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so... I bought a water damaged early 2013 MacBook pro in hopes of fixing it, the description said it made 3 beeps when plugged in, i recieved it, and it did three beeps, i did some research on the topic and discovered i would have to do some complicated soldering so went shopping for motherboards, I bought a cheap one which was also water damaged but had some resistors missing in the picture, which were still on the original motherboard and looked easier to transplant then ram chips. the second motherboard let the laptop charge but no turn on, so, my question is, what's wrong with the second motherboard, can it be solved with the resistor transplant or should I just save for a proper replacement, if so can you recommend some? however replacing the motherboard properly is not ideal as not currently having the funds does hinder my ability to work

The super nice old guy at my town junkyard lets me dig in the electronics bin and today I scored a 2001 Athlon 64 with a couple bent pins and this Asus card: I'm not sure what this is but I'm guessing video card (?) But I'm open to surprises Only a couple problems: This capacitor was hanging in there and came off when I looked at it funny. Also little guy other than this two fellas I didn't see any other broken stuff So, question 1: What is this thing? Question 2: How much should I bother re-soldering/replacing the two capacitors? I am still going to clean it but I'd like to know what I'm dealing with.

Hi I am currently trying to take a lightning connector off of my iPhone 7 I thought of soldering it off but i don't want to damage any of the surrounding parts on the board I watched a video where someone cut it off with a Rotary Tool and then soldered off all the leftover solder and glue. This is the board I'm trying to get the port off of https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-7-lightning-connector-assembly?variant=39371929714791 If anyone has any good idea's or thoughts it would be most appreciated. Thanks

I have a ACEPC AK2 small computer and the fan works, but the terminal to the motherboard is destroyed. The entire terminal ripped of taking some of the pcb with it. Is there any where on the board that I could run some wires to get enough power to power the fan? I thought that maybe if I run some wires directly to the barrel connector, but I don't know if that will work. But if anyone knows of another way to power the fan I am all ears.

Hi! My name is giuspepy and im searching a way to fix this mobo for a year now. Thanks to some really nice people we managed to narrow the problem down. The problem was the mobo would not post and make a series of 6 beeps the motherboard is a ga-8ipxdr-e this is quite a old board. I buyed it for exeperiments and see how dual cpus work. The actual problem is the 6 beep code means that the keyboard controller dosent work whatever its probably replaceble. Whats blocking me from desoldering it and replacing it is that i cant find it. The board being old and the fact that the ics are also old means documentation is probably been lost in time. I have basic soldering skills and also a multimeter. I could really use some advice with this. I tried finding it with connections between the ps2 port and the chips with the multimeter in "short mode" but all that they had in common was gnd wich isent of much help. Here are the photos of the mobo and chips that are near the ps2 port. Any help or tips on the procedure to take to find the problem would be a lot for me. Ps: i dident yet desolder anything. I used the soldering iron in the background for desoldering old capacitors from another board lol.

Hey Guys/Gals, I placed it in this part of the forum as it appeared to be the most Apt, but i've been wanting to learn how to solder electrical components for sometime now and i have finally gotten around to doing it. Ultimately i want to be able to restore and modify retro game consoles beyond the thorough cleaning which is what i currently do. So soldering/de-soldering capacitors, chips, wires etc... That being said i was wondering if anyone had any suggestions regarding any practice material that may be available. Given my first ever attempt at soldering was replacing voltage regulators on a genesis i had as a kid, which i botched horribly, i would like something that i can tinker with that doesn't make things a lot worse. I already have a fair amount of tools typically needed such as the soldering iron, flux, flat snips, multi-meter, and even one of those quad hands. I appreciate any suggestions you may have.

I need to solder some things for a project with a raspberry pi, but want to practice first. Does anyone know a good little practice project which involves soldering and is not too expensive?

