Service manuals for GPUs. Is this a thing?

[TavinhoSensei]

Hi folks!

So, digging deeper and deeper on PC repairing i encountered some barriers. Got yesterday a GTX560 with two broken capacitors in that messy circuit just under the chip, and troubleshooting this area of the board without a schematic can go from something like "i will break my head, but i can figure out what's happening" to "oh hell, already 60h without sleep? Is this a resistor or the graphic chip?". In this situation i was wondering if it's possible to buy any documentation sort of a "service manual" for a graphics card.

Brands for common electronic devices have a way for professionals to buy service manuals and spare parts/components, Intel and AMD even allows google to show their officials datasheets, so if you want to design and build your own DIY motherboard, actually is possible (if you are a master or a god XD). So any tip for approaching ATI and Nvidia about these subjects would be great! I will be honest and tell that i don't even searched if they got a e-mail for this type of requests, or if anyone already asked this in any place on internet.

*Pic of the capacitors, one was missing and the other was pretty broken so i took him off. The board was showing some frames on post screen and going black, after take the capacitor off there was no sign of life.
**The other pic is just the boards that i have here to repair XD the HD7870 actually is finished, some internal mosfets from the chip are dead and there is no fan speed control, the 7950 have a broken HDMI. Both had their BGA redone.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

I think only maufacturers would have them. Sadly PC parts aren't treated like say automobiles. If something gets broken, you get a replacement from the manufacturer. With currently Tesla and upcoming electric cars, I'm wary that the trend will spread to auto industry too.

 

[TavinhoSensei]

I think only manufacturers would have them. Sadly PC parts aren't treated like say automobiles. If something gets broken, you get a replacement from the manufacturer. With currently Tesla and upcoming electric cars, I'm wary that the trend will spread to auto industry too.

Yeah, it's a shame, they only support their newer and more expensive cards (i guess they don't provide repair services for those too). On AMD cards i don't even found on their site information and specs about a HD7870 and a 7950 that i repaired a few days ago. For some countries i understand that would be easier and cheaper to recycle a bad card and buy a RTX3090, but in a country that instead of buy a 3090 for $1750 you would buy a GTX1650 and a 3090 would cost about $15k, is kind of comprehensive to repair a GPU.

I'm pretty used to work with Sony, LG, Samsung (and others) products, that is possible to get a service manual and spare parts and chips from the manufacturer if you are a technician.

 

[Bones]

Those are easily replaced if you know how to solder.
As long as the replacements are of the same size and shade of color it will work. I've even used pieces of a slightly different shade of color robbed from boards and cards without issue but that's the main thing.
Get the color shades and sizes matched to the originals and you should be able to fix the problems it's got.

 

[TavinhoSensei]

Those are easily replaced if you know how to solder.
As long as the replacements are of the same size and shade of color it will work. I've even used pieces of a slightly different shade of color robbed from boards and cards without issue but that's the main thing.
Get the color shades and sizes matched to the originals and you should be able to fix the problems it's got.

I am used to deal with components smaller than those, so replacing should be the easier part of the repairing.
The size should be about the same size to fit the circuit space. But about the shade of the color, it just depend about the material used by the manufacturer, it don't actually interfere with the value or the voltage rating of the capacitor.
I though about plug the card on the pc and track every signal there with the oscilloscope. With the data and some calculations it should be easier to get a more exact value.

 

[John Naylor]

Why this isn't a thing ....

Lemme see ... do I wanna pay a technician for 60 hours of work or just buy a replacement 560 off ebay for $10 - $30 ?

 

[TavinhoSensei]

Why this isn't a thing ....

Lemme see ... do I wanna pay a technician for 60 hours of work or just buy a replacement 560 off ebay for $10 - $30 ?

Yeah, that was one of my points on the answer to Khonjel, i understand that in some country it's cheaper to do this. But let's compare the differences between countries, you live in a country where average monthly income is about 1000~2000BRL, just in electricity bill you pay 300~500BRL, a GTX550Ti costs 400BRL brand new (sold my used 550ti for BRL220,00), if you want a RTX3070 you will spend 3600BRL, and a 3090? Just about 13k...
And other point was the tech waste. If we got 100% efficiency recycling methods, yeah, we could just throw away something and turn this in a new product. But the world inst perfect though.
And well for something easy as a GPU, if a technician needs more than 6 hours to diagnose and fix a GPU, he is a pretty bad technician...

