What do you do to keep the GPU cool?

My laptop turns on, but I see no video?

What if my need is not listed?

As an electronics technician, laptops and desktops are not the only items I work on. If you have a specific need that is not listed above, please feel free to email me at

This section will try to answer the most often asked questions I get.

Follow the links below for an indepth answer to each question.

My desktop turns on. I see no video?

What if my need is not listed?

As an electronics technician, laptops and desktops are not the only items I work on. If you have a specific need that is not listed above, please feel free to email me at

Do you add copper shims or pennies?

What if my need is not listed?

This section will try to answer the most often asked questions I get.

My laptop will not charge my battery?

What if my need is not listed?

In a previous article I had written, Do you use pennies or copper shims?, I had tried to explain in a straightforward and concise manner that copper shims do not help cool your chipsets in a proper manner as to keep it from overheating.

To get to my update one day I was speaking to a computer shop owner whom had called me to express his desire to add copper shims to his laptop repairs. I tried my best to convince him that copper causes issues when trying to cool the system. Between the capacitors located on the top of the chipset and overloading the motherboard electrical circuits, my warnings were let go by the way side. He stated, “I can just add a penny and get the chipset to cool down and my customers will be happy in the end.” Now, this is where I started thinking. My father is an avid coin collector and stamp collector and is electronics professional. He has done both for many years so I decided to ask him a few questions. As I was asking him questions, he decided to ask me one which was, “How much copper do you think is in a penny?” This got me to thinking, “Yeah, your right how much copper is in a penny?” Well, the chart below explains just how much is in a penny.

1982 – 2011 Zinc Lincoln Cent Value (United States)

Now, I had written a few forum posts on the HP Support forums stating about the copper shim danger and what it can do to your chipsets when a guy from Ontario made the comment.

“Well, I agree copper shims are bad. I used a penny in a repair and it failed, that is why now I use dimes because they are made of silver.”

Well, let us put the facts straight. Dimes may appear silver, but have not been made of silver since 1964. Not one grain of silver is in what is called a clad coin, or coins produced after 1964 for general circulation unless it is a Kennedy Half Dollar or Eisenhower Silver Dollar up to 1971 which are 40% silver by volume. Below is the chart showing us what is in a dime.

1965 – 2011 Roosevelt Dime Value (United States)

Now, we see that a dime is far from silver, but COPPER! Amazing, huh?

Both coins now have had their compositions explained so now we have to get all scientific. For developing why pennies, dimes, and copper shims do not work besides the obvious dangers, we have to refer to the basic laws of thermodynamics. You may say, “The laws of thermo-what?” As I explain what I mean we must reference what is called the first law of thermodynamics and it states:

The first law of thermodynamics distinguishes between two kinds of physical process, namely energy transfer as work, and energy transfer as heat. It tells how this shows the existence of a mathematical quantity called the internal energy of a system. The internal energy obeys the principle of conservation of energy but work and heat are not defined as separately conserved quantities. Equivalently, the first law of thermodynamics states that perpetual motion machines of the first kind are impossible.

In layman’s terms spelled out the first law states:

Matter and energy can not be created or destroyed (only converted between the two). Likewise, heat-the movement of energy from a hotter object to a cooler object-is never eliminated, but only moved elsewhere. To accomplish this, there are three primary modes of heat transfer: convection, conduction, and radiation.

By adding a copper shim or a penny you have only adapted the first law of thermodynamics to amplify the mode of heat transfer by conduction since the principal is explained as:

Conduction – the transfer of heat through matter with no net displacement of the matter

Now that copper shims and pennies only operate primarily on conduction, you have to relate that certain substances and metals have a level of thermal conductivity. Thermal conductivity is explained as:

Thermal Conductivity is the amount of heat a particular substance can carry through it in a unit time. Usually expressed in W/(mK), the units represent how many Watts of heat can be conducted through a one meter thickness of said material with a one Kelvin temperature difference between the two ends.

The thermal conductivity of all substances can be rated on this scale. Human bodies, copper, water, shaving cream, a piece of bread can be weighed by this principal and scientific fact. The chart below shows how each substance conducts heat over time.

Thermodynamic Profiles in W/(mK)

Highlighted in this chart we see how copper rates on the list. As part of the principal of thermal conductivity you can see that conduction is also rated on the principal that the item must heat up aggressively. With this being said the conductor must wick heat then move it elsewhere otherwise it wicks the heat then superheats the shim then heats the chipset by way of convection causing a failure.

We also see how pennies are made of zinc, not copper, as the primary composition which rates nowhere on the chart. That can be found here:

The idea of using pennies as a copper shim will not work. Then using a dime will? No, the idea of running a dime as a copper shim will work in theory except the principal of thermal conductivity says the dime will heat up to transfer the heat from the shim, but goes nowhere after that. Heating the motherboard in such a localized manner can cause the flexing, or distortion, of the PCB layers. With distortion, you get flexing and uneven heating causing unrepairable damage to the layers of the motherboard.

As a trend I see variations of the heater coil principal were homemade heat sinks are comprised of aluminum and copper layers. The idea is that the application of the principal in industrial applications can be scaled down to work properly in a electronic situation to help or assist the removal of heat. I give an A for effort, an A for logic, and a F for practicality. As technicians we have to reference back to the principal of thermodynamics and its first law then place logic that convection is the mode of transport for this energy that we are trying to displace. When we take all of that into account we find that the logic and effort will not move the mountain of practicality. Below is an example of an aluminum handmade heatsink placed on a laptop chipset by an eBay seller:

Between the 27 single layers of aluminum foil we see and the electrical tape we have to wonder if this was actually worth the effort. I can say if it ended in my shop, I will say no.

