Repairing a broken GTX 1080ti

[k_flo_k]

Hey LTT Forum it's my first post on a hardware Forum, so please be kind guys. 

So a year ago me and a friend tried to watercool a 1080 ti from a used HP Omen Pc we bought and somehow screwed it up. I more or less just kept it lying around because I didn't know what to do with it, and it was "only" 300 bucks back then, so I never considered if it was worth repairing it. Now that the mining hype is back upon us again with the GPU shortages and my 1080 slowly dying after 6 years of constant use I was thinking if I can repair it. So I wanted to ask if anyone on the Forum has any Idea if it is even repairable or maybe even how to

Thanks for any help in advance!

[WereCatf]

3 minutes ago, k_flo_k said:

So I wanted to ask if anyone on the Forum has any Idea if it is even repairable or maybe even how to

How would anyone have any idea, when you don't explain what you actually did to it? "Somehow screwed it up" isn't even NEARLY enough information.

[k_flo_k]

7 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

How would anyone have any idea, when you don't explain what you actually did to it? "Somehow screwed it up" isn't even NEARLY enough information.

Well I can't really say what we screwed up. We used a NZXT Kraken G12 Mount on it with a Kraken M22 Liquid cooler. We mounted it like shown in the NZXT Guide Video . Put it into my PC and started it up. It worked perfectly the first 10 Minutes with no Heat spikes whatsoever at around 48° in idle. After we thought everything was running smoothly we wanted to make some Benchmarks to see if it was working fine. The benchmark crashed after a while and I saw some artifacts, so I instantly turned off the power. But apparently it was to late because it smelled a bit like burned electronics. And when we took the Card apart again we saw some scorch marks next to the DIE(like shown in the pictures)

[WereCatf]

6 minutes ago, k_flo_k said:

And when we took the Card apart again we saw some scorch marks next to the DIE(like shown in the pictures)

None of that explains how there's a big solder-blob there; they don't just appear out of thin air. That said, sure, you could always desolder all the capacitors around the burned area, clean up all the extra solder and replace the caps with new ones -- if you were lucky, that'd be enough, but there's no way for any of us to say any more about it.

[k_flo_k]

24 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

None of that explains how there's a big solder-blob there; they don't just appear out of thin air. That said, sure, you could always desolder all the capacitors around the burned area, clean up all the extra solder and replace the caps with new ones -- if you were lucky, that'd be enough, but there's no way for any of us to say any more about it.

I didn't solder anything on that PCB that the burned soldering blob "appeared" after it burned. I would try replacing the surrounding capacitors the question is if I can get any capacitors as an end user. 

[WereCatf]

56 minutes ago, k_flo_k said:

I would try replacing the surrounding capacitors the question is if I can get any capacitors as an end user. 

Of course you can. Mouser, Farnell, LCSC, eBay, Amazon, Aliexpress, Octopart -- there are a ton of different places you can find and order components from.

[k_flo_k]

18 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Of course you can. Mouser, Farnell, LCSC, eBay, Amazon, Aliexpress, Octopart -- there are a ton of different places you can find and order components from.

Thanks now I just need to find out from where I get the schematics/Part Number for the capacitors. ^^
 

[WereCatf]

7 minutes ago, k_flo_k said:

Thanks now I just need to find out from where I get the schematics/Part Number for the capacitors. ^^
 

You're not going to find such. You need to desolder some of the old ones and measure their capacitance and ESR, then match those values with the new ones.

[Mark Kaine]

Possible that your friend tried to solder these parts? 

 

Not that it would help much,  but it does look like some very amateur attempt to fix "something"...

 

This really doesn't look like something that just happens...usually the capacitor would just blow up but it looks largely undamaged, unlike the area surrounding it...

 

Just really odd how this all apparently went wrong,  but maybe replacing the caps in that area fixes it,  i don't think you have a lot of other options,  not that I know of anyway. 

 

 

PS: I used to work in smd soldering for prototypes and looking at the top picture,  a pcb that looks like that would be 100% unusable...traces dead...  and again it looks like a botch job, but maybe it was a short or something, I just don't think it's still usable...

 

I did actually manage to kill a few pcbs this way,  it's very easy to to, too much heat and not paying attention for a few seconds, rip...

 

That's not to say you shouldn't try,  just saying in production this is simply a 100% defect (from the looks of it on that picture)

[pplx5568]

4 hours ago, k_flo_k said:

Hey LTT Forum it's my first post on a hardware Forum, so please be kind guys. 

So a year ago me and a friend tried to watercool a 1080 ti from a used HP Omen Pc we bought and somehow screwed it up. I more or less just kept it lying around because I didn't know what to do with it, and it was "only" 300 bucks back then, so I never considered if it was worth repairing it. Now that the mining hype is back upon us again with the GPU shortages and my 1080 slowly dying after 6 years of constant use I was thinking if I can repair it. So I wanted to ask if anyone on the Forum has any Idea if it is even repairable or maybe even how to

Thanks for any help in advance!

lol

[k_flo_k]

54 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Possible that your friend tried to solder these parts? 

 

Not that it would help much,  but it does look like some very amateur attempt to fix "something"...

 

This really doesn't look like something that just happens...usually the capacitor would just blow up but it looks largely undamaged, unlike the area surrounding it...

 

Just really odd how this all apparently went wrong,  but maybe replacing the caps in that area fixes it,  i don't think you have a lot of other options,  not that I know of anyway. 

 

 

PS: I used to work in smd soldering for prototypes and looking at the top picture,  a pcb that looks like that would be 100% unusable...traces dead...  and again it looks like a botch job, but maybe it was a short or something, I just don't think it's still usable...

 

I did actually manage to kill a few pcbs this way,  it's very easy to to, too much heat and not paying attention for a few seconds, rip...

 

That's not to say you shouldn't try,  just saying in production this is simply a 100% defect (from the looks of it on that picture)

We bought it used from a game Studio that went bankrupt, so we didn't do any work on it before, and I don't think they did either, but you can never know. After reading a bit more about capacitor failure on other GPUs I think I'm going to try to desolder the broken caps and try to run the GPU and if that doesn't work I think it's a total bust. What I have read is that if your cap blows up like that it's most likely a short or a bust on some other parts and the problem goes far beyond the caps itself.
 

[Mark Kaine]

2 hours ago, k_flo_k said:

We bought it used from a game Studio that went bankrupt, so we didn't do any work on it before, and I don't think they did either, but you can never know. After reading a bit more about capacitor failure on other GPUs I think I'm going to try to desolder the broken caps and try to run the GPU and if that doesn't work I think it's a total bust. What I have read is that if your cap blows up like that it's most likely a short or a bust on some other parts and the problem goes far beyond the caps itself.
 

Oh, i see... well then pure special but then it looks like they *did* "repair" something,  damaged the pcb possibly,  and that's the result,  maybe doesn't even need to be connected to your nzxt cooler endeavors...

 

 

And yeah, that's what I'm saying it doesn't look like a cap problem necessarily, more like a pcb problem,  but still soldering back those might just fix it at least temporarily,  and of course replacing them would have even better chances to fix something.