 

[Frick]

Apart from the points above the waste mentality is not good for resources. Last month I got €80 for selling laptops I found in the trash room for my apartment site. They all had some problems but had nice parts that clearly were of interest to people. A GPU is a complex thing, trashing the entire thing because a few capacitors are gone just feels wrong to me. A classis example is cars. A friend of my brother had a Fiat van with some issue with the wipers. Most workshops just wanted to replace the entire box controlling that, for something like €750. He went to a small shop in town ran by some fixer guys from the middle east who fixed it with a soldering iron and took €70 for it because he knew exactly what the problem was. That is how it should be. Sadly those skills are rarely developed in wealthier nations/areas because people just replace the entire damn things instead of actually repairing stuff.

 

[Sybaris_Caesar]

Yeah, that was one of my points on the answer to Khonjel, i understand that in some country it's cheaper to do this. But let's compare the differences between countries, you live in a country where average monthly income is about 1000~2000BRL, just in electricity bill you pay 300~500BRL, a GTX550Ti costs 400BRL brand new (sold my used 550ti for BRL220,00), if you want a RTX3070 you will spend 3600BRL, and a 3090? Just about 13k...
And other point was the tech waste. If we got 100% efficiency recycling methods, yeah, we could just throw away something and turn this in a new product. But the world inst perfect though.
And well for something easy as a GPU, if a technician needs more than 6 hours to diagnose and fix a GPU, he is a pretty bad technician...

I guess you're from Brazil? I heard some backward-ass things about problem buying tech things in Brazil. Can you shed some light to me. Is it strict import laws or too high taxation? I sometimes see Brazilians posting online that it's cheaper to order things off of Amazon US or similar.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Looks like those are just bypass caps. They shouldn't have a massive impact on the card even if you can't find the exact same type.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I guess you're from Brazil? I heard some backward-ass things about problem buying tech things in Brazil. Can you shed some light to me. Is it strict import laws or too high taxation? I sometimes see Brazilians posting online that it's cheaper to order things off of Amazon US or similar.

One word. Protectionism.

The government wants everything to be made in Brazil, so imported things are stupidly expensive and if you get caught importing something, the tax is stupid.

Asus, Foxconn and others have factories there just because of this.

I've shipped kickstarter products to Brazil and except for Israel, it's the worst country in the world to ship to. Greece is the worst country in Europe, as the customs workers scam people at try to charge €100 for nothing. Indonesia is also quite bad. In the Philippines the postal workers just take the stuff and claim it went missing en route...

 

[oobymach]

Used to be able to get service manuals online for most electronics, either from the manufacturer website or a repair manual collection. Not sure if they exist for gpus.

You can try contacting them here.

Contact Us

www.xfxforce.com

 

[TavinhoSensei]

Apart from the points above the waste mentality is not good for resources. Last month I got €80 for selling laptops I found in the trash room for my apartment site. They all had some problems but had nice parts that clearly were of interest to people. A GPU is a complex thing, trashing the entire thing because a few capacitors are gone just feels wrong to me. A classis example is cars. A friend of my brother had a Fiat van with some issue with the wipers. Most workshops just wanted to replace the entire box controlling that, for something like €750. He went to a small shop in town ran by some fixer guys from the middle east who fixed it with a soldering iron and took €70 for it because he knew exactly what the problem was. That is how it should be. Sadly those skills are rarely developed in wealthier nations/areas because people just replace the entire damn things instead of actually repairing stuff.

Actually i upgraded my pc from a 9600GT to a GTX550Ti, then a HD7870 and now i have that HD7950. Apart from my very first ATI X1600, i had to repair all of those (but was actually fun to do it =D). I imagine that not everyone wants to run the heaviest game on highest settings (like me), just want a pc to open chrome and play some games and spend money on something else, principally when you live on a country that can make a GTX1050Ti pretty expensive. And well, this "green" and "ecological" generation sucks on being ecological =\ wall-e movie didn't teach anything, how much waste...

I guess you're from Brazil? I heard some backward-ass things about problem buying tech things in Brazil. Can you shed some light to me. Is it strict import laws or too high taxation? I sometimes see Brazilians posting online that it's cheaper to order things off of Amazon US or similar.

Exactly, tech market in Brazil isn't cheap. By strict laws you mean restriction for importing products? If so, no at all, it's pretty easy to import basically anything (depending on what you plan to import you probably can go to jail hahahah). I would blame the cheap currency (1$ to 5,59BRL) and the taxes (~60%). Yeah, i bought a R$50 Xeon E5440 from Ali, and it get's almost the same benchmark scores as my dad's Ryzen 5 1400 that costs ~R$500. And well, i'm pretty happy playing gta online at highest settings with 37FPS+ i see on many foruns better specs struggling to run on low or medium settings, so i made a good deal hahahah

Looks like those are just bypass caps. They shouldn't have a massive impact on the card even if you can't find the exact same type.

