BenQ S57 service manual?

Hi all, I own the S57 joybook and someone asked me for the service manual as that person's GPU is fried.

Anyone knows where I can get a copy? Seems likes its impossible. Tried to google but to no avail.

Please help?

 

Hello. It was probably me who asked you for the service manual. Well, if you own the S57, I have just completely disassembled mine and replaced the HD4650 mobility, and it works now perfectly.

Do you have an issue with yours? I am more than happy to help you pull yours apart and reassemble it. I know how you can obtain parts as well. There are a few tricks in disassembling it, but you do not need the service manual.

PM me if you need help with yours.

cheers

 

Hey thang! Yea pretty sure it was you. Well you need to have a minimum of 5 post before you can pm or be pm-ed at.
I would really like to repaste my gpu. So please give me guidance with disassembling the laptop.

*Edit*
Maybe you can make a photo or video guide to help others as well. So they can disassemble their laptops as well.

 

Well first the story. I had no luck at all in finding the VGA card anywhere on the net because it is a specialist card which is made specifically for BenQ by Pegatron with video bios specific to BenQ etc. Faced with throwing the entire unit out, I emailed Adrian Chang, the SE Asian President of BenQ (guessed his email account) who responded next day, after which David Wong, the CFO, found a second hand card somewhere in Thailand which was then invoiced (very reasonable price) to me and mailed to me. I then spoke to Tim Bui in BenQ Sydney who very kindly told me not to use thermal grease on the GPU but to use instead very good thermal pad (double sided) and he mailed me a piece, gratis. These people in BenQ are very, very good with customer service, if you can penetrate beyond the spare parts people, who don't care at all (here in Australia at least).

So, to disassembly.

First, take all of the back off, the covers (battery, HD, fan area etc). Cover your screen with something to avoid scratches. Take out all screws, they are mainly one length except for the HD cover screws. Put them securely and in some sort of order on a separate surface where they won't be disturbed. Take the HD out (remove 4 stubby screws, remove two side screws, slide out). You cannot remove the back plate yet.

Then turn over. Take off the plate with stripes (hinge cover) by first removing the three screws which retain it from the rear (you have already taken these out, the screw holes have a "K" printed into the plastic near them on the rear plate). You push the hinge cover down and up on both ends and it will pop up. Take it off. This exposes the two big screws which hold the two monitor hinges on. Take them off and lay the monitor down, but don't unplug the two VGA cables yet or the two wireless aerials.

Now, push the top of the keyboard down and you will see some retainer clips which hold it into the top plate. The keyboard will come out with a little careful effort along the top of the keys - push the retainers down with a flat nose screwdriver, carefully, it will all come out. There is a ribbon cable plugged in to the motherboard under it, and one for the mouse. Just pull the front clip out of the sockets and the ribbon cable will come out. Take the keyboard off and place somewhere.

There are two screws under the keyboard which must be removed. Place somewhere safe.

Now, take off the front plate (white front cover). The motherboard is exposed. Turn over and the wireless card where the two monitor aerials is visible (near the RAM I think), unplug the two aerials from the terminals and thread out. Turn back over, unplug the two VGA cables carefully from motherboard. Take monitor entirely off and place somewhere safe.

Now, take DVD unit out by sliding, it is easy, no screws. Now, unscrew the motherboard and place screws on piece of paper with rough drawing of the motherboard, so you know where screws go. Unplug the two battery terminals near battery compartment. The entire motherboard should come out now, be very gentle. I can't recall if there are some screws holding the fan unit in, I think they are removed from the back. There are two longer screws which you must remove also from the rear side where all the IO stuff is.

You have now disassembled the unit entirely. Have fun replacing the HD or whatever. Can I ask why you wanted to pull yours apart?

Oh yes, if you can, wear antistatic bracelet, I didn't but I do own one. If you don't own one, don't shuffle your feet and don't stand on carpet while you are doing the above.

When I replaced my VGA card there are thermal pads over the memory chips and a chip on the rear plus grease on the GPU. The GPU gets hottest so I recommend using thermal pad over it. THis means you need to build up the thermal pads over the memory chips as the pad over te GPU will be thicker than grease. I used two layers of thermal pads over the memory chips.

Hope all this helps you. Just post here if you need further advice. Go slow and use your head.

 

Well cause my GPU was hitting 100'C and that is was high. So I wanted to repaste it with some IC Diamond paste.

Thanks for the detailed account for the dis-assembly but would be better with pictures.
Will ask if I have encountered anything. Thanks so much Thang!

 

I have had so much trouble finding the HD 4650 mobility card by Pegatron for my S57 that the last thing I want is for someone else to have the same trouble. Therefore, I have no problem in helping you disassemble your machine so you can look after your existing VGA card! All you need do is ask, by posting here, and I will help.

