What blew up? Is this repairable or is my laptop done for?

28 Comments

  1. Noxlifer

    Thats the cpu bridge (north/south). To my knowledge its pretty much impossible/beyond economic repair to fix this

    Edit: ive blown up couple macbook silicas at my work for fun (the motherboards were dead so I just shorted them). Silicas are so beautiful (:

    https://imgur.io/ZndDfPL?r

    https://imgur.io/xcbEPrN?r

  2. BmanUltima

    That’s the chipset, and with a laptop that old, probably not worth replacing the motherboard for.

  3. TheClassicGamer-

    if you didn’t remove the main cooler for the CPU and GPU I think it may be the chipset that went boom so anything that was connected to it is gone

  4. Vahelius

    A quick eBay check shows working motherboards for this model laptop going for $300-400.

  5. ketamarine

    It e-waste. That’s an 7 year old laptop that just died. These things happen.

  6. ArmoredAngel444

    Looks like a gpu chip, and it has exploded apparently lol

  7. Wow. In my two decades of doing PC hardware, I have only once seen a chip blow up like that.

    I had volt-modded an Abit KT7, such that a case LED cable was soldered to the VRM’s reference and I could slot in a resistor in parallel with it to lower its resistance and raise the voltage on the CPU. Usually ran it around 2.1V core (default was 1.75) which was dangerous, but not explosively so.

    One day I misread a resistor’s colour codes and put in one something like 100x lower than it should have been. The resulting voltage would have been basically the maximum the VRM could handle. The Duron 850 had shattered under the heatsink.

    Anyway, enough greybeard rambling.

    The laptop is dead. Good for parts only. A new motherboard would also be a new GPU and new CPU, since they’re all soldered on, so cost pretty much as much as a new laptop.

    Exploding chips are *very rare,* you could post in the Asus subreddit and see if anyone’s interested, but, being out of warranty, it’s game over for this old warrior.

  8. IuseArchbtw97543

    Irreparable. As for the causes, any strong impact. Maybe it was dropped or something like that

  9. Yeah it’s deader than dead. Definitely not repairable without replacing the whole motherboard. Considering how old it is, the repair is going to cost more than the laptop is worth, if you can actually get a replacement that is. Though it still likely would be cheaper than a new laptop

  10. CptClownfish1

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more “done for” laptop.

  11. Nithilus

    That’s the most done I’ve ever seen something be on this sub.

  12. slayez06

    You blew your PCH chip. Most your other stuff should still be good from cpu memory to other items if you felt like harvesting.

    You can get the best bang for your buck selling it on Ebay as AS Not working.

  13. Damon853x

    OMG THE CHIP! 😱
    Ive never seen something like that, das crazy. I have a hunch this is beyond repair lol

  14. Sorry_Sorry_Im_Sorry

    You’ll probably need a new laptop and as much as that sucks, the only thing I’ll say that’s good is all the sales will be in November.

    [https://slickdeals.net/laptop-deals/?sort=rating](https://slickdeals.net/laptop-deals/?sort=rating)

    There are the best deals for laptops now but also check r/buildapcsales

  15. KTTalksTech

    A repair place that’s equipped for BGA soldering will be able to swap that out, if by some miracle they’ve got an identical dead laptop to pull the chip from. Something in the power circuit is probably broken as well since a chip exploding spontaneously is extremely unlikely (it’s usually due to a physical impact).

    As others have pointed out, the repair isn’t interesting from a financial standpoint.

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