What i could see is that there is more things wrong there, the chip is working fine (he warms up a little on bios screen and burned my finger when it passed POST and gone for windows). It still don't give image though.

One word. Protectionism.
The government wants everything to be made in Brazil, so imported things are stupidly expensive and if you get caught importing something, the tax is stupid.
Asus, Foxconn and others have factories there just because of this.
I've shipped kickstarter products to Brazil and except for Israel, it's the worst country in the world to ship to. Greece is the worst country in Europe, as the customs workers scam people at try to charge €100 for nothing. Indonesia is also quite bad. In the Philippines the postal workers just take the stuff and claim it went missing en route...

One word. Stupidity. A motherboard LGA775 DDR3 made in Brazil costs about R$390, a Biostar A320 costs R$400, a basic Asus don't go under R$550.. Dunno about the government wanting things to being made on Brazil, but agree with the abusive taxes, even for national products.

 

[FinneousPJ]

How do you mean you get a bios screen but no image?

 

[TavinhoSensei]

Used to be able to get service manuals online for most electronics, either from the manufacturer website or a repair manual collection. Not sure if they exist for gpus.
You can try contacting them here.

Contact Us

www.xfxforce.com

Got many physical service manuals of older things, many .pdf too, but for others things it's pretty easy for getting a datasheet or service manual. But have being working on GPUs and PC parts just recently and found so few peoples actually repairing this things.

How do you mean you get a bios screen but no image?

Not that it really shows the bios screen, i meant that it can get to bios and respond the commands, and it can POST and boot windows. I will analise, but maybe i will do a reflow just to see if it show any sign of life, if so, i can go for a rebbaling

 

[Bones]

I am used to deal with components smaller than those, so replacing should be the easier part of the repairing.
The size should be about the same size to fit the circuit space. But about the shade of the color, it just depend about the material used by the manufacturer, it don't actually interfere with the value or the voltage rating of the capacitor.
I though about plug the card on the pc and track every signal there with the oscilloscope. With the data and some calculations it should be easier to get a more exact value.

You're probrably right about that but I prefer to match them as closely as possible to help ensure the replacement is the same as the original, esp if having to rob dead stuff to get them which I have to do.

 

[Zach_01]

Hi folks!

So, digging deeper and deeper on PC repairing i encountered some barriers. Got yesterday a GTX560 with two broken capacitors in that messy circuit just under the chip, and troubleshooting this area of the board without a schematic can go from something like "i will break my head, but i can figure out what's happening" to "oh hell, already 60h without sleep? Is this a resistor or the graphic chip?". In this situation i was wondering if it's possible to buy any documentation sort of a "service manual" for a graphics card.

Brands for common electronic devices have a way for professionals to buy service manuals and spare parts/components, Intel and AMD even allows google to show their officials datasheets, so if you want to design and build your own DIY motherboard, actually is possible (if you are a master or a god XD). So any tip for approaching ATI and Nvidia about these subjects would be great! I will be honest and tell that i don't even searched if they got a e-mail for this type of requests, or if anyone already asked this in any place on internet.

*Pic of the capacitors, one was missing and the other was pretty broken so i took him off. The board was showing some frames on post screen and going black, after take the capacitor off there was no sign of life.
**The other pic is just the boards that i have here to repair XD the HD7870 actually is finished, some internal mosfets from the chip are dead and there is no fan speed control, the 7950 have a broken HDMI. Both had their BGA redone.
View attachment 172191 View attachment 172192

If you can find caps the same color as the ones in green boxes and you can solder them, I think you'll be fine.

 

[TheLostSwede]

One word. Stupidity. A motherboard LGA775 DDR3 made in Brazil costs about R$390, a Biostar A320 costs R$400, a basic Asus don't go under R$550.. Dunno about the government wanting things to being made on Brazil, but agree with the abusive taxes, even for national products.

Oh, I agree.

Looks like Asus is expanding in Brazil, although this article is a couple of years old.

Asus to Expand Manufacturing in Indonesia and Brazil, Executive Says

The company is also scouting for collaboration, investments, and acquisitions in Israel, Benjamin Yeh, Asus director for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific said in an interview

www.calcalistech.com

Looks like Qualcomm is also making some chips in Brazil for the local market.

Qualcomm, USI and ASUS Collaborate to Foster Growth of Mobile and Semiconductor Industry in Brazil | Qualcomm

In São Paulo today Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (USI) and ASUS, highlighted their collaboration to grow the mobile and semiconductor industry in Brazil by

www.qualcomm.com

I got a Brazilian friend and ex colleague here who used to work as a software developer for a local router manufacturer in Brazil.
He doesn't have much good to say about how the tech industry works in Brazil.