If I had known that a guide would be useful here, I would have taken photos. However, I went off common sense and a bit of verbal help from Tim Bui in BenQ Sydney. If you go slowly, and have a big workspace (do not work on a cramped or small table ok?), be methodical and do not use force under any circumstances, you will be ok. Have a set of jewellers screwdrivers with magnetic tips, mainly phillips head but you will need a larger flat head driver too to take out the hinge cover and the keyboard. You cannot remove the motherboard until you remove the keyboard from the top, because of the two screws under the keyboard. When you take out ribbon cables (keyboard and mouse) you need to pull the front out from the socket which loosens the socket so you can remove and replace the ribbon cable.

Anyhow, I am here to help. Take it easy, start from the back then the top, like my instructions above. Post your progress here. It took me several hours to disassemble it, as it should if you do it carefully.

Good luck, although you should not need luck.

Also, I would recommend using good thermal pad rather than grease on your GPU. You will need to build up your pads over the memory chips, but it will keep the temperatures down. Definitely you need to replace the grease BenQ put on though, it is crap and dried out and no good.

When you take the motherboard out, you have to remove the heat bars and fan and HD4650, which is all one unit. So, you will see the copper heat bars terminate on the vga card, which is held by four phillips head screws. The top screws (closest to the monitor) hold the entire unit on the motherboard, so remove them first then remove the entire unit (card, copper bars and fan) and unplug fan of course from motherboard. The bottom two screws hold the VGA card onto the heat transfer unit, remove and remove card. Now you can clean with a credit card the baseplate and the GPU. Everything else is thermal pads which you should not remove.

 

Hey Thang!

I have managed to everything apart and to put them back together thanks to your directions. Tho it was a little tricky at parts. Whole process took about 2 hours.

Yes, you are right, the TIM from benq is crap. Totally dried out already and yes I might get better thermal pads. The stock ones did not seem very fitting.
Thank you so much for the help. I did manage to snap some pictures. So I will post it up with your directions above, with your permission of course.

Thanks again!

 

Of course you can use the directions, perhaps you can bullet point them for clarity. The S57 is a nice laptop with a good CPU and nice design inside, its a shame the thermal paste they use dries out so badly and causes the GPU to fry.

I think the pads over the memory chips are ok, providing you build them up with another layer if you decide to put a pad over the GPU (for contact). Did you re-grease your CPU? I would be interested in your temps now (I use Sandra for temps) as opposed to the very high temps you were getting before.

What I need is something to control the fan though. I'm not sure its RPM is correct and unfortunately Catalyst with powerplay does not have a fan control overclock function, so if you know of a program whereby I can take control of the fan, such as ATItraytools etc, let me know.

I'm glad you were able to open and rebuild your machine. Its not difficult when you know how. The only part which had me stumped was the two aerials because they thread back *under* the motherboard, where the wireless card is.

So, let me know what your temps are now, and if you know of a way to take control of the fan.

cheers

 

Haha! and I thought I was the only one looking for something to control the fan.
Well I have tried Catalyst, fanspeed and some others which can be found on google. Nothing seemed to work. Don't think there is a fan speed option in the bios as well.

Yes, I did repaste my CPU. The paste was dried out as well when I opened it. I tried 2 paste on it. One is the IC Diamond and the other is the MX-2. I use HWMonitor and System information for Windows for the temps. For the testing, I used Prime 95.

MX-2 temps
room temp - 32'c
min - 37'c
load - 76'c

ICD 7
min - 34'c
load - 73'c

 

I'm going to buy a tube of IC Diamond 7 on Ebay, it goes for around $14A. My temps are much higher than yours, which means the pads are no good for the GPU (this card doesn't have diodes on the memory chips, just a diode on the memory IO which is a rough estimate of memory temps). I like the idea of micronised synthetic diamond.

So, I will be stripping mine down in a week or so, again...

By the way, Prime 95 is predominantly a CPU stress program. Why not try a video card stress program, there are plenty free out there? Or use a late 3D game?

 

IC Diamond helps with the CPU temps. Yes, Prime 95 is just for CPU and a lil bit of ram. I don't dare to stress my GPU cause that day after repasting ICD on the GPU, I tried playing COD4 MWF on the laptop. Highest it still clocked 104'C.

So I guess this laptop's cooling design is just naturally bad.
Laptop is pretty much a fire hazard when playing heavy games. Even with a laptop cooler with removable fans directed directly into the air vents.

