Dell M4700 REBUILD #4 - Enter The BLOWTORCH!

Why I Am Using A Blowtorch On A Video Card

In my continuing campaign to bring CRAZY, my Dell PRECISION M4700 laptop, back into the land of the living, I decided to try reflowing the GPU on its MXM TYPE A Daughtercard, an AMD FirePro 4000 (Model: 216-0834044).

This required me to (once again) dis-assemble the computer.  Once I got it stripped down to the point where I could remove the card, I did so and placed it on a wet cloth. 

I then took a cigar torch and played the flame of the torch on the GPU, always being careful to move the flame around.  The chip got so hot that the solder underneath began to boil, so I removed heat and let the card stand (without moving it) for 10 minutes, at which point it was cool to the touch.

The whole point of this was to eliminate any thermal cracking of the solder balls that the AMD card is "floating" on, something called BGA (Ball Grid Array).  This has become more and more popular as devices get smaller and smaller, and wave soldering techniques have become more precise and exact. 

With many Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI) chips, pins are now a thing of the past.  Instead, large chips are increasingly placed on Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) using solder balls that connect a "landing pad" array on the board and the chip, in what is called a Ball Grid Array (BGA) packaging type.This is a perfectly good packaging type, and it comes with several advantages, the foremost of which is a very slim form factor.  

Unfortunately, advances in solder have not keep apace.  Solder is much less flexible than it used to be, because of ongoing efforts in the electronics industry to respond to calls that it needs to reduce its toxic chemical content.  Lead, an extremely flexible (and ductile) element of solder, is highly toxic to humans, so it has been gradually phased out - leaving solder less flexible than it used to be.

The problem that emerges after a few years (especially in high-heat situations) is the solder balls that form the BGA begin to develop micro cracks due to their constant expansion and contraction as they are heated up and cooled down.  Over time, the cracking can become so bad, flaky behaviour and intermittent failures begin to crop up as the temperature of the chip fluctuates, leading to a complete failure.

See the video of how I attempted to reflow an AMD Firepro 4000 with a mini-blowtorch!

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Bill of Materials

Micro Butane Torch Lighter,Kitchen Craft Cook's Blow Torch Professional Grade Culinary Blow torch for Cooking & Baking Camping Welding Flamethrower BBQ Outdoor https://amzn.to/39yGT97