It's a similar situation in India as well, although not quite as bad. This is why a lot of the phone manufacturers, including Apple, is now making their devices in India.
The slogan there is Make in India...

 

[delshay]

If you can find caps the same color as the ones in green boxes and you can solder them, I think you'll be fine.

View attachment 172402

That's correct.

In most cases, ceramic capacitors are repeated in the same area, so if you want the real value, desolder a good similar capacitor not too far away & take a measurement.

You could also buy more faulty cards of the same make & model to be 100% sure replacement part(s) are correct..

 

[ArdWar]

As an electronic engineer, it really hurts when someone recommends picking components based on size and shade. MLCC come with extremely wide range of voltage, capacitance and dielectric characteristic. MLCC made by the same manufacturer almost always come with the same shade regardless of value or characteristics. A 0402-size MLCC for example can be anywhere from 1pf 50V to 1uf 6.3V, that's six order of magnitude difference!

Or worse, a black "resistor" can be anywhere from zero Ohm to tens of MegaOhm with the same physical size. Fortunately resistors are marked.

But yeah, unfortunately, MLCCs are rarely (if ever) marked. Fortunately, capacitors on modern digital circuits also rarely requires critical accuracy. Just putting reasonable value with reasonable voltage rating should be enough.

 

[TavinhoSensei]

You're probrably right about that but I prefer to match them as closely as possible to help ensure the replacement is the same as the original, esp if having to rob dead stuff to get them which I have to do.

I will take out some capacitors around that looks similar and take some measures to see if it follows some pattern. I dunno if even a great oscilloscope can measure the signals around there, but i will give a shot.

If you can find caps the same color as the ones in green boxes and you can solder them, I think you'll be fine.

That's correct.
In most cases, ceramic capacitors are repeated in the same area, so if you want the real value, desolder a good similar capacitor not too far away & take a measurement.
You could also buy more faulty cards of the same make & model to be 100% sure replacement part(s) are correct..

I never designed too many circuits by myself, but participate in some. Always hear that is liked to put the same values the much as possible (+quantity -price), and was faster for placing components (manually or by machine). But actually near CIs and chipsets, the components have close or same values because the CI has similar electrical characteristics between pins (just like an arduino, if you design a protection for one pin, it will be the same for all pins). But choosing them by color or size, it's totally wrong...

Oh, I agree.
Looks like Asus is expanding in Brazil, although this article is a couple of years old.

Asus to Expand Manufacturing in Indonesia and Brazil, Executive Says

The company is also scouting for collaboration, investments, and acquisitions in Israel, Benjamin Yeh, Asus director for Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific said in an interview

www.calcalistech.com

Looks like Qualcomm is also making some chips in Brazil for the local market.

Qualcomm, USI and ASUS Collaborate to Foster Growth of Mobile and Semiconductor Industry in Brazil | Qualcomm

In São Paulo today Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, Universal Scientific Industrial (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (USI) and ASUS, highlighted their collaboration to grow the mobile and semiconductor industry in Brazil by

www.qualcomm.com

I got a Brazilian friend and ex colleague here who used to work as a software developer for a local router manufacturer in Brazil.
He doesn't have much good to say about how the tech industry works in Brazil.
It's a similar situation in India as well, although not quite as bad. This is why a lot of the phone manufacturers, including Apple, is now making their devices in India.
The slogan there is Make in India...

Yeah, actually the government basically sucks, we have the technology, we have the resources, but we have many barriers to national business and so many taxes that's easier to a international brand come than something national growing up.

As an electronic engineer, it really hurts when someone recommends picking components based on size and shade. MLCC come with extremely wide range of voltage, capacitance and dielectric characteristic. MLCC made by the same manufacturer almost always come with the same shade regardless of value or characteristics. A 0402-size MLCC for example can be anywhere from 1pf 50V to 1uf 6.3V, that's six order of magnitude difference!

Or worse, a black "resistor" can be anywhere from zero Ohm to tens of MegaOhm with the same physical size. Fortunately resistors are marked.

But yeah, unfortunately, MLCCs are rarely (if ever) marked. Fortunately, capacitors on modern digital circuits also rarely requires critical accuracy. Just putting reasonable value with reasonable voltage rating should be enough.

As a electronic technician, it hurts me too, electronic isn't a monster, but is not THAT easy. But what about a 01005, how can i know the color? I barely see the component . Jokes apart. Yeah, gladly i know enough to never pick a component by shade or size, on my reply to Bones i said that the shade of the color depends on the material that the manufacturer used. But sad to see this type of tip being given.
Already saw marked MLCCs but only on Mouser or in photos on google, and ever some resistor on a GPU aren't marked too.