 

Well even though I now have a syringe of IC Diamond 7 and isopropyl wipes, I'm not going to strip the machine down again due to your latest information. That is, my temps seem to be OK using Video Card Stability Test (you can get it here: Video Card Stability Test - Stress Testing & Benchmark the speed of your 3D graphics video card, temps running GPU/MemIO from about 38/42 idle on powerplay saver, to plugged in powerplay high performance of around 86/90, over a test of around 3 minutes.

You can run the test in a window and observe your temps in your sensor GUI of choice (I use Everest Engineer - computer/sensors). What I am seeing is probably the same, if not lower, temps with my thermal pads than you are getting with your ICD7.

Would you please do me a favour? Download and run VCS Test for 3 minutes and tell me what your GPU/MemIO temps are?

Thanks

 

38/42? wow thats very low. Constant aircond room?
What is MemIO? sorry still very noob.

Anyways I ran the test already for 5 minutes and my temps were around 86/91.
Almost the same as yours. even for the idle test.

For repasting the CPU, you don't have to take apart the whole laptop as you can reach the CPU from just opening the cover for the fan.
Just remove the cover, unscrew the heatpipes connected to the CPU, disconnect the little wire and lift it up. The fan should be able to come right out.

 

No its winter here, I'm in Perth and its fairly cold (temperate here, unlike Malaysia where its always tropical).

I won't be pulling mine apart again because I think the thermal pad I used has cured now and is working well. In future, BenQ if they are serious about the laptop market need to use a decent thermal paste on their GPU's and redesign the fan/heatsink config. However, I think my new (second hand) HD4650 mobility now will see the laptop out.

I know you can access the CPU under the base, but you cannot access the VGA card. I never wanted to repaste my CPU because its temps are very low, even under stress only hitting around 40C or so max.

The VGA card is the thing. It can get very hot playing late 3D games like Starcraft II (what a game that is!!) and so on, even with really good thermal paste or pads.

The memIO is the input/output circuitry on the GPU itself, as opposed to the GPU core, so the temp diode there really measures the temp of the memory chips in an indirect way. By rights, there should be sensors in the memory chips and also the voltage regulators. However, with my card, it was the GPU which screwed up and died not the memory. Bear in mind too that our version of the HD4650 has only 512mb memory, which must work a lot harder than the usual 1gb memory on this card. That's another design defect.

The guide you posted is good. I am glad I was able to contribute.

 

Haha well without you, there wouldn't be a guide! Hope it helps the other users out there.

Ah k, Well yea its pretty hot down here. So I can only get such low temps when in an aircond room.

Totally agree that there are design flaws in the S57. It gets pretty hot when I play COD and stuff. Pretty worried sometimes that the GPU might burn. Still scouting for better quality thermal pads.

Thanks for the info for the memIO. Always learning new stuff.

 

Hi guys,
I'm brazilian and have a notebook Philco PHN15008, made with the same Pegatron's barebone of BenQ S57. Members of our local forum find how to improve fan's performance using a modified dsdt table that can be loaded in Windows system initialization. If you want I can post here the new table file and installing procedure. Best regards and excuse my english.

 

Hey Pfpa.

Sounds good. Please share.

 

Yo! You still there Brazilian boi? My second card has now fritzed so I bit the bullet and bought a nice new Acer M5 581TG Mass ultrathin for the missus. However, I'm intrigued by your comment that the PHN15008 has the same Pegatron backbone, and I believe it runs the same HD4650 - which means there might be spares for your unit which I can use to rebuild my unit (I detest throwing laptops away). Can you assist on this please?

cordial regards from Australia

 

thang and lyj_8191,

Here are the JoyBook S57 System Disassembly Description and the Joybook S57 Product Engineering Specification.

DSDT table modifications can be found here: forum.clubedohardware.com.br/philco-phn15006-phn15008/985132 (in Brazilian Portuguese because I'm not able to translate... sorry).

BenQ JoyBook S57 and Philco PHN15008 are the same notebook (few changes like processor, hd, cover color etc): manual here.

thang, if you want I can try to find a new or used HD4650.

 

Hey Pfpa, thank you for the disassembly guide. Bet it would help other users out.

 

Hey Pfpa, thanks for the detailed response. Yes, see if you can find a new or used HD4650 please, and I will try to resurrect the BenQ. On another note, I complained to BenQ about the frequent issues with my machine and even though it is now over 4 years old, well out of warranty, they couriered me a brand new GW2760HS 27inch monitor, just released. It's beautiful and thank you to BenQ who really know how to keep customers happy (RRP in Australia is around $399!)

So if I can resurrect my old S57 it will be a bonus as apart from the ATI card, it was flawless.

Before you commit to a new or used HD card, can you give me an idea of what sort of price you will be looking at? It's the Pegatron PCB too, isn't it?

Thanks again...

 

You still there my South American friend? What did you have in mind? Perhaps you want my unit for parts?

Thang