WANTED: BGA Mad Scientists! ;)

Just curious who has underlying knowledge on replacing or upgrading (NVIDIA in particular, but any BGA experience is welcome) BGA packages instead of ordering complete motherboard's (whether new, used, or refurbished).

I have seen new balled BGA NVIDIA chips in the $10-75 range and desoldering and cleaning a BGA chip/pad isn't that hard...

What is to stop a BGA laptop owner from replacing their chip or even upgrading it in the event of a failure if they can get their hands on a balled chip (or have the skills to reball a known good chip from a parts donor)?

I understand upgrading a chip in a chassis not designed for it would require thermal handling system upgrades as well, so I'm not interested in hearing about that caveat in this particular thread.

 

it's not so easy

 

@Khenglish is your man.

 

I assume it would require a custom BIOS and likely a bigger power supply if upgrading the chip to a stronger model?

Is the BIOS where the TDP limitations lie?

Are all NVIDIA BGA packages the same array layout?

Anyone have a solid source for the BGA chips with a wide selection to choose from?

Where can I lookup BGA chip model numbers (that don't resemble the "friendly name" model and number of card)?

 

Better ask woodstackz.

 

better buying a new laptop with a mxm gpu

 

Maybe I just have a lot more patience and tolerance than most people, lol.

So far my primitive list of supplies consists of:

Heat gun, flux, tweezers, helping hands, thermocouple, foil HVAC tape (or copper tape possibly?), soldering iron, soldering wick, solder, alcohol, microscope/magnifying lenses, gobs of patience.

I've never actually toasted a GPU or CPU myself. I'm just asking because this stuff interests me. I just like to tinker and prefer to fix my stuff rather than replace it if I can. Always learning. Always ready to add skills to my set.

I prefer to hang out and learn from not-idiots in forums like this one rather than waste my time getting dumber on Facebook and the likes.

 

I'm really curious about you project but you need a lot of skills for that work. There are users of this forum with a BIG BIG BIG knowledge about Modding laptops, may be someone can help you

 

You're looking for @Khenglish

 

I don't have a particular project in mind or on the table at the moment. But in the area I live, free stuff and free broken stuff is plentiful. All the concentration of wealth here means people give away or get rid of nice stuff for free or dirt cheap frequently. That and it is a big tech hub also. My learning here would likely go toward more than just laptop applications. I have a long-term interest in hardware and low-level stuff. I wish I could say I was an inventor but at this point I just like to repair stuff mostly since I don't have a wide enough breadth of knowledge yet to accomplish much in the areas I am interested in.

 

Yes and no, it's limited but technically you can, you'll have to do more than simply replace the chip in case you try to upgrade to another series. All kinds of chips and stuff like inductors etc. are designed to provide the GPU the right amount of voltage etc. If you try to upgrade just the GPU from lets say kepler 700 to Maxwell 900, chances are you'll kill it.

If you have a BGA 980M you could simply replace the GPU with a desktop 980, it would work "plug and play", since both chips are very similair.

There you have it.

 

Well technically all GPUs are "BGA" whether they're soldered to the motherboard directly or soldered to a MXM GPU board.

Khenglish was able to replace the core on a 980M MXM with one from a desktop 980 because they're identical GM104 dies, the 980M just has shaders disabled and lower clocks

There's reasons why professional BGA solder stations are big expensive industrial equipment. Aligning the chip and controlling the temperature to get perfect connections on all the contacts, without cooking or desoldering other nearby components, is harder than it sounds. The board also has to be heated from underneath.

 

I didn't necessarily mean jumping architectures or series, but a step or few up as yourself and @bennyg have mentioned. For example my HP laptop from late 2012 shipped with a GT630M but HP also offered a GT650M version (either after the fact or paired with an i5 rather than the i7 that I ordered). So that would be a practical example besides the ones already mentioned. I am not sure if the overall package size varies directly with die size though. The GT630M was offered in 40nm and 28nm fabrications for example and my 40nm version is considered the GF108M variant (114mm^2 physical package size) using PCIe2.0x16 and the GT650M is the 28nm GK107 fabrication (not sure if the physical package size changes with the die shrink or not. Also noticed this is listed as PCIex3.0x16).

I'm just pulling rough details from this wiki right now, I haven't looked into this too deeply really:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#Mobile_GPUs

 

Its easy to do if you have a BGA rework station, but pretty much nobody outside of professional electronics refurbishers have access to those.

 

BGA station are fairly not expensive. Generally around 300-1000 usd.
3d print your BGA balling kit with high accuracy resin printer.

 

Yes it's all in the amount of money you want to spend. I have seen rework stations and reballing stations from a few hundred dollars up to say $20,000 or so. But when you're not trying to push production volumes and just working on a one-off project, many things in life can be done by a steady hand with some patience and a good eye.