Liquid damaged GPU repair

[@KiNG3DPrinting]

Owner of the card here Story is someone gave it to me after they rebuilt their PC that was in a house fire. So it got hot gross water all over the system an into the card. I do refuse to claim ownership of the little fly though. I did a very crude cleanup on most of the card with a lot of corrosion removal via reflowing with new solder, that's why there looks like there are so many spots with brand new solder. I got to the area here 21:49 and I believe I knocked a resistor off looking at it wrong so I just gave up on continuing and after seeing the headaches you went thru I'm glad I did. 20:30 is where some of the worst damage was visually and took forever to make it the dull green it is in the video haha Thermal paste was me being lazy and not wiping off the old stuff from the heat sink since I abandoned working on it. Factory was the square machine applied and my buddy for laughs told me to paste it and try booting it lol I sent you a message on Discord regarding the PCI-E pad repair solution I've been using for 20 years.

[@theoldbigmoose]

Are you willing to share your pad repair solution?

[@KiNG3DPrinting]

@theoldbigmoose Normally we use a silver or carbon based acrylic. Tape off the area and hope you can make it to the trace. Apply a few layers and cover with UV glue to insulate the parts you don't want exposed. I have not tried soldering to the silver yet for a jumper wire as it's normally not needed. (We do this repair on a lot more than just GPUs so the traces are usually really long)

[@theoldbigmoose]

@@KiNG3DPrinting thank you sir! Always trying to learn new and better techniques.

[@blank4700]

Hi. How much was the shipping for you and from which country is this guy?

[@Thierry14HR]

How much did it cost? The repair

[@kentstansberry9748]

Find yourself a brush-plating kit (electroplate) to touch up the nickel-gold plating on the corroded finger's. If the corrosion isn't too deep, you may just have to re-plate the gold. Gold doesn't adhere well to copper, that's why the nickel is plated to the copper first, then gold to the nickel. The copper foil's used on printed circuits are bonded to the dielectric material using heat and pressure. The dielectric material used on the vast majority of pcb's is basically woven glass fiber's impregnated with various formulation's of epoxy resin.

[@neverendingstudent]

Agreed on electroplating for the gold top-layer. For situations where the contact pad is ripped off / otherwise gone, you can get copper trace sections on amazon or aliexpress for a buck or two - they are named weird: on amazon you can search for 'circuit board trace repair' and it will find some, but they are named things like 'flywire' or 'jumpwire', weird translation issues from Chinese I think. Anyway, that would give you a base pad replacement to build from, but it would be copper, not gold, so you might need to electroplate afterwards. Research needed since it needs to be a hard contact, so you probably need to use cobalt gold electroplate solution, with the nickel electroplate solution applied beforehand. Just searching for 'gold electroplating' on youtube shows the actual 'how to' - the actual application of electroplating is very simple, though there are toxic chemicals so breathing and skin PPE is required. I think the following sequence could be used to repair even badly damaged contact area (with steps removed if not needed): for gouged / missing PCB volume, 1. apply superglue / baking soda to build up the surface, 2. use a grinding pen to shave it down to even or juuuuuust below even with the board, 3. lay down donor/replacement coppper trace of the same width, soldering it to connect to whatever stub is left, then carefully glue down with minimal superglue (careful not to glue your contact area of course) - I would use knipex pliers wrench (because the jaws are smooth/flat and stay parallel), cover the jaws with PTFE tape and use them to compress the copper pad down flat during the glue application process, 4. continuity test to make sure you still have exposed copper, 5. apply nickel electroplate and then clean with de-ionized water, 6. apply cobalt-gold electroplate and clean with de-ionized water. Done. Oh, and the US based seller kits for this I'm finding are stupid expensive, what you actually use as the tool for electroplating is a 4.5VDC source and a felt pen tip to soak up the solutions (you'll want to keep separate tips for the different solutions of course) - that can be had on aliexpres for cheap or DIY'd. The chemicals... I wouldn't trust aliexpress for. I think that is the one area you really need to not cheap out on, sorry. Buy from a reputable chemical company.

[@techluvin7691]

I watch every damn video front to back. Best graphics card repair videos on the internet.

[@piotrlewandowski8676]

Use ultrasonic cleaner for this kind of cards. Probably there is a lot of corrosion which is not super visible yet, that would help for the ports too :)

[@Glitchy24]

Dang! And I own this exact 2080 Super, and it's a super Great card even today. So it hurts to see 1 in this type of shape like this. You're the Man for being able to revive the card and get it running like it should be

[@SirVellen]

What I learn, you need to clean the ports

[@laserjock509]

Very cool. I've got a water damaged EVGA 2080 sitting on my shelf as well that I have been considering trying to repair just for grins.