Hopefully someone can help me out. I'm trying to make an extension of the SD card reader so I may put it inside of another device and move the port to another location. Before anything, I tested the card port and it reads my SD card just fine. I removed the SD port from the board and soldered extension wires to each point on the SD port and extended that back to their individual points on the board. When I plug in the USB stick, the LED activates and blinks in sequences as if it is waiting in standby for an SD card to be inserted. I place the SD card in its port and nothing happens (with or without force). I plugged a microSD card into the other port that was still attached to the board and the computer can detect it just fine. My guess is that when I added wires to the port, I added latency to the signal due to the wire length and therefor can't reach the card. Perhaps using a 3.0 card reader with higher voltage could fix this? Here is the card reader I brought: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-usb-2-0-sd-mmc-memory-card-reader-black/3602009.p?skuId=3602009 I check all my soldering points and made sure they are all properly in place. What am I missing?..

So on an Intel motherboard that I have (Intel Spl500 socket J) board, one of the capacitors has been dented when I brought it home in a suitcase. The capacitor was a 1200 μf, 12 volt. I have bought from Radio-Shack a 1000 μf 35WVDC capacitor and a 2200 μf 35WVDC as replacements. Could I possibly use one of them as a replacement capacitor for the dented one? Also can you wrap the leads in electrical tape because sadly they are axial ones. Thanks! (Photo from Tom's Hardware, edited my yours truly.)

There aren't many topics one heat pipe soldering here so I thought I'd share my first experience. Here's a relevant Log from @iamdarkyoshi which I really liked and wanted to reference here also I have a 2010 HP Pavilion dv7 4000 from 2010 i5 M450 with AMD Radeon HD 5000 graphics. Very excellent laptop, has been great since I got it for school and I have used in constantly until I built my first rig in December last year. It was unfortunately getting very slow and really struggling to stay cool. I wanted to continue having a laptop however so I decided to get a copy of windows 8.1 off Kinguin ($25) and change out my boot drive for a SanDisk 120Gb SATA3 SSD ($45 bucks new). Along with a full fan/system clean (It had been about 3yrs since I last de-lint-ed the cooler fins internally). Simple, but I'm sure you understand "well I might as well do that since I'm here" which usually leads to something brilliant or exhausting but interesting either way. So I tore the laptop down, removed the motherboard and the lint stricken fan and air hosed everything. Then I thought back to some things I heard in Linus' videos regarding thermal paste and how manufactures don't usually spring for the best stuff and thought well I'll use up my leftover paste from my new Hyper 212 and possibly improve thermal performance further. When I removed the cooler from the motherboard there was a totally unnecessary amount of very dry putty looking thermal paste on the CPU and GPU (clearly degraded I thought). CPU side: So I went about cleaning that mess up and I noticed how little solder was used to connect the heat pipe to the little copper plate that interfaces with the CPU. That's thin plate to be reaching out across the entire CPU and conducting all that heat to the heat pipe on the edge of the CPU. Top of CPU side: I figured even though solder doesn't conduct as well as copper it's much better than air so I could improve the heat conduction to the pipe by adding a nice large fillet of solder between the heat pipe and the copper plate on both sides. So, grinning at my seemingly clever improvement idea, I went about securing the CPU plate and mounting bracket in the vise out in the garage (it was about 8F outside so I didn't want to spend