T41 reflow- did I kill it?

[Ragueneau]

I got a T41 with a bad gpu, which would POST and boot with a dark screen. If you pressed on the gpu, it would come on, so it seemed like a classic case of bad solder points. Last night I acquired a heat gun and followed the guide as closely as I could, but lacking an IR thermometer I placed an oven thermometer very close to the gpu instead.

I followed the timing as closely as I could, but discovered that the thermometer wasn't reporting sufficiently high temperatures: pointing the gun at the thermometer (as I had been doing to the gpu) caused the temp to rise much more dramatically than when it was next to GPU catching residual heat. The gpu was under the gun for about 30 minutes altogether, and I allowed it to cool until it was cool to the touch.

Now when I reassemble the device and try to power it on, the wifi light flashes quickly and nothing else. No noise, no light, no screen. Pushing on the gpu changes nothing.

Did I kill it?

[craigmontHunter]

You may have - all the times (3) that I did it, it was under the heat from about 18 inches down to 2 and back out for about 5 minutes. I admittadly never got it hot eneough to hold (except for the last time when it was blown off the pads), and it never lasted longer than 2 months. The heat is very centeralized with a heat gun - you need the Ir thermometer to judge the temp of the chip (or use my method, pray and hope that you don't kill it).

You may be able to pick up a motherboard on e-bay, either working with a doa warrenty, or a R51 motherboard with intel graphics.

[visionviper]

Yes, you killed it. The IR thermometer is a very important piece of equipment - you should not have attempted without it.

You can buy a replacement T41 motherboard or a R51 motherboard to swap into your machine.