[@10100rsn]

Superglue/Cyanoacrylate turns to acrylic once it cures. CA is an acrylic ester. The way you repaired that pad is exactly how it should be done, at least that's how I've seen it done before. Just need to lightly scratch the PCB surface under the pad area before applying the glue to promote a stronger bond to the PCB. Not sure if it would be worth fixing the gold plating.

[@Foxx_69]

Excellent presentation and explanation of troubleshooting.. thank you for sharing

[@teddp]

Seriously it is as if some things just don't want to get fixed. Probably nobody else on planet Earth would even put the effort.... You did get a fair warning from the owner of the card though so kudos to him for giving you a heads up.

[@napoficial7123]

I dont have a clue what s going on but your videos are hypnotic, thank you for that! Merry Xmas and happy new year!

[@sfmn2396]

These long videos are amazing

[@Anthony-fd8mh]

Graphite pad? You Sir are a Master GPU fixer!👍

[@MikkoRantalainen]

Great fix! I think you should look for superglue that doesn't dry without activator (or cures really slow without activator) so you could use absolutely minimal amount of it, press the pad down fully flat and then apply activator to cure it. Another possible option would be solder mask but I think you cannot UV cure the part that would stay under the pad so that wouldn't be strong enough.

[@leadbadger9543]

I love this channel, what you do is magic. Keep making great repairs, fight entropy.

[@facundotunkiewiez5823]

Eres un genio, me encantan tus videos y como enseñas, saludos desde argentina.

[@4sp3ro]

che facu is not hard use google translate, ya que ves todos sus videos sabras que habla ingles xdd

[@facundotunkiewiez5823]

@@4sp3ro te traduce solo google xd

[@DevilbyMoonlight]

there used to be a special pen back in the day that was used to electroplate gold onto pcb's but there was something conductive to plate onto, I think jewellers use something similar,back in the day I have seen in desperation when a plated pin on an edge connector has peeled away and snapped off or burnt this could be a common occurrence on arcade machines back then, some people used copper tape the kind gardeners use to keep slugs off their plants trimmed and stuck down with PCB adhesive before the connection was soldered to it, it worked and held up the life of the machine but I'll never own up to it!

[@traitoR142]

I remember doing a pencil mod on my Radeon 8500 LE back in the day. lol

[@McStump72]

VERY Much enjoying the work you do. Thanks for the education.

[@MikeMik86]

I've used distilled vinegar to save corroded electronics several times, mostly Allen Bradley screens but it does well cleaning up the corrosion

[@mandistruble5175]

Videos get a little confusing. Because of trial and error inherently. I wish there was a recap at the end of your videos. That explains exactly what worked and how it was fixed. Great video, keep up the good work!

[@lecarrotman]

That's a great idea I'd like that too

[@TheGameBench]

Honestly... that card mostly looks better than most of the GPUs I open. As for the gold plating, you could use some sort of electrolysis. That would be my assumption. I'd love to know if there is an easy way to that at home as well, since I have some older retro games that could use it after clearing up some nasty corrosion.

[@GrulbGL]

now that is a FIX! i get so proud of your work! keep it up!!!

[@handyman1957]

Glad your practicing safe circuits : )

[@RANDOMNATION907]

CircuitWorks Gold Guard Pen . . . curiosity got the better of me and I had to look it up. If you get an RX 5700 in for a bios re-flash from mining back to graphics, please make a video. You give thorough explanations. Thank you.

[@MikePfunk]

A thin layer of copper coating is added chemically into the holes and onto the surface of the board through a process called electroless copper deposition. It would be cool if you did that, as I have been looking into this entire subject as well.

[@marcellipovsky8222]

Thanks for the show.

[@vilippo]

That last dirty dirty connector, smh. Great fix again :D

[@nezu_cc]

"If you click the notification button you will be reminded for sure" Meanwhile me with almost 19k unread notifications on KZbin (the record was like 56k IIRC before I miss-clicked the bell while asleep).

[@SianaGearz]

To attach a new pad to edge connector or PCB please use epoxy, just a slow cure heat resistant epoxy and cure it on your PCB bottom heater. Curing at 80°C is much faster than at room temperature and makes for a better stronger bond as well. You can get copper pad kits that are just plotter cut from a sheet. Unfortunately that's plain copper, not hard gold plated like you need for PCIe pins.