much time out there working). I then grabbed a torch and spool of solder and began to heat the assembly, continually poking it with the solder to check the temp. The solder began to melt on the copper plate and I happily filled the entire void with solder. That'll do 'er!! As I was admiring this, out of the corner of my eye I thought I noticed the GPU heatpipe sag very very slightly (the heat pipe from the CPU plate goes to the fin assembly which also includes the GPU heat pipe which goes to the GPU plate). After a sudden realization and at the very moment when I finished thinking "..oh no" the fin assembly slid off of the CPU pipe and it, the CPU fan mount plate attached to it, the GPU pipe, plate, and mounting bracket all went their separate ways as they hit the garage floor. Now it had become a full rebuild project and I moved to the kitchen table because I was freezing. Reattaching the GPU plate and bracket to the GPU pipe in the same location was easy because the solder left on the pipe marked where it was and I clamped it in place and did the same as I had with the CPU (except the first time I assembled it flipped 180 and had to take it apart and resolder). Now that the brackets and plates were on I had to get the fins and fan mount plate back together. The only problem was I would need to hold everything in the right place securely so it could all heat up without falling apart. So I put the CPU and GPU brackets back on the motherboard and decided to hold them in the correct position with the fin assembly and then secure them in that position in a fixture where I could heat them up. But when I went to slide the fin assembly on it wouldn't fit! The pipes had expanded slightly from the high temps. I had read about this possibility and about possible exploding heat pipes but I figured they had to solder them in the first place so they must be able to withstand at least solder melt temps. It turned out it was very easy to gently re-flatten them with a pair of flat pliers so I could squeeze the fins on. I then did a dry fit in the chassis to make sure I had it right: To hold everything together securely and make sure the plates would be parallel with the mound brackets, pennies!! I took a block of wood and stacked up some pennies on it where the CPU and GPU would rest and screwed the brackets down on them (this picture was before I did the dry fit with the fins on the motherboard): The full fixture looked like this: I jammed some extra solder in the fins with the heat pipes for better contact: I torched everything at first to get it all warmed up then I only torched the CPU bracket on and off just enough to keep the solder flowing on everything without overheating. I held the fan mount in place with some pliers as I soldered it back to the fins. And vio la! And it fit!! New peas of thermal paste and all: Boots fast!! Runs cool!! Some 8.1 driver trouble with the swithcable graphics possibly causing an HDMI external to run extremely slow but that's another topic. Also unfortunately I didn't run any stress tests before I started but I know it's working great. Better? I don't really know. However, I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from trying this (with caution of course) and doing some tests before and after. I think soldering heat pipes is fairly easy if you know how to solder and in the future I might play around with them and try making a custom cooler (I can use our machine shop at work). I'll run Aida64 or something soon and post here. TLDR notes my thoughts: -Heat pipe soldering works -Wow they really move lots of heat!! (duh) They heat up very quickly and entirely so expect to secure every piece of an assembly or it will all fall apart when you heat one part. -They expand but can be reshaped and be careful not to heat more than what you need to melt the solder (use ppe) Hope my first topic is interesting to someone excited to join the community!

