One of the most scary moments for someone could be when the Laptop one have been using for last 3 or 4 years dies suddenly. When I say die means it would not switch on anyhow and most of the time this is the issue with your motherboard. Having a defect in DVD drive(that people even no longer use these days), keyboard, touch-pad is not because you know these are easily replaceable and you can even get away without those with external keyboard, mouse or DVD drive. But once the laptop motherboard dies all other components becomes useless without it or say orphan without their 'mother'board. And in that case the only options we are left with are either to get it repaired or buy a new laptop. Changing a laptop is not as much easy option as just changing to a new mobile and tablet. So most of the people go ahead with the option to get the laptop repaired.
In such scenarios when you take your laptop to get repaired the most common issue detected in diagnosis is issue with Graphics chip or unit. The laptop which have an dedicated Graphics display unit/card are most prone to this issue and most of the cases the heat is held responsible for this issue. So how does the heat makes the Graphics Unit stop working and how can it be avoided?
The heat produced by the electronic devices is result of Thermal radiation, that is just the by-product of electromagnetic movement within millions of circuits, and the internal resistance it encounters – or to put it another way, electricity powering your computer is the simple reason why your computer or laptop becomes hot. A computer’s core, its Central Processing Unit (CPU), naturally generates heat as it carries out algorithms, as does the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), which typically handles 3D imaging for display. Gaming can result in higher temperatures, especially as they often require GPUs to carry out complicated calculations (in many instances, the GPU can generate more heat than the CPU).
The most notable way your computer draws heat away from sensitive components is with a heat sink — normally located by the CPU or sometimes GPU — which pulls heat from its surroundings through conduction and using fins to dissipate higher temperatures across a wide area, i.e. the rest of your computer’s case and out through vents at the back or sides.
But the fan in the heat sink unit when draws the air into the laptop's body it also draws the dust particles and lint. If you use your laptop by placing it on a blanket or quilt which sheds a lot of lint the laptop's fan may keep drawing it may keep accumulating inside the laptop body.
 |
| Lint accumulated on the sides of heat sink unit of a laptop. |
These accumulated lint and dust partial may form a layer on the sides of heat sink unit, CPU and GPU and appears like cotton buds. This accumulated layer obstruct the flow of air. In addition to that if the laptop is being used when placed on a cushion like surface it may block the vents through which the cool air from outside is drawn inside and hot air from inside is exhausted. In this way the hot air may get trapped inside and in this situations the temperature of CPU and GPU may rise to the level where they may no longer operate and most of the time the computer stops abruptly and restarts automatically. But when the CPU and GPU does not perform such survival instinct this situation may lead to some issues. The dedicated GPU chip which have relatively less coolant and heat sink support becomes vulnerable at such high temperatures and this can make the tracks (or ‘bumps’) in a flip-chip design BGA chip physically deform and you end up with a dead chip. This issue usually end up shocking the user when the laptop which was switched off working fine fails to start up or display nothing on the screen.
When diagnosed at a repair shop the issue is said to be with the Graphics Chip and the technician advise to get the chip re-balled that is melting up its soldering and re-solder it as it is assumed that heat would have make some soldering balls melt/deform some soldering balls and re-balling it would fix it up.
But in reality, These solder balls melt at around 220°C and the laptop's internal units can't reach up to that temperature. If such a thing what would have happened, laptop would have gone into thermal protection mode way before then. So most of the time chances are there was nothing wrong with the solder balls in the first place. But in a attempt to fix it or "re-ball" it, when dead chip is heated up in order to melt the solder balls it is effectively causing the internal tracks to realign, or rather be nudged back into place so they just so happen to work again. If 120°C was were to be applied to the chip i.e. 100 less than is required to melt the solder balls, for around 5 minutes the similar results may be achieved. The chip may well now function but it is not repaired. It’s a in a state of fragile mess. Once the chip is put under heavy load for a period of time and its internal temperature increases it will fail again. For a moderate user, such as someone who browses the Internet and other non-graphics intensive workloads, it may well be the ‘repair’ lasts for a few months. However, if you are performing video editing (i.e. something which uses the GPU heavily for processing) or gaming etc this chip will fail again very quickly. The chip is dying.
The only way laptop can be fixed in right way is by replacing the GPU chip with either a new chip (if available) or a known good working one from a donor board. This is where reballing is valid – when replacing the chip.
Prevention is better than Cure
Instead of being in such a state where one has to change its laptop just because of graphics chip failure it is always better to avoid this. Here are some early measures that one can take to avoid being in such a state:
- Do not use the laptop by placing on a cushioned surface where its vents gets blocked and flow of air is blocked.
- If one has to use the laptop on a cushioned surface there are some laptop surfaces and external fans available where the laptops can be placed.
- The laptop starts giving some early signs with issues with its heat sink or ventilation units. Always check for these signs If there are some issues with the CPU fan it is better to get it fixed or replaced on early stages. However ther are some external fans available but those can not fill up the space of an internal heat sink fan.
- After 3 or 4 years it is better to clean up your laptop. If one knows to assemble or dissemble the laptop it can be done at home or it can be taken to some technician who can disassemble it and clean it up for the accumulated dust particles and lint accumulated around vents, heat sink unit and chips \.
0 comments:
Post a Comment