[@SianaGearz]

Tifoo in Germany sells gold electrolyte "Midas". It's alleged to be a cobalt hardened gold coating. It deposits up to 5.5µm/h at recommended current density which means an over 5 hour plating time is necessary with this material for 30µ edge connector gold contact thickness. Then again perhaps GPUs use less plating thickness. The gold fingers aren't the same, they have a gold alloy with iron for hardening. Electroless immersion gold like used for gold pads on the rest of the PCB (ENIG finish) is not suitable for edge connectors, it can wear off on first touch. First they electroplate a bit of nickel on there as an adhesion promoter and diffusion barrier, then hard gold is electroplated. The chemicals used industrially are not available for purchase due to high toxicity. Gold plating solution is usually cyanide based and will EASILY kill you under any number of circumstances. The process is either hands-off and with no humans in range, or done in a fume hood, it's done under controlled elevated temperature and takes maybe half an hour. They for sure must have a way to clamp the PCB such that it's contacting electrically above the edge connector. I have not seen the process as applied to PCBs. It's done to a PCB during manufacturing before solder mask is printed on. I'm actually interested in figuring out a refinishing process for game console cartridges, where gold plating is usually heavily damaged or worn off.

[@darkbreed]

The way to glue this down is to cut a thin grove and use a thermal curing resin. It is an extremely ineffective procedure and requires a lot of practice. 25 years ago we glued copper conductor tracks with special chemical surface preparation into the cavity filled with thermally curing resin (with appropriate holders to obtain a reasonably flat surface), the copper conductor track was thicker than the desired conductor track thickness and after the resin had hardened it was sanded down to the desired thickness, then gold was galvanically applied to the contact. superglue is the solution most ppl use today.

[@ltsmash7527]

16:01 In the year (or minute) of 1601 the holy monk brother from the order of St. Corrosius has blessed EVGAs 2080 with a holy green halo-crumble :D

[@scottstamm7022]

Electroplating kits - you can get gold/nickle, etc. It's a chemical reaction to get the metal to bond using a liquid/metal and electrical process.

[@TheYarolinux]

I have had good luck circuitworks cw2500 or 2400(conductive) when replacing pads, or traces, especially one like that PCIe connector contact. It is good for strength and durable under a decent amount of heat.

[@bryanwmills]

LOOOOOOOL "home" "home" is all the way. great video man!

[@Phoenix_Enterprises]

A jewelers pen plater would be perfect for touching up those pins. There is a paint that allows you to electroform copper onto any surface. Then nickel then gold. :)

[@jhlolex1254]

The thumbnails are getting better

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Nicely done

[@Fatpumpumlovah2]

ONE HAS TO WONDER how these things happen. looks like it was in a swamp.

[@HardwareSense]

I only see this kind of corrosion in GPUs that have been heavily mined on

[@santiagocastro6701]

I knew that there was some silver painting to solve they pads, maybe nota they Best solution, but si a solution at the very least, a 100% fix, amazing!

[@lonettehendrick9836]

Your sense of humor cracks me up. To be honest I have no clue why I watch computer or laptop repairs, not like I can do them. Hahaha!

[@harlequintheserpent7016]

Base experts: ALL YOU BASE ARE BELONG TO US

[@dzoks-e7n]

amazing repair,so good.

[@aleksandrbmelnikov]

Last computer related part looking like that, was an Apple ][c. Some old guy had it in his shed with half roof gone for over three years. Your customer is lucky you got it to function at all.

[@handyguy4814]

In my perspective, it would be better for the pin to be nickel plated than gold plated as its easier and cheaper, also nickel adhere well to the copper far better than gold to copper. Also be careful, cause Pcb itself does have some porosity, so using electroplating or chemical plating you should protect the area that you never intended to plated. For example the edge of pcb might have some little-tiny-itty-bitty holes that connected into two trace that should not be connected into one another, and after the plating somehow its connected. So the edge of pcb should be considered too, to be covered with something like CA Glue

[@VikingDudee]

I learned something from your video, If I ever have a GPU thats problematic, get ahold of you! lol

[@AI_MicroSolder]

Denali a small channel and solder a wire to make the connection. Then cover it with glue and mask. Just a thought. The new gorilla glue is way stronger and slightly flexible . Just a tho7ght to help keep a flush mount..

[@derekgee8504]

Great video thanks for sharing

[@karmaftw3730]

"Who Knows? I'm not a doctor though." LMFAO

[@garrettmancuso4417]

that reminds me of what happened to my first water cooled pc 20 years ago. I overtightened the fittings on the cpu block and dripped conductive coolant into my poor 6800gt.