Guys i'm building a DIY Powerbank by using a Richtek chip. It has 2 USB A connectors for decharging and 1 micro USB for charging. It can manage itself for short circuits, overvoltage, etc... For my project i need 4 USB A connectors for charing up a few devices. There will be 2-3 devices pulling power from the batteries at max 5v +-2Amps. Is it dangerous to solder 2 USB A ports parallel to 1 extension cord? Many tanks Levi

So I'm trying to repair my ATH-M40x headphones and the first cup i soldered (left) soldered on and worked fine. Second cup i tried to solder multiple times, no bueno. Mind you this is my first time soldering so be gentle.

Alright guys, you know the drill. I post a dumb, ridiculous question that has probably been answered and then I feel like a fool, but here's another "is this a thing", er, thing. Can you use a soldering iron (like a larger one) or some type of soldering method I guess, to connect multiple pieces of copper and stuff together? Basically, can you solder stuff like laptop heat pipes, small fin assemblies (likely connected to those wimpy pipes, maybe a fan), to make a larger heat sink? I would take the aforementioned laptop heat pipes and solder them to a small block of copper cut to a decent size to cover the cpu (if cannibalizing a gpu air heat sink wasn't possible) and just SOMEHOW getting it all together. Even if it was ugly, I don't care. It's all for shiggles and gets to me. I wouldn't try to mount it to a laptop or am trying to improve a laptops thermals/performance. I just wanna mod me up a heat sink for the hell of it, maybe create a rad heat sink that could maybe later be upgraded with water cooling for a custom pc; custom sound dampened enclosure, just a sweet custom rig. I couldn't find really anything on this topic, or know how to google it best. I doubt using torch solder for connecting pipes would work, would damage the components. I thought maybe you could connect flat surfaces and "weld" a nice rim around the two pieces, basically weld it together best you can and hope the heat transfers well. I don't think the solder would soften during heavy loads and disconnect or whatever. And with a good, powerful soldering iron you wouldn't have to heat the metal I would think. I don't know obviously, about any of this stuff. So any friendly advice or knowledge would be awesome! Also before I end the post, I can post pictures of some hardware I had thoughts of connecting together, or pictures of stuff I think would work well; I guess now that I think about it, this question gets more and more into is custom air cooling possible? I've seen videos by people like DIY Perks that make me inspired to try stuff, so I've been dismantling decommissioned gear, mostly a couple computers in hopes to use them in a future project. I think a custom cooler would be fun. PS. I just want to reiterate I know this is a terrible idea and wouldn't use this on my main computer, I figure it must be too hard or not possible seeing no posts on it so maybe it's common sense it is out of reach but I'm hoping someone knows whether it is safe and possible to try it. Thanks!

I have only soldered once but the process seems fairly straight forward. At least for replacing LED's on the mechanical switches I want to replace the LED that lights of the Logo of the keyboard near the spacebar. Would I need any other tools than the following? Soldering Iron Electric Led solder wire Solder Sucker Pro tech tool kit Spare Razer Blackwidow Logo LED I'm not sure how to check the polarity of the LED wires, knowing the right way to place it in. Would it just be trial and error? or could I risk shorting it out if the polarity is incorrect?

I recently ordered this LED strip from Amazon https://smile.amazon.com/TOOGOO-7500LM-Density-Sealed-Ribbon/dp/B071XTDNY5/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1500952461&sr=1-1&keywords=TOOGOO(R)+5m+SMD+2835+600+LED+12V+72W+7500LM+IP65+Dust+Density+Sealed+Cool+White+LED+Light+Strip+Lamp+Strip+Ribbon+Tube+Lights, which is advertised in the picture with a DC power connector. However mine did not come with one at all, just a roll of LEDs and wire leads on either end. So my question is how I should go about powering them. Would soldering the wires of a DC power supply directly to the leads of the LEDs work, or would there need to be resistors? Aside from 12V output. what should the power supply deliver? Any help would be greatly appreciated and it would take my rather basic setup to the next level of zen. Awwww Yeah.

Greetings, So i finally got around to doing the Tsop flash on my OG xbox and when attempting to solder together two of the write points; i think i lifted the solder Pads. I am looking for a second opinion from more learned individuals though. If i did lift the pads any advice on what to do to repair the issue?

This might sound insane, but I'm considering soldering a 6-pin power connector to the board of a GTX 970 where another 6-pin power connector will plug in. Hear me out; It 'appears' as though on one of the two auxiliary power rails on my GTX 970 is dodgy. If a 6-pin is plugged into it, the system won't boot and nothing is displayed on screen. If nothing is plugged into it, regardless of whether the other 6-pin connector is plugged in, the system won't boot, but I will receive a message advising to plug in all power connectors. So basically I'm wondering, if anyone has had any experience, would it be possible to supply the power of two 6-pin connectors to one of the 6-pin sockets on my GTX 970? Or would it completely destroy the card or my PSU (although my PSU should be okay; an EVGA 750W with a measly Ryzen 1500)? (I have also tried flashing different BIOSs' and have tried different PSUs and motherboards but the card reacts exactly the same no matter what). Cheers in advance

