Laptop Motherboard Repairs

[Zulema Estabrooks]

Myfriend has got a busted motherboard for a 13-4003dx with the fairly common failure mode; Burnt/blew the capacitor/Charging IC/FET that lies under that sticker near the SSD.

See here:

_laptop/

He says I can have the laptop for cheap if I can fix it. Does anyone know more of the intricate steps in how to repair this? I see x360 motherboard repair offered on eBay so I figure it can be done. I am a beginning electrical engineering student and pretty deft with a solder iron, but I'm not quite sure where to start with this repair. I've taken a good look at the circuit, but some of these ICs are not common so I'm not quite sure where to get them. If anyone has extra information that might help me, I'd be very grateful. Thanks!

We at HP do not recommend replacing such sensitive parts on your own and I would recommend you Contact HP so that a repair service could be set up to have this done by a trained professional using genuine HP Parts.

I checked the parts website, but it onl has the major assemblies, no SMD parts. However, all I may need to replace is a capacitor or two, and these HP specific. The only thing I need to find out is the capacitor value. Often times(but certainly not always), using too high a capcitor value is alright when the capacitor is being used in the voltage regulation circuit. However, I would feel much better is I know the exact value.

I also have an HP Spectre x360 13-4005dx that will not charge. Purchased 14 Dec 2015 so of course out of warranty. I hardly used this laptop. Hoping HP will stand behind this one and repair at their cost as well. Please assist.

I also have a Spectre x360 just a few months out of warranty, motherboard dies tonight, HP wants to charge $500 to fix it. There are tons of posts on this topic on these boards, it's clearly a problem with their hardware, I feel like I should expect to get more than 18 months out of a premium laptop.

I just bought mine in June of 2017 and already one of the charging ports has failed. I hate being without a laptop for HP to repair it. I guess I need to find out if it's still under warranty and what to do about it. Dammit. You'd think with as many people as are reporting the charging port failure, they would step us anf manage this.

This service also serves as a general deposit for larger projects or boards needing multiple repairs including recaps, IC replacement, BGA repairs, solder work and certain diagnostics for custom requests.

Please send along any high quality photos as it helps us determine amount of damage and a better idea on how much it will cost to repair your motherboard. The more information the better.

We take a $40 diagnostic fee to determine what is the cause of your problem. The $40 will be credited towards labor of your device should you approve the repair. See below for Terms & Conditions.

Please include your charger. While we have most chargers for laptops on hand, we like to make sure everything is working correctly including your charger, and we will test it while it is here.

Please include just the bare Motherboard, with your CPU and Ram so we can test it all after the repair. If you are sending the whole computer please Double box and securely pack your desktop computer. We have seen damaged desktops on arrival due to poor packaging.

We offer two motherboard repair services: full motherboard replacement and motherboard repair. If your motherboard is beyond repair, we can replace it and ensure all components are properly installed and functioning. In some cases, however, we can attempt to repair your motherboard. This could involve cleaning up spill damage or replacing broken components such as fans, heat sinks, or other parts.

We offer many computer repair services, including hardware and software repairs, virus and malware removal, data recovery, and more. Our team of experts can diagnose any issues with your computer and provide you with personalized solutions to meet your needs.

In addition to our repair services, we also offer diagnostic services to help you identify any potential issues with your computer before they become major problems. This proactive approach can save you time and money in the long run, as it allows us to identify and address issues early on.

At Laptop Repair, we stay updated with the latest technology trends and advancements, ensuring we provide our customers with the best possible service. We understand your computer is an important part of your daily life and are here to ensure it functions properly.

Caution! Due to the lack of integrity in the computer repair sphere, it is very important to get your laptop checked by a professional computer technician or a lab with the highest skill and experience in laptop repair.

In some cases the condition of your laptop will even become worse. Another lab, for an example, may tell you the problem stems from a faulty motherboard, when in fact the problem is in the operating system or software.

