Some of you presumably noticed my thread about wanting a V4500 or 5500 PCI in the Marketplace forum.  I already had a functional V5500 PCI up until October or so...

Here are the pictures (4.5 MB each, JPEG, taken with Fuji FinePix E550 in Macro mode -- no tripod, so not 100% steady):

Entire Card #1 (Clearer view of RAM)

Entire Card #2 (Clearer view of other components)

The Bad News

How It's Supposed To Look

How It Actually Looks

I'll let someone else narrate this little Shakespearean drama, but I can tell you that the protagonist's tragic flaw is either the urge to improve or foolish impatience, or maybe the vector product of the two.



I'd love to attempt to repair it, but I'm not skilled at soldering (I do have a friend with some talent at it) and I don't know how to go about obtaining correct replacements for the two missing components (capacitors, I'm assuming, but with what specifications?).

And for the record, I'm fully aware of exactly how I screwed up.  Future cards will not be doomed at the hands of Renner.

:-[ ;D

The missing components are 0.1uF capacitors, ceramic, 0406 size.

Hank

Boom!

Thanks, Hank.  Any opinion on whether that scrape across the traces at the upper left will be a problem?  They still appear to be intact, but how finicky are these cards about stuff like that?

You might want to try to clean it up a bit with some rubbing alcohol. If any of the traces are broken they could be repaired with a conductive pen http://www.intertronics.co.uk/products/tec2505.htm I'm to cheap to buy one so I went to the local auto parts store and bought a rear window defroster repair kit ;D Fixed a broken trace on my AGP V5 5500 when mounting stand-offs on the rear of the card to put some coolermaster PIII fans on the back. Slipped with the needle nose pliers, you know how is is when you get in a hurry :-/

Yeah, impatience killed the Voodoo...   ;)

I did that damage with the heatsink from the second chip.  On the first chip I'd spent a couple of hours putting drops of acetone into the tiny gap between the chip and the heatsink, then gently prying with a knife blade.  Eventually it just popped off.  The second time around there was a bigger gap, so after a bit of acetone I got greedy with my knife blade and pushed it into the gap just a bit too hard...

*SNAP*

The heatsink came off all at once, and sideways instead of straight up like the other one had.  And cleaning off the two caps in the process.

I was planning to put a Zalman northbridge heatsink on each chip (the taller version), and then I had a 120mm fan set up in my case to blow directly on them.  I figured that would be about as close to silent but sufficient cooling as I could get.

Once I saw the damage I didn't spend any more time on the project, hence the adhesive still on the second chip.


Anyway, thanks for the tip.  Now I just have to get in touch with the soldering wizard and see if he's up to this job.

Being that it's a PCI card, I would try to repair it. AGP cards can be picked up on eBay for a pretty reasonable price. What am I saying, Of course I would try to repair it. What do you have to lose? I'd prolly try to do it myself to hold down expenses.

If you get it put together like you had planned. I'm sure we would all like to see some pics of it, you know, with the zalman and the 120mm fan setup 8)

Roger all of that.

:)

Well, I've got the new Mac 5500 flashed to PC, so I removed the stock heatsinks today in preparation for the Zalman sinks.  I have a pair each of the 32mm and 47mm Zalman's, and after some test-fitting and deliberation I've decided to go for the 32mm sinks after all.

My case setup for this system leaves me with enough room for the 47mm sinks, and they are a nice blue that matches the sinks I plan to put on the RAM.  However, with that 120mm fan blowing half-under, half-over the card, I believe the 32mm sinks will be adequate cooling, and they leave me with one more usable PCI slot "just in case".  I also have an idea that they actually have almost the same surface area as the 47mm sinks, because there is an extra row of fins in each direction.  Finally, if I ever do need to put 40mm fans directly on the heatsinks, it will be much simpler with the flat-topped 32mm sinks.

I had something of an epiphany while removing the stock heatsinks this time around, too.  Last time I flipped the card so the coolers were facing down, then slipped drops of acetone onto the heatsinks where they adhered to the chips (using a makeshift pipette).  After doing that several times, I tried the freezing trick and worked a blade into the crack between the actual chip and the heatsink, and pried that way... with disastrous results.

This time I repeated the acetone procedure (once the sinks come off you can see that it eats into the adhesive a couple of mm on all sides, weakening the bond by maybe 10-15% based on area), then the freezing trick.  Instead of a blade, I tried just prying with a credit card (saw that suggestion somewhere here), but it didn't provide enough force to do the job without some scary flexing.

So then I thought, hey, what if I cut that card up (it was an expired card) and use it to protect the card while I pried with something stiffer?

I cut the card into some strips of different size and slipped them between the base of the chip and the heatsink.  They were quite loose like this, but I overlapped the corners and pushed a double layer in there, which was nice and snug.  Here's a picture of what I mean (sorry, the  heatsinks are already off, but you'll get the idea anyway):

3MB Image

At this point there was basically no way the heatsink could damage anything on the card when it came free, and I had a perfect base to pry on with a nice dull flat-head screwdriver!  After re-freezing the card, I just slipped the screwdriver in on top of the credit card on the PCI connector edge, and pried up gently.  The credit card protected the base of the chip (that fragile PCB portion) from being crimped, so I could use much more force without feeling out of control.

*crack*

The heatsinks just popped loose like a charm.  After all the time I spent messing with it, once I discovered the secret it took all of 5 minutes to get both sinks off with no risk of damage (unless of course the heatspreader on the chip had pulled off instead, but they seem to be awfully strong).

Anyone who plans to do a cooling mod on a V3, V4, or V5 with the glued stock heatsinks should definitely attack it this way.  It sure takes the worry out of the procedure.

You must have missed the video in which I popped off 4 v5-6000 heatsinks in 10 seconds or less  ;D

http://www.thedodgegarage.com/video/v6k_in_lab.mpg

Hahahaha!  That was great!

Somehow I never found that video in my searching on how to  remove those suckers.

I'll but that broken 5500 off you  ;)

wrote on 27.01.06 at 16:02:45:

I'll but that broken 5500 off you  ;)

I think it's right here...  Tag this thread with an offer.

http://www.falconfly-central.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=market;action=display;num=1137996571

wrote on 27.01.06 at 17:12:09:

I think it's right here...  Tag this thread with an offer. http://www.falconfly-central.de/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=market;action=display;num=1137996571

I'm a step ahead of you, already PM'd him

wrote on 27.01.06 at 19:16:27:

I'm a step ahead of you, already PM'd him

Afraid that someone else is gonna achieve thier goals first?

???

I've been looking for a PCI V5 4ever and one reasonably cheap too for my second monitor... I believe I have a post somewhere on here about it  :-/

hmm I have sent you a PM I did find one, it says send to Europe only but if you mail the seller and ask if he want's to ship to USA as well I think that won't be a problem :)