Hello friends, My dog and I are currently working on doubling the world record (1026 words) for most words learned by a dog. My dog is currently 9 months old and knows around 220 words. Most of these words are the names of objects, mostly stuffed animals. In addition to that he can also operate switches on command which brings us to my current project. I been working on building him a Bluetooth media controller so he can play music, skip and reverse tracks and make phone calls when given a verbal command. So far the best way I've found to build this media controller is to hack apart a inexpensive Bluetooth speaker and solder new wires and switches onto the PCB. The reason I need to solder new switches is so I can space them apart so the dog can operate them. I was able to solder wires to the "Phone Call" micro switch contacts and it works. However I was unable to remove the switch that is is still soldered to the PCB. The best switches I've found for dogs are these foot pedal switches below or large arcade style push button switches (not pictured). This way it is easier for the dog to operate them with his nose or paw. For this project I built wood "toppers" with each media icon. I want to mount these on top of the new switches (pictured below). The micro switch on the PCB has 4 contacts connecting it to the PCB.The larger switches I have have only two wires attached and since the PCB has 4 contacts for each micro switch i'm not sure how to connect two wires to 4 contacts. This is the Bluetooth speaker PCB that I soldered the wires to that lead to another 4 contact micro switch. Example of a foot pedal switch the dog uses for turning on the TV. I think the switch I need for this project though is a momentary DPST push button switch (can anyone confirm that?) Here is an example of a switch I think that might work that I found on ebay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Pcs-22mm-Plastic-Momentary-Push-Button-Switch-10A-440V-1NO1NC-DPST-RED-GREEN/292918333004?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item44334b0e4c:g:n5kAAOSw4zdcO-Fr&enc=AQAEAAAB4BPxNw%2BVj6nta7CKEs3N0qWaz%2FiYzfDWYiTmgyvwYmdnRlNFR9lroQfczXO9BUUO%2F4%2BNUdJl3QR3aAH8XCJ7a4SdX6JPAvMu0ZxkNocm8OfNuaywesd9W3wXlv%2BjgTQAw6GPeVPpguCtrwDbYB8Ui2dLXfI6WV%2Bm8ZZLl84vEWJqLW7xG3fJHdGGwRd0Pcegt04QeUmzAv5Hr0K%2FbYWbqswXX3MDc%2Bu3JddpOYNnyXjQEGgStuwh7YFdV1A0BlPQ4JvEra01ib%2B63ei7g0b%2BDaxQpiTlohExJ7oC482R4k0a%2FNe82r86YX00a9MhW1%2BMqz2Fe%2BLDQKTXAhmVV5vrioimnqAj3ZWkw%2FAwvoOXfMJ3rSuWGRmXKQA%2BBnX7pfrDat4ScoXVp1BjsEPgXwEM3%2BIWf77XT%2B2Tq5S28PwoGynK0jbLAj88gcAtiAVy1r7PWZKfkcmnMTBVl4YrG5hemh7K0jblpmjyxBRkRTLAhaTzfTLm1ZIaayz8IeWo9vEyFgyX5GkVQ2mcZ6KyW5jJh0aqtVTp3QmX%2BtDDfPIHQSdhqtRBXyFTdWX0IxLTiXr257tJsQMooDZDDaHDxzPZZmLBSM99JGMOKsiq10nLm4U7TYireM%2BofK5BaJbBVjVNvQ%3D%3D&checksum=292918333004ed2e4f85019842d38fdf3e3eeeb23e43 As mentioned earlier I was able to solder wires that lead to another micro switch and it worked. However I am worried that the dog could potentially break the switch because it is so small. I made wood buttons that I plan to attach on the top of each micro switch. These buttons with sit recessed in the white wood panel shown below. I used phosphorescent powder for the icons so they would glow in dark and each button is coated in a food safe poly resin. Here are the wooden buttons I want to mount to the top of each switch. The wooden icons are spaced 3" apart. This type of mini electronic work is not my expertise and I'm not sure if there is a better way to make this.I have never used a Arduino or RasberryPi but thought that might be be viable for this project? My main questions are... What type of switch is needed for this project? Does anybody see an easier way to make a media controller for a dog other than soldering new switches to a Bluetooth speaker? If anyone has any suggestions I'd like to hear them. I don't mind starting over if it means it will be better for my pup.

