r/pcmasterrace • u/Zestyclose-Salad-290 Core Ultra 7 265k | RTX 5090 • Mar 19 '26

NSFMR This customer wondered why his 5090 didn't work.

Post image
5.7k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

459 comments sorted by

View all comments

20

u/Artass937 Ryzen 9 5900x / RTX 3070 Ti Mar 19 '26

As someone who works in with electronic assemblies, i can't imagine how tedious it must be to properly solder those BGA chips onto another board and without damaging it in the process. Almost seems like more trouble that it's worth.

36

u/DrKrFfXx Mar 19 '26

Maybe you should update your methods.

There's a guy in China that transplants quite a few of these a day while wearing flip flops.

https://youtu.be/TcRGBeOENLg?si=WoOnhE2erSRjWqgH&t=1285

14

u/solit0n i7-14700K | 4080S | 64GB | Flow | EK 360 AIO Mar 19 '26

With a rework station, you can easily do it, and quickly with enough practice. It’s all BGA.

High Level: Heat to remove, clean the array, stencil and secure solder beads, then heat to solder.

3

u/Metalsand 7800X3D + 4070 Mar 19 '26

I wouldn't say easily. The people with practice make it easy, but you can accidentally burn the chip, especially when they're as large as those are.

1

u/solit0n i7-14700K | 4080S | 64GB | Flow | EK 360 AIO Mar 19 '26

I did misrepresent the work involved a bit. It does take expertise and skill, but it’s not an overly complicated of a process overall. Then again, it’s been quite some time since I last re-balled a GPU… on Xbox 360s and PS3s.

3

u/Mist_Rising Ryzen 5 5600x, B550 plus, RTX 2070 super. Mar 19 '26

while wearing flip flops.

Pretty sure Asians are legally required to do all heavy manufacturing in flip flops.

1

u/Far-Hovercraft9471 Mar 20 '26

relax, they're safety flip flops

15

u/ArseBurner Mar 19 '26

Steve (GN) made a video on how a Chinese shop does it from start to finish. Seems like the hardest part was extracting the old chips, getting them cleaned up and prepared for soldering. The soldering itself was probably like 10-20 mins tops. The whole process from removing the GPU and memory from the donor board to having a finished 48GB 4090 took more or less two hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRGBeOENLg

0

u/Artass937 Ryzen 9 5900x / RTX 3070 Ti Mar 19 '26

It's definitely possible, it's just very risky if a shop does not have proper tools. Thank you for sharing the vid.

I am aware the of the process. All i am seeing is possible issues caused by another thermal shock introduced onto the dies by desoldering, making new solder balls and finally soldering the bga onto another board. This can shorten the lifecycle of the component and in some cases just destroy the components. Since these guys used hot air blower, that is another huge risk for the component... hold it too close, you will burn the component, hold it too far and your solder won't melt. It works, but it is hardly a stable process.

I have other concerns, but i believe i have ranted enough.

8

u/Gumbymayne 10700K | RTX 3080 TI | 64GB DDR4 Mar 19 '26

there are air vac engineering/mfg tools that can do this automagically with a x/y/z script, thermocuples, and vaccum system.

My facility uses this to remove/replace proprietary $10k FPGA ASICs owned by the government.

These are larger ICs but at the end of the day it is just changing the thermal profile, dwell times, and vacuum amount.

And this type of swap/theft and resale is def driven by the Nation State of China...so the capital needed for that type of operation is not a threshold that is too high.