By the way, when we open any laptop to repair a motherboard in our lab, we clean the whole interior by removing dust from motherboard components as well as from a cooling system. Also, we replace old and dried thermal paste by a new better quality paste (It lies between the CPU and the heat sink, and over time it dries up to the level when it stops transferring the heat from the CPU to the heat sink. As a result the computer starts to slow down and shuts down from overheating).

Usually the price to repair the motherboard of a laptop ranges between 400NIS and 800NIS.

The price of the motherboard repair for Apple computers ranges between 800NIS and 1,500NIS.

The best thing you can do is to contact us with the description of the specific problem.

Apparently this was a common problem with this laptop, with many similar complaints on support forums. Being 1 year out of warranty, Dell was not going to repair it despite being a documented issue. They offered to sell me a new motherboard for $250. No thanks.

In my initial attempt I tried passing current to the board through the DC jack. I connected a snipped Dell DC cable to a CC/CV buck converter based on the XL4005 buck converter, commonly found on Ebay and Aliexpress for a few bucks. (Constant-current is not a feature of the XL4005 but is implemented with an op-amp and current shunt on the board.)

The DC in jack seemed to have a higher resistance than whatever was causing the short. I decided to take a more direct approach and power the board through the battery jack and see where that got me. I soldered two wires to the battery jack on the motherboard as shown below: I connected my power supply to the wires and repeated my test with the thermal camera:

This looks a lot more promising: The long QFN and inductor, located between the battery and DC input jacks, immediately began to heat. After a minute the board began soaking the heat but its still quite clear in the image below what is sourcing the heat:

We can collect your damaged laptop, completely free of charge, the same day or a preferred day of your choice. Collections arranged after 1pm will be collected on the following day. Repair collections can be from your office or home, someone will need to be present.

This is hard to answer without looking at the laptop. However, we charge 45/hr (65 for advanced board level repairs) and most repairs take between 1-2 hours to repair. We will always let you know in the quotation the exact amount it will cost, then you can decide if you would like to go ahead or not.

Portable personal computer is suitable for mobile use, a laptop has most of the same components as a desktop computer, most laptop are powered by mains electricity via an AC adapter, and can be used away from an outlet using a rechargeable battery,laptops are also sometimes called notebook computers or notebooks and other terms, such as ultra books or netbooks, refer to specific types of laptop or notebook, most of the modern day laptop computers also have a webcam and a mic microphone pre-installed, Netbooks are laptops that are inexpensive, economical, energy efficient and especially suited for wireless communication and Internet access and the basic components of laptops function similarly to their desktop counterparts, but are miniaturized, adapted to mobile use, the design bounds on power, size, and cooling of laptops limit the maximum performance of laptop parts compared to that of desktop components.

Most higher end laptops are sufficiently powerful for high resolution movie playback, some 3D gaming and video editing and encoding and laptop processors can be disadvantaged when dealing with higher-end database, maths, engineering, financial software, virtualization. Also, the top of the line mobile graphics processors GPUs are significantly behind the top of the line desktop GPUs to a greater degree than the processors, which limits the utility of laptops for high end 3D gaming and scientific visualization applications.

LaptopRepair.com is about getting you back up to full speed with a properly functioning laptop, maybe your laptop turns on and it has no display, it may be due to the graphics chip failure, as part of our commitment to providing the highest quality of service, many of our repairs are provided at flat rates and motherboard repairs take a little longer, as we realise the importance of getting it right, laptop motherboards are extremely complex pieces of electronics and need to be treated as such.

I have the service manual, I have even the schematics of entire laptop. I opened it looking for any obvious signs of damage on the motherboard. But no luck. I checked if DC power socket is firm in place. It is.

I am quite proficient at electronics, but not too familiar with laptop repair. Perhaps somebody can tell me where to start measuring the basic voltages (3.3V, 5V, etc). I can take photos of motherboard if that will help identify strategic points for measurements.

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