Fix Damaged PCB Traces

[BigDamn]

Howdy fellas. I've got an old Asus P7H55 motherboard with damaged traces from improperly installing a cooler (just a board I mess around with. didn't have the mounting bracket and said fuck it). The board still works, however, memory channel B doesn't function properly. It will detect ram in those slots but it will not be usable. I've attached pictures of all the spots with issues, and idea's on how to fix that? thanks!

 

Images:

Spoiler

[Jurrunio]

Soldering wires to connect the damaged bits... Dont see you actually doing it lol, motherboards dont cost enough to be worth fixing like that

[Corrupt_Liberty]

While it might be possible to remove some of the solder mask and solder a bridge wire across the damaged sections, I wouldn't bother.  One, you are likely to cause even more damage in the process.  Especially if it's your first time attempting the repair with some very delicate traces.  Two, did you notice those traces are all squiggly?  They do that so that all of the high bandwidth traces are exactly the same length even though they are going to different pins on the RAM.  They have to be the exact length because at those frequencies you can get a lot of timing errors if they aren't the same.  A repair will likely change the length of the repaired traces and even if it does detect the memory and make it usable again, you're likely to start getting weird issues after running your system for awhile.

 

Either keep using it as is, or buy a new (used?) board.  That board is less than $50 on eBay.

[BigDamn]

49 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Soldering wires to connect the damaged bits... Dont see you actually doing it lol, motherboards dont cost enough to be worth fixing like that

 

19 minutes ago, Corrupt_Liberty said:

While it might be possible to remove some of the solder mask and solder a bridge wire across the damaged sections, I wouldn't bother.  One, you are likely to cause even more damage in the process.  Especially if it's your first time attempting the repair with some very delicate traces.  Two, did you notice those traces are all squiggly?  They do that so that all of the high bandwidth traces are exactly the same length even though they are going to different pins on the RAM.  They have to be the exact length because at those frequencies you can get a lot of timing errors if they aren't the same.  A repair will likely change the length of the repaired traces and even if it does detect the memory and make it usable again, you're likely to start getting weird issues after running your system for awhile.

 

Either keep using it as is, or buy a new (used?) board.  That board is less than $50 on eBay.

Thank you for the replies. This board is used in a "project computer" of sorts. It serves no practical use but I've done some good overclocking with it and have modified the case to provide better cooling. A DIY repair on this board could provide a good learning experience for me so I'd like to do it myself.

 

What are your thoughts on a conductive pen as shown in this old LTT video? Seems it would be tough to be accurate enough with it, but I've considered giving it a shot.

[Jurrunio]

5 minutes ago, BigDamn said:

 

Thank you for the replies. This board is used in a "project computer" of sorts. It serves no practical use but I've done some good overclocking with it and have modified the case to provide better cooling. A DIY repair on this board could provide a good learning experience for me so I'd like to do it myself.

 

What are your thoughts on a conductive pen as shown in this old LTT video? Seems it would be tough to be accurate enough with it, but I've considered giving it a shot.

Not good enough for repairing something as dedicated as a motherboard, let alone one related to memory. It can probably fix a raspberry pi, but not a desktop.