[@seanshay6573]

you seem to be very adept at gpu repair, i recently got a dell xps 15 9550 laptop. it has a nvidia gtx 960m in it. so ifixit says this can be desoldered and u can go up to and including a 1650. i have hot air gun and a 1650 chip not as nice a gun as yours though. in your exp do u think desolder and reball re solder new gpu chip will work ?

[@Rmm1722]

Good work

[@AI_MicroSolder]

This is Scott. I have a question. How do you clean a whole GPU board? Do you use a sonic cleaner that's the size of the GPU?

[@boabs]

you are good man

[@Droveful]

You are the best..

[@leso204]

@northwestrepair : just a tech question' what flux do you think is the best value on the market ? Tia ......

[@deputydawg3215]

an irish jig with the fake beard and sunglasses would have been a nice touch 🤠😉Another great video ,,,, I wonder how many times you feel like pulling your hair out,,,,you are the GPU repair Guru !

[@northwestrepair]

sometimes. but i want to reach the end of the tunnel so bad i cant sleep until its fixed.

[@ronlevin2339]

About glue in 36.20, you can buy copper sheet with a glue under it and cut it for your pad shape.

[@jonsmith5087]

Epoxy works to stick pads down and JB weld make a high temp resistant one - up to 280c 500F? ive used normal araldite but it can still softens under soldering heat - no where near as bad as superglue turning to jello tho. The only problem is u have to let the epoxy harden over night to be 100% sure it wont lift

[@jeffreybarker5586]

I have a gtx 1660 ti with water damage it turns on and works fine but for some reason if you use gpu-z the power draw is really high around 340 watts and the perfcap reason says pwr and it's stuck at 300mhz but if you use the stress test of gpu-z until it heats up around 42 degrees Celsius put the computer to sleep and then wake it back up it works the way it's supposed to but if you turn the computer off it goes back to the way it was until you do the sleep thing I mentioned what could I do to fix it I took it apart and didn't see anything scorched or corroded would an alcohol bath fix it

[@johanrynjah8241]

Unlike distilled water, normal water contains minerals which conducts electricity and corrodes metals even when it's dried because the dried mineral residue left behind absorbs moisture from the air and thus conducts electricity and changes the values of most electronic components on the card. Use a spray-bottle to apply a generous amount of alcohol on the card and a soft painting-brush (hard brushes might pry the SMD's off the board) to rub the alcohol on the board, remember to NOT keep the board lying flat but always KEEP IT STANDING while doing this cleanup so that the mineral residue will DRIP OFF THE CARD while you're doing the cleaning. I hope this helps. . . Greeting from India. .

[@PAB-Elektronik]

Nice Fix

[@jdmcs]

True repair story: I was re-pasting an RX 380X the other day, as the seller had told me it needed it, and because it was making a beeping noise, all the while thinking to myself, “be careful or you’ll be sending it to Northwest Repair.” Also, turns out the card wasn’t making that beeping noise, it was my UPS protesting the power draw on the battery backed outlets while running benchmarks on the GPU as the computer with that card wasn’t the only computer on the battery backed outlets… And yes, I successfully re-pasted the 380X (subject to debate in the comments as we all know how contentious thermal pasting can be).

[@myne00]

Curious why don't you ultrasonic bath the filthy/corroded ones? No bath?

[@enteranon3342]

You can also glue the PCI Express pin with solder mask and apply it all around then straighten it with a polish grinder pen bit

[@SianaGearz]

How's that supposed to work? It will cure around the edge but will it ever cure under the pad?

[@enteranon3342]

When you mix heat with the strong UV light it becomes solid

[@SianaGearz]

@@enteranon3342 but the pad metal is opaque to UV or any light. It's never going to reach under the pad.

[@michaelmurphems-zc4xd]

🎉🎉

[@PaulHigginbothamSr]

I think the way you replaced the gold connector is about the only way to do it. What I don't like is the height of that plate. Looking into the other component of the pci connector, if it is a wire it will work no matter how proud it sits.

[@tandzan]

IMHO corroded parts must be reflowed \ replaced without further investigation because disintegrated pads and traces under components.

[@paranoiia8]

34:00 would making long grove there and putting wire inside work?

[@dg_cato2644]

Could try a little electro plating little water and electricity with a bit of what metal you want on the pcb

[@BeenThrDunThat]

Condom? It may be *entirely* possible that you and I approach electronics repairs in slightly different ways... 😊

[@bobbysanderz6769]

🤣🤣🤣 as always awsome presentation

[@MSteamCSM]

epoxy is your best friend in electronics

[@SirVellen]

Why you don't clean water damage with ultrasonic cleaner?

