lot of paste on the GPU, some paste will touch the heatshield.
Thermal paste is not designed to fill a gap though, and works terribly this way, you need a thermal pad or some other kind of thermal compound for that.

[ajkula66]

You need a replacement motherboard. I doubt that this one could be saved even with re-balling.

Good luck.

[Adda]

Ah yes now that I look closer at the pic, it seems some resistors have broken off, and the core is damaged.

It's broken for sure, with no hope of revival, unless the entire GPU assembly is replaced completely.

[thinkpadhole]

Things indeed look a bit grim, but automobus informed me via PM that yes, some of the resistors between the two lower memory chips seem have broken off and that he thinks the issue might be because of those since the graphical errors on the screen are highly consistent and not random, meaning that if someone would know exactly what kind of resistors those are, I could replace them and fix the board. He doesn't think that the dent on the GPU chip causes anything and frankly neither do I, I'm also positive it's just the resistors missing, so I'd say there is hope!

[RealBlackStuff]

Since you probably won't find the V3200 GPU circuit diagram anywhere, you'd need another identical GPU to remove the resistors/condensors from, and onto yours.
Being as small as those SMD-bits are... good luck.
Getting another motherboard would be your best bet.
ALL T43/R52 motherboards will fit from both 14.1" and 15" machines.

[thinkpadhole]

Yeah, at this point the prospects for me repairing this GPU are looking pretty slim. I tried to remove similar looking MLCC capacitors (which is what the components apparently are) from an old and busted Acer laptop's ATI GPU and reattach those on the ThinkPad with a regular soldering iron and tweezers, but I couldn't even get the ones on the broken laptop budge due to the soldering tip being too large I guess to touch the tiny component's solder, so I just ended up removing them by force with a screwdiver again (the irony, I know) but that didn't get me far either because reattaching them to the ThinkPad proved pretty impossible with my tools as well.

But I haven't quite given up hope yet! My next idea is to somehow find out the values for those capacitors used on the V3200, buy the right kind from an electronics store and then reflow the whole mobo in an oven with the capacitors placed over the solder points on the GPU, hopefully they would reattach and the GPU would work again. The only problem is finding out the values for the capacitors, and here is where I would ask your, the good people at this forum, help again; Could someone who owns a multimeter and a functioning T43p check the values and post them here? Or better yet if someone could just find the circuit diagram for this laptop, but I'm sure that's even more of a long shot than someone just checking the values if possible, which would be greatly appreciated

[thinkpadhole]

Nobody huh? Figures. I'm going to have to do it myself then, no problem. The plan is still the same; Once I've bought a multimeter and seen what kind of measures one of those pea-sized MLCC capacitors give, I'll attempt to buy similar caps and solder them on the solder points that's missing them and see if I can magically resurrect this GPU to working order. Will keep you posted!

[kfzhu1229]

It seems like to me that your silicon on the GPU itself has a nick. You might've touched it when taking the original fan out. Maybe your GPU is dead. You can go online and buy another T43p motherboard for around $150