The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Sam,
Not in the US. They are about the same price here!

Russ

 

Estuansis,
The melting point of lead is lower than any other metal used in PCBs I can think of. The solder joints won't melt unless you have a real good short somewhere, and they heat up enough. Copper and tin melt at a higher temperature than lead.

Russ

 

Agreed. I am still adamant it was a bad cooler mounting process that caused the cooler to come loose from the heatspreader of the CPU/GPU.

 

Estuansis,

I got to thinking about it and the description you gave where you re-soldered one of the connections on the motherboard. It's called a cold solder joint. That's surprising considering PCBs are flood soldered. Still, the reason you see it and can distinguish it from a good connection is the dullness, caused by probably a lack of Soldering flux on that particular connection, so the connection never sets. All that's connecting it is the lead, because if the lead doesn't melt completely, neither of the other metals in the solder will melt and mix properly either, and lead by itself is a poor conductor of electricity, subject to heating, cooling, and vibrations. Your soldering job, probably with rosin core solder, made it a good connection again!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

I've also had to replace blown caps on some older boards and I've added an AGP x8 slot to a board with the blank spot on it. It worked too after a custom BIOS. Just a matter of time and patience

 

Soldering and capacitor replacement fairly standard stuff, but adding an AGP slot where there wasn't one? Hats off about that, I would never have thought that possible.

 

Well the board was actually built to use AGP. There was a blank spot on the motherboard for an AGP x8 slot where the holes were soldered shut. I just melted them out carefully, inserted the pins, and re-soldered it using a piece of aluminum in between the contacts to keep my mess under control. I just used an AGP slot off a dead board, melted off the solder and it came out without a single problem. Then I got the factory BIOS for the board and flashed them over the Dell BIOS using a pin hack on the processor(bridging two CPU pins with a thin piece of copper wire). Popped in an X1300 512MB and it ran like a champ full performance and throughput on the slot and everything. I really should hunt that guide down I did it early last year.

The idea of the pin hack is to trick the board into thinking it's an OEM board and not Dell proprietary. After I made the BIOS flash I removed the copper wire and the board acted just like an aftermarket part. It even had some very limited OCing options unlocked.

This was on an intel 865G board with a 3.2GHz Northwood P4 in it. AFAIK the PC is still in use with a 7600GS and does see occasional gaming from time to time.

 

ddp,

Flood soldering, now more commonly called wave soldering, where the board is totally immersed in solder for a very short period of time and all the connections are soldered at the same time. Please notice that it says immersed, not submerged. All the connections are fluxed, by a machine and immersed in liquid solder. When the process was invented, the theory was that the solder should only stick to the connections. If the temperatures and flux are right, the connections should be perfect. Oh to live in a perfect world! LOL!! Here's a YouTube vid that shows the whole process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmGOMatwSDI&NR=1

Happy Holidays,
Russ

 

ddp,
Yes, I know that. That's why I mentioned not submerging the board. Only the board level components that aren't surface mounted are done with wave soldering. Sockets for PCI-E, PCI, Sata, IDE, Power connections and any surface socket for USB ports, CPU, Etc. Basically anything that can be soldered on the bottom side of the board. I can well imagine the mess caused by complete immersion in the solder! Thought the video was pretty neat though!

Russ

 

Y'all wanna see something scary and possibly traumatizing?

http://my.afterdawn.com/estuansis/show_image.cfm/24485

Sam already saw it so you guys should take a look.

 

I'd be writing poems too if I looked like that...LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!

 

Grr shut yer trap. Put your money where your mouth is and man up. Your turn to take a pic. I have better pictures now I have shaved and trimmed up. I'm actually not bad looking IMO. I have had a few girls comment on how handsome I am

 

Estuansis,
Never mind him! You look like what Al Franken wished he looked like at that age! He's from Minnesota, so that's close! LOL!!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,
Russ

 

Here we go. Im going in... LOL! I have the replacement board waiting right next to me. Now we see if the Ram is incompatible(or voltage issue), or if the Mobo was simply DOA.

I'm noticing that Ram on the supported list(Multiple), run at 1.5V. So the odds of the Ram being the culprit, just declined. I truly hope that it was the Mobo. I don't mean to upset newegg with my ignorance

 

Yer right, I gotta wear makeup in public so I can't talk crap about you!
http://my.afterdawn.com/deadrum33/show_image.cfm/3908/full

 

It's official. My luck ran out a long time ago...

It's now become an extremely high probability that the Ram is either faulty, or simply not supported by default settings. I suppose the CPU could be the culprit. But given the failure rate of CPU's, I'd probably be struck by lightning first. I gambled and lost...

Now i'll be contacting newegg, and apologizing about the situation. And that the board that they're receiving back, should be 100% working. I treat my equipment like babies Wish I had a spare DDR3 module laying around

On another note, so far my new BD-Rom drive appears to be working ok. About to fire her up, and see just how sharp my monitor can be. Oh...I suppose the games I play already qualify though

 

Ha that's actually you? Interesting. I used to be like hardcore goth for a while. Dyed hair, elaborate eye makeup every day, white skin, tripp pants, torn up shirts you name it.

Also Im down to one piercing. I used to have several on both ears plus eyebrow plus a barbell... in a certain place.

But I grew out of it now I'm just myself