[@Zensaitv]

That card us way to far gone to be fixed with all that water damage must've been coca cola 😂 but guess he really wanted the repair then a new card for the fix. But a ultrasonic cleaner would be a fun thing to have just incase of nasty people

[@mohammadghuzlan]

Hi I have gigabyte arous master x570 With 5950x cpu 1080ti gpu When I let pcie in x16 I got a black screen after restart until I let the pc for a while or put pcie 8x8 it start normally Please help me 😢😢😢

[@mohammadghuzlan]

Test another card and ram kit same problem

[@gheorghilassilviu]

2:38 those of us who knows about gpu's and computer parts in general don't really have much in common with the bases:)))

[@glenntinamiller6199]

I WOULD SUGGEST getting some gold foil the reral gold kind andlaying that down mabie a lil flux to get to stick and when you have the 18k gold foil on the pins use your hot air to basicly flow the gold on to the pins / pads

[@2xKTfc]

Seems like either you need so much heat to reflow the gold that the PCB gets fried or the foil doesn't stick well, crumbles away when the card is inserted, and the flakes short the pins together. Both are not really desirable.

[@TymexComputing]

I am not baseball player nor baseball fan (in europe there was a cricket or a palant game like baseball) but i am sure thanks to Frank Drabin - that the fourth base is the last and even when you swing the ball all the way away from the court you dont even have to run to the last base, just walk your way anywhere 😀 Have i been comment-baited?

[@DMLelektronik]

on 35:29 you can use solder-mask as the glue

[@jrose-xp6tf]

Wouldn't board-mask help to secure it?

[@AndrewJackson1841]

So many of the ATX cases sold to hobbyists are horribly designed. For instance, lots of them have a perforated top, for the mounting of unnecessary extra fans or other cooling equipment. I can just picture someone knocking over a can of soda, the sugary liquid instantly draining through the top of their riced-out PC directly onto the superfluous 140mm fans mounted there, spraying it over the whole interior of their computer and ruining every single component all at once. Even expensive models seem to favor form over function. I doubt most of them comply with FCC standards, as I've seen a few examples with poor grounding.

[@laptopDoctorKZN]

Did u check the hdmi port filters

[@DaSlotho]

36:16 yes superglue is conductive ask me how i know - there r non conductive glues out there (no ideas of their names though)

[@TheWangbolizhong]

[@emp1985]

am I about to watch a 45 minute NWR repair video? Yes, yes I am. Cannot not do that.

[@MrMousekillaz]

home plate, is all the way electroplating is easy. stop by a jeweler and ask them.

[@davidbates2161]

they do sell copper glue strips for just such a repair

[@FranklinClinton1]

Good thumbnail 😂

[@Warren-ln2uj]

Epoxy and tape it 8n place with kapton tape and weigh it down until cured use permatex 500°C epoxy

[@northwestrepair]

ill look into that, thanks !

[@Bahador_R]

Yes, you come on 3rd base

[@ElektroTechNL]

You can use copper pads for it.

[@aenonace]

My Gpu was Spinning at top speed and don't know what happened, it was working okay yesterday but when I tried opening it I saw a little water inside the Back plate. The water was in contact with the GPU board so It must be the main reason why it was doing that. Fast Spinning fan and No display. my GPU is RX580 4Gb it's been used for about 3 years I think. I feel sad about it😭.

[@barbarianzg8826]

ur right,you're not a doc you're sargent surgent..lol and for dp port,it may seem he's suffering from what mine is suffering..happens when you forget that dp has a safety pins and you try to unplug it anyway..when i tilt the cable screen goes black and reappears,magically..somehow..

[@yuumi925]

don't u have a sonic cleaner u can just dump the pcp in to?

[@peterdeyanov5056]

What if instead super glue you use a drop of a mask liquid and then UV?

[@northwestrepair]

UV's wont reach under the pad

[@RamaOshiLo]

lets sleep sir , you are so tired 33:54

[@HardwareSense]

What is causing this level of corrosion?

[@northwestrepair]

environment

[@HardwareSense]

@@northwestrepair More precisely? High humidity, solty air... I recently got an older GPU that has the worst corrosion I have ever seen on the heatsink and I know it was used for heavy mining, I have see similar a few years back with another mining GPU as well, so just wonder what would be the relation

[@tiemanowo]

1:53 It got me thinking. Liquid from where? Failed water-cooling rig? Flood? I'm really curious.

[@PoopCop]

it's piss

[@thebombcat]

Home is the final base...you gotta score man, hitting a triple is for losers :P

[@KelleyStrzelczyk]

3rd base is nearly home. Take it home.

[@slkslk9324]

🥳🥳🥳🥳