Radeon 9700 repair! Hard work :-D

[celemine1Gig]

Hi,

recently I bought a defective Sapphire Radeon 9700 off eBay, that had one of its mosfets cracked off the PCB when trying to remove the heatspreader that is placed above the 3 mosfets on the back of the card.

Well, I knew the partnr. of the mosfet from the seller and had already ordered a replacement-chip from Fairchild semiconductor. Today I had the time and tried to repair it.

The following pics show my progress and how hard it was to get this part back on and wired. I say wired, because it wasn't as easy as to just solder the replacement mosfet in, NO! 2 of the 8 soldering-pads had been destroyed, so I had to think about a new way for the connections and with the help of "w1zzard" (the guy who writes the softmod drivers for radeon cards) and some time spent reading the datasheets, I think I figured it our correctly. At least I hope so.

So here are the pics:

That's how the card looked like before starting the repair work. You can clearly see the missing mosfet and the two empty solder-pads.


Here you can see the fresh soldered on mosfet with 6 of the 8 pins connected.


And the last pic now shows the last two connections finished.



Wish me luck guys! Tomorrow I'll be adding some new heatsinks to the mosfets and then I'll test the card.

Greetz

Ingmar

[cold_ice]

Well done:thumbsup:
Good luck for tomorrow

[celemine1Gig]

Yeeeeeehaaaaaw!

Card seems to be working fine! Made a short test today (only boot into windows). Test was made as short as possible, because the heatsinks on the mosfets (that are normally under the heatspreader) were only standing on the mosfets, held in pace only by some thermal paste.

But, I got a picture without any artifacts, so it looks good and like it's time to get to Vmod this thing and spank it really hard.

The Alpha PAL6035 for the GPU is already here and lapped. I'll post some pictures later. This card will wish that it never went defective and got into my hands

Edit:

[Hell-Fire]

Man...what a sexy heatsink.

I want to have its babies.

[.::$k4T4N::.]

nice work...

[celemine1Gig]

Originally posted by Hell-Fire
Man...what a sexy heatsink.

I want to have its babies.

I'll tell him! Perhaps (if you're lucky), he's interested.

[celemine1Gig]

I promised you that I'd post pics, and here they are:









Card works like a charm and is now fully vmodded (VGPU-, VDD-, VREF- and also VDDQ-Mod). Will test it's potential soon.

[duKe]

very nice!

[Tonic]

How much you paid for this card?

[celemine1Gig]

I paid 40,-EUR for this Sapphire Radeon 9700 and nothing for the new mosfet that the card needed (got it for free from Fairchild Semi).

[Jupiler]

Very nice and clean job you did there, congrats.
Those 40 € are well spent.

[celemine1Gig]

Thank you guys!

And yes, IMHO, these 40,-EUR are really well spent.

Now, I think I'm gonna sell my Radeon 9800SE@Pro and wait for the X800 to get cheaper, while clocking this Sapphire 9700 like mad.

[Thomas FJ]

Originally posted by celemine1Gig
while clocking this Sapphire 9700 like mad.

How far can you push it?
/Thomas

[Milkmover]

Originally posted by Hell-Fire
Man...what a sexy heatsink.

I want to have its babies.

Hell-Fire you crack me up man

[celemine1Gig]

Wooohooo, tomorrow will be a cold day for my Radeon 9700!

This is what I'll add to it tomorrow:



Hope it appreciates it and clocks good after adding the extra cooling. Had no time yet to test overclockability. Only know that the core maxes at 380 Mhz at standard volts (~1,48V).

[Thomas FJ]

Originally posted by celemine1Gig
Wooohooo, tomorrow will be a cold day for my Radeon 9700!

This is what I'll add to it tomorrow:



Hope it appreciates it and clocks good after adding the extra cooling. Had no time yet to test overclockability. Only know that the core maxes at 380 Mhz at standard volts (~1,48V).

Looks prytte nice!

Mine maxed out at 385 mhz default Vgpu...

I'll recive my fully mod'ed card today
/Thomas

[STEvil]

It was looking great until you chopped up the 6035.........

Seriously, though... I need to find a better heatsink for my 9700 pro when I get it.. 86w pelt is only hitting 12c (measured backside of card with default 1.52v vgpu) with current heatsink and a delta screamer

[IvanAndreevich]

Nice job!

[celemine1Gig]

Thx!

The jobs now finished:










Now it's time for some overvolting action!

[WesM63]

Nice work

[naelq]

good job!

[T07N]

Originally posted by celemine1Gig

is that really gonna help the back of the core? haha

[celemine1Gig]

Originally posted by T07N
is that really gonna help the back of the core? haha

Of course!!! It's a small pure copper block and a aluminium heatsink with copper base (look at the picture a few posts above) is mounted on top of it. That sure helps cooling the GPU down. What do you think is the reason why all Hercules Radeons had heatsinks on the back of the GPU?

[IvanAndreevich]

celemine1Gig
>>What do you think is the reason why all Hercules Radeons had heatsinks on the back of the GPU?

To tell you the truth, I believe it's mostly because it looks cool. The thermal interface they use there is crap. I've seen some guys compare temps with and without the back cooler. The funny thing is that WITH it, the temps were a tiny bit worse since it was acting more like an insulator

Yours is different of course, because it works.

[STEvil]

indeed!