My dad told me of what seems to be an ancient and lost product. A product that may exist, but it has been lost in the folds of the google search. He told me about flat disks made of solder. Disks that were thin, like a coin shaped foil made of solder. You could put these disks in between two hot surfaces that you wished to solder together, apon cooling, they would be soldered together until the end of time... echos dramatically After searching for minutes and minutes on end, using terms like "soldering pads" "circular solder -wire" "soldering foil" "flat solder" "disks of solder" etc., I have yet to find anything. Do these exist? What are they called? Where can I find them?

Is it possible to remove soldered ram off a laptop and replace it with new ram chips? as far as i know most laptops which exist in several ram capacities have the same bios an with the right equipment and a lot of flux this shouldn't be too difficult If possible this would be a cheaper alternative to configurating it with the highest amount of ram possible when buying a laptop, plus you could you what ever amount of ram you'd like Does anybody has any experience doing this or advice, before i test it myself?

Hi all, first time posting, and any help would be much appreciated. My brother was inspired by the corsair water loop build episode of tech tips and decided to go all in with it, he spent about £4000 - 5000 on a parts for a new rig. He askede to help home do the build as I've built a couple of pcs for myself and family, but nothing as big as this with hard piping etc. The long and short of it is he has chipped a capacitor(?) resistor(?) off the back of his new card while trying to remove the heat sink. Is there any methods to resoldering this on or is it just time start weeping and considering his life choices? Pic attached..

if you delid a cpu and then solder the heat spreader to a heat sink would it improve cooling enough to make it worth doing? i only say take off the heat spreader because i read something that said the cpu would break because of the heat from the thing you solder with (i don't know what its called)

Hey, LTT community, I joined this awesome place because hope dies last and hopefully your knowledge and experience can either help me bring that card back to life or we're gonna collectively call the time of death for it. The Problem: Sapphire RX Vega 64 (blower style) not detected at all in device manager, the fan doesn't spin, only the Radeon LED lights up. When I opened it up to see what's the cause of the problem, I found the following (please see attached images). That "0.82uH 1708NC" (is that a capacitor?) part in the middle looks to be the culprit, it's burned and the little black square chip next to it has a corner of it missing (I don't know if that affects anything?). I found this RX Vega board layout: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-vega-64,5173-4.html and it looks like there was 1.8V going through that particular part. It's located in the labeled image, just under VDDCI, labeled as 1.8V in a white square. The Question: Now the question is can this part be replaced assuming I'm able to get another Vega just for parts, and then solder it off from one board and solder it on to the other one? How likely is that this burned part is the only sole culprit of the faulty GPU? Could there be anything else burned or destroyed that's not visible from physical inspection? If there's anyone who can help me in any way, shape or form, pointing me to where I could get the replacement part or what's the best way to approach the repair and how it should be done, basically if there's any hope and if you can shed some light on that, I'll be grateful to you forever and if you leave a Monero (XMR) address, I'll make sure your effort is properly rewarded as well! Thank you for your time reading this, I'm looking forward to your responses and advice! Hope you all have a wonderful day! :))

So, I recently discovered a method for rescuing motherboards, with broken pins. There's a way to remove the socket of a motherboard, and replace it with a new One. There are many tutorials on how to do this, with a heat gun, flux and a soldering iron. I'd love to hear an opinion on this topic from you guys, what I've heard by now is, that it's not worth it for cheap motherboards, but High End Motherboards are worth going through the whole process. I'm currently trying to rescue an ASRock x79 Extreme 11 Mainboard by replacing the Socket, This is my first time doing something like that so I'm quite excited. I'd certainly be interested, if Linus did a Video on that topic.

I built my own reflow oven, and thought that my experience might help others looking to do the same. Attached is a brief build log and design explanation, along with a link to the code running on the oven. Pricing is also included, I always find it annoying when other build guides don't give a guide to the price of things. It should give people an idea of what it's going to cost before they get started, and shows the mistakes I made that cost me extra. Reflow Oven Build.pdf