Soldering new memory chips?

[TheGermanEngie]

Good morning LTT - 

 

So up for sale on eBay is this Gigabyte R9 280X for insanely cheap because one of the memory chips was broken off upon removal of their custom water cooler they installed. 

 

Counting up the chips, any singular chip is 256MB in size (GDDR5 of course)

 

256MB x 12 = 3072MB

 

Does anyone know the make and or model of the memory chips used on this particular card? I want to try and solder a new memory chip back on. (I know this requires a lot of experience, I know a guy who's been doing this kind of stuff for a while)

 

thanks

[FloRolf]

Not sure if this is even possible with multi layer PCBs tbh.

But the used memory chip should be stated on one (if not all) of the exisiting chips. So maybe ask the seller for a picture.

[WereCatf]

10 minutes ago, TheGermanEngie said:

So up for sale on eBay is this Gigabyte R9 280X for insanely cheap because one of the memory chips was broken off upon removal of their custom water cooler they installed.

When it broke off, there's a very good chance it ripped off some of the traces on the PCB with it and in such a case there's zero chance you'll be able to solder a new one on. The traces that go to a BGA-package are just way too tiny and closely-packed for you to ever be able to repair them. I'm not telling you to discard the idea, but I just wanted to point this thing out.

[Coaxialgamer]

Depends . Can you do bga reballing , and can you even get those specific memory chips ?

also , did it damage the actual PCB when breaking off ?

[TheRandomness]

You should be able to get replacement chips with ease. And if there’s surface-damage, you can sand it down gently to expose the copper itself. I wouldn’t recommend doing this, but if you have nothing else to lose... Well, it’ll be a fun project to document on here

 

And I do speak from experience. My mistake was not pre-heating the PCB, meaning it was a pain to get the chip off. I got it replaced in the end, but the artefacts had shifted position, indicating I just fucked over another memory module. This was on a HD 6850, by the way. 

[TheGermanEngie]

7 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

Depends . Can you do bga reballing , and can you even get those specific memory chips ?

also , did it damage the actual PCB when breaking off ?

no the PCB does not appear damaged. i just need to find the specific memory chip used to solder back on

[Coaxialgamer]

1 hour ago, TheGermanEngie said:

no the PCB does not appear damaged. i just need to find the specific memory chip used to solder back on

AMD and nvidia usually source their RAM from a couple vendors : Samsung , micron, EPILDA and SK hynix . You're just as likely to find any of these on your card , but you'll need to find matching memory chips if you plan to repair . the best way to figure it out is just to ask the vendor for a detailed pic or just a pic of the memory modules if possible

[TheRandomness]

6 hours ago, TheGermanEngie said:

no the PCB does not appear damaged. i just need to find the specific memory chip used to solder back on

Look for a model number on the top of the chip, and search on the internet. You're likely to find replacements on aliexpress or ebay.