In this post I will try to show and display the added stress that using a hot air system of any kind can damage the system motherboard. Now, in the hands of a skilled technician hot air systems can work great on non-powered chipsets, ie. chipsets with capacitors on top of them. Now I get questions all the time asking me such great questions as:

1. Why do I need to have a reflow performed by an IR system when I can do it with…. now we fill in the blank with such great industrial items as hair dryers, shrink wrap gun, heat gun, hot air station, flaming alcohol?

2. Why reflow it since it will fail again?

In the picture overhead, you see some of the damage that hot air systems will do to your chipset. As explained in the video below, the capacitors are visible to have been removed by force with the hot air system.

Here is a little video that can help you to get on the road to repair with your Apple MacBook Pro Unibody if it has no video.

As an example we received a local drop off service for a Compaq CQ50-139WM laptop system that displayed a flashing DC jack and no power to the system. The DC power jack blinked in a uniform fashion to indicate an error code, but error codes are not detailed by HP or Compaq for blinking DC power jacks, to our knowledge. The system was delivered due to the belief it required a reflow service for the chipsets since the laptop is a common system to be affected here recently with a chipset failure, but upon further inspection this system is an Intel based laptop (506519-001) with an Intel based processor (SLB6M) and Intel based GPU chipsets (SLB8Q and SLB95) which are rarely affected by reflow issues.

Usually we test the memory to verify that the memory is not dropping the voltage since the DDR2 slots are reversed in the Compaq CQ50 line of laptops, but a blinking DC power jack does not indicate a short, no power, but indicates a reset from a power rail failure, a blinking DC power jack.

Currently, we have a system with an Intel motherboard from a Compaq CQ50 laptop, a blinking or pulsing DC power jack, and memory that is not found to be failed. Our only option is disassembly of the laptop to verify the issue from the circuit level diagnostics using our Fluke based testing equipment. We use a simple Fluke 117 RMS digital multimeter to test most motherboards in our shop. The multimeter can give you the best diagnostics for the laptop from our tests.

One hour later, our Compaq CQ50 laptop is disassembled and is lying ready for the troubleshooting we perform. For our testing, we only use HP branded OEM power supplies. The difficulty with using a non-branded power supply from China or a Targus adapter from Walmart is that the power supplies are variable rate and variable wattage which could lead to issues with diagnostics. A variable rate power supply may not supply the correct or higher level of Amps while still supplying the correct wattage which could lead to a false positive while diagnosing your system on the bench.

Before we even test the laptop again with power we test the power rail which is located by the DC power jack. We test the mosFET labeled U1 with a signifier of 4407 on the chip which is a known mosFET to fail in both HP DV6000 and HP DV9000 Intel based and AMD based laptop systems regularly. The chip reads 0.000 which shows our test equipment is working properly to begin. The way we test this chip is across the VCC and the Ground legs to measure the reading.

Now we plug the DC power jack in to signify that the power supply is good and blinking. We achieve this test outright by plugging the adapter in.

Then we move to testing the laptop system with the power adapter plugged in to the DC power jack with our Fluke 117 multimeter. The multimeter gives different readings from the same position telling us the mosFET may be damaged internally. The mosFET is a P-channel mosFET. The gates within the chip are switching on and off giving us the variable up and down ratings.

To be absolutely sure, we have to do a thermoelectric test by using our infrared thermometer. By using our thermometer we can get a reading of the chip and if anything internally is failing within the chip. The chip specifics state the chip to be in tolerances requires a 25C rating or a 77F rating. With this we test our infrared thermometer to check the office and get a rating of 76F for our room temperature in our office.

Then the chip after being plugged in to get a reading from the multimeter showed a rating of 86.5F

After attaching the power adapter to the DC power jack and gathering a rating we had a reading well outside the range for failure specifying this chip is the issue with the laptop.

Below is a video of our test displaying our findings with narration and explanation for those wanting to test or get a better understanding of the steps we took to test the unit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAYMqr1zvoY

To the point, we are not just an average break fix computer company. We are not just a degree holding computer repair facility. We are not just a reflow and reballing facility. We are an electronics company.

We fix TVs. We fix amplifiers. We fix stereos. We fix laptops. We fix desktops. We fix TCUs. We fix printers. We fix battery chargers. We fix about anything that can be soldered or tested with a scope, multimeter, or continuity tester.

We use only Hakko-branded equipment for our fine pitch soldering. We have all Fluke-branded electrical test equipment.

Below is an example of a system that was sent to a Florida-based repair facility off of eBay who could not fix the unit. Their solution was to replace the motherboard. For all their soldering knowledge, testing equipment, and time they only could suggest a motherboard replacement.

In the picture above the mosFET, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosfet, was damaged due to a short overloading one of the gates. This simple solder work can only be performed by hand, with the right equipment, and with the correct knowledge.

After the pick and place parts repair was performed we had a fully working and functional machine for our client in less than 24 hours.

Now can your computer shop do this for you? If not, then we are willing to offer you a deal to try our service out in the state of Georgia.

Write me at one of the contacts below and I will make sure to make it worth your time:

Website: http://www.doubleclickittofixit.com/
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