I put some new capacitors there, a little bigger, but the value should be close enough. It's not giving image yet, but the GPU is working just fine and the PC still can POST.

 

[delshay]

TavaresDB

Have you actually removed every single ceramic capacitor behind a GPU & measured it. Too tell you the truth I have not, but I have removed all capacitors behind a CPU. Not the same thing but it will give you an idea how many different values there are.

When I removed all the ceramic capacitors behind the CPU, I measured every single one & put them in a pile for each value. There was only "five different values".

I take ceramic capacitors from dead motherboards & use them for experiments. I can carry out the same experiment on a GPU as I have one dead card. How many different values do you think I will find.

Zach_01 is correct , as you are more likely to hit the correct capacitor with 100% accuracy as you are taking capacitors from the "same batch of capacitors" including colour of the capacitor, from the same area, same power plane, same card.
If it was a different card then that will not work.

Anyway don't anyone take my word for it, I welcome "any user" to de-soldered all the ceramics capacitors behind the GPU from a dead card they don't care about & post how many different values did they find.

 

[Ruru]

I remember using just some random similar SMD caps on my old GTX 470 and it worked for around 2 years flawlessly after that.

 

[Bones]

As a electronic technician, it hurts me too, electronic isn't a monster, but is not THAT easy. But what about a 01005, how can i know the color? I barely see the component . Jokes apart. Yeah, gladly i know enough to never pick a component by shade or size, on my reply to Bones i said that the shade of the color depends on the material that the manufacturer used. But sad to see this type of tip being given.

I can't disagree but as said that's just how I have to do it but over multiple fixes done it's always worked with no ill-effects, all that's I've fixed so far still works fine.
I don't have access to real testing equipment, in my case it's just "Make it work" and that's what I have to do.

I do suggest if you have access to testing equip, use it to be sure what you are wanting to use is indeed the right part(s) it needs.

 

[TavinhoSensei]

TavaresDB
Have you actually removed every single ceramic capacitor behind a GPU & measured it. Too tell you the truth I have not, but I have removed all capacitors behind a CPU. Not the same thing but it will give you an idea how many different values there are.
When I removed all the ceramic capacitors behind the CPU, I measured every single one & put them in a pile for each value. There was only "five different values".
I take ceramic capacitors from dead motherboards & use them for experiments. I can carry out the same experiment on a GPU as I have one dead card. How many different values do you think I will find.
Zach_01 is correct , as you are more likely to hit the correct capacitor with 100% accuracy as you are taking capacitors from the "same batch of capacitors" including colour of the capacitor, from the same area, same power plane, same card.
If it was a different card then that will not work.
Anyway don't anyone take my word for it, I welcome "any user" to de-soldered all the ceramics capacitors behind the GPU from a dead card they don't care about & post how many different values did they find.

No, actually in six GPU repairing that i've done until today, just this one i had to work on this part of the card, and i prefer to not take all of these out .

Well, i was not disagreeing with you or Zach_01. I guess that i could made it clearer, my bad. In my answer i said "But actually near CIs and chipsets, the components have close or same values because the CI has similar electrical characteristics between pins", that would actually totally agree with you guys, and would be a badbasic explanation of why if you take every single MLCC behind a CPU or a GPU, you would end with that "many" different values. But working way more with general electronics than GPUs or PC parts, my opinion is that choose a capacitor just by color and size is pretty wrong.

And i do believe that measuring the MLCCs of any brand of a GTX560 could give the exact value needed. Being the chip GF114-325-A1, the values of the components around the chip should be pretty always the same.

I remember using just some random similar SMD caps on my old GTX 470 and it worked for around 2 years flawlessly after that.

Yeah :\ i did some tests yesterday and found more bad capacitors. Probably i'm going to spend a couple of hours taking those off and measure them. Could order them on Mouser though, i don't have any stock of MLCCs.

I can't disagree but as said that's just how I have to do it but over multiple fixes done it's always worked with no ill-effects, all that's I've fixed so far still works fine.
I don't have access to real testing equipment, in my case it's just "Make it work" and that's what I have to do.
I do suggest if you have access to testing equip, use it to be sure what you are wanting to use is indeed the right part(s) it needs.

I explained to delshay too, could have expressed me better, sorry. In specific cases like CPU or GPU this actually can be done sometimes. But as i'm used to general eletronics, changing just a little the value of a capacitor can lead to pretty bad results (pretty cool if you like to see things blowing up though hahahah).