Burnt chip(chip???) on motherboard but seems to still boot after a few tweaks, interesting...any help much appreciated!

seraphim22

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so the situation as below, I'll try to be brief, any questions i will follow up with answers a.s.a.p.

Situation: So I have what I think is a very good gaming laptop, recently moved to the czech republic and now through my fault the motherboard has an issue.

Problem: I spilt white wine on the keyboard at about 2 in the morning, the laptop continued to work fine and no problems for 1hour after, I wiped it immeaditely after it happened and held it upside down to not let it sink into the laptop, not much was spilled at all. Dried and continued using it. 3am, put laptop in standby as i normally would and went to sleep

10am next morning, try to turn laptop on, it seemed to start up and made all the correct fan noises etc but display wasn't showing at all. thought i had issue with just the screen somehow. Tried a few basic things(turning off and on etc) but still no display. about to give up and so left it running on for about 30 minutes.

After this 30minutes it started to fizz and i smelt something burning, the laptop then switched off and i tried to turn it back on, it would do all the normal things but then burning smell and switch off after 3-4 seconds. I then took it to a computer shop.

the guy had it for 3-4 days and then said i will need to replace the motherboard at the cost of 10,000 czk crowns (roughly 300 gbp). Its alot of money. When i got it back, now it doesnt turn on it all. he said the insides had completely melted and soldered together due to the heat produced.

I cut my losses and am using my girlfriends laptop as i type this now.

13 days after this, I decide to open it up, i've done this before as I like to mess with my old laptops so i have a basic knowledge and am happy taking them apart.(i've tried to upgrade a cpu on a laptop before so i have some experience, it eventually would just overheat as it was too powerful but i had fun and learnt alot.).

At this point the laptop would not start at all when i pressed the power button and the battery wouldn't charge when connected.
So i opened it up just now, and there is indeed a burn connector but still seems fine enough(now i can see this for the screen). and one definite problem, a chip, a tiny chip close to the bottom of the motherboard has completely burnt out and i wiped this away gently. I reconnected everything and now it seems to load up fine, but still no screen, the fan is working and it seems to be running, left it on for 30minutes now and nothing bad has happened and nothing else has overheated for sure.

edit: as doing this, i checked the connector i mentioned earlier, that seems to be for the screen 100%, would explain why it isn't working. I have attached pictures below hopefully that will give more details about it.

laptop specs:

Name: Asus R510J.
Cpu: Intel Core I5-4200h 2.8ghz
gpu: Nvidia geforce 940m
Ram: 8gb
Hard drive - now disconnected but has been tested externally and is working absolutely fine.

Hope you can find out my motherboard from these specs and the pictures.!

I understand the motherboard may need to be replace entirely, I think I could certainly do this but i have no idea which one or specs or anything like that. never dealth with motherboards before.

From other posts, is it possible to replace this completely burnt out chip and have it running again??? if i had to use an external monitor/new screen that is an entirely new problem and i can deal with it seperately :). I wonder exactly what this chip did....if anything???



all and any help is appreciated!!!!
 
Solution
"Do you have any idea of what that chip may have done?? I have no idea what those chips on the board actually do? is it memory for a certain system application or something? controls dimming the screen? or something completely different? is it possible to live without one of those chips that possibly does very little?"
-->only Asus knows these answers, and only they would offer a guaranteed fix for this type of issue.

Hopefully system ok via connecting to another screen.

seraphim22

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fd6mi1.jpg


5ma64w.jpg
 

seraphim22

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Hi mate, thanks for replying.

I have done this before for another laptop as screen wasn't working, unfortunately I have literally 80 gbp to my name right now for the next month so I can't buy an external monitor and i don't have a vga cable :((( so unable to test it in that sense.
 

Jim90

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While it isn't impossible to replace motherboard soldered components, microsoldering is very difficult. You have the added problem of correctly identifying and sourcing the component, and there's no guarantee that this is the only thing needing replaced.

Since the Laptop now appears to power up and is lasting for at least 30min you might be lucky in that it's only the lack of display that's a problem and everything else is ok/stable. Connecting to an external TV/monitor would confirm this and allow you to make a decision on seeing if the Laptop's own display can be used/fixed.
 

seraphim22

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Do you have any idea of what that chip may have done?? I have no idea what those chips on the board actually do? is it memory for a certain system application or something? controls dimming the screen? or something completely different? is it possible to live without one of those chips that possibly does very little?

I will make it a priorty to test it on a monitor a.s.a.p, fingers crossed it's going to work fine.....interestingly when i put the hard driver back it, it lights up as it should to say there is a hard drive inside and it doesnt come on when I remove it, but i wonder if the screen is just showing "error"anyway.....
 

Jim90

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"Do you have any idea of what that chip may have done?? I have no idea what those chips on the board actually do? is it memory for a certain system application or something? controls dimming the screen? or something completely different? is it possible to live without one of those chips that possibly does very little?"
-->only Asus knows these answers, and only they would offer a guaranteed fix for this type of issue.

Hopefully system ok via connecting to another screen.

 
Solution

seraphim22

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Finally got a monitor


and just wow....it's working fine it seems!!!! some loading screens such as the wakeup one take a little longer to load but i can't see any other issues with it.

When first started, it said "getting windows ready" for about 5 minutes but apart from that everything seems to be normal.

My cpu (monitoring using speccy), seems to be jumping in temperatures though, roughly 48c average then jumping to 60c and 75c for a second and then going back down immeaditely....could be something worrying....any advice on this?

the temperature on cpu seems to be going a bit wild, jumping up and down.

interestingly speccy is no longer producing a temperature report for the motherboard which i guess I will need to have a look at this.

but wow! whoever says you can't having a working laptop after the montior connection burns itself out completely and a whole chip on your motherboard turns into ash is completely wrong!! :)

and the i.t shop guy insisted i needed a new motherboard completely......it's a certain shop in prague i sent it to, i'll post the details so hopefully others will be aware of this guy....i think he wanted me to buy one of his other laptops.....

I'll keep using it for now and see how things go, but don't see any major issues right now apart from using an external monitor. no smells of smoke or anything!!!! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

500$ saved!! all by not listening to suposedly the expert in the shop......maybe i'm just better than I think :D

Thank you jim. Great help.
 

seraphim22

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The spot where the little chip burnt out is getting a little warm through the case but cpu temperatures seem to have stabilised.

Running fm 2015 now and it's handling it with no spikes and all quite well!!

Honestly can't see any issues or have any idea what that chip did?

Edit: Getting severe cpu spikes when doing very little but always returns down very quickly. Laptop is heating up a little after 30minutes. May need help on this....fan seems to be working fine but now on a light browser game average termpature is around 72-75c