I asked Steve to not mention my name in the video as I am embarrassed I broke that cable. Thank you Steve for only mentioning my name a few times! :-). Steve did an awesome job on this repair. I can confirm the card is still running perfect a month after receiving it back. The GPU is running a lot cooler thanks to the premium heat pads and the perfect amount of thermal paste. I do not see the temps of the VRAM well into the 90s when gaming anymore. 95C is the max temp for the VRAM chips recommended by the manufacture and this card can easily go above that when running demanding games. For those curious about frames per second, I did not run a benchmark with the stock heat pads before the repair so I can’t confirm a performance increase but the lower operating temperature should help prolong the longevity of the card. There is probably a performance increase in some games as the card will not have to reduce voltage to reduce temperature as much. That fan wire is a lot smaller than it looks in the video. As I remember, it is only 3 or 4 mm wide. It takes a great deal of talent to fix something that small. If anyone owns a Nvidia founders edition 3000 series GPU, I recommend the heat pad replacement for cooler temperatures (some report a 20C drop in temps after replacing the heat pads) but be very careful with those three small cables! Thank you Steve for the repair! I love this GPU and I am happy to have it back and running cooler.
I love that you don't mind showing mistakes. Too many people go out of their way to make it seem to be afraid of showing a mistake on camera. Keep up the awesome content!!!
What makes this guy so sympathetic is that he also shows his own fails ... just to encourage others and himself to make it better and to take lessons about own fails! That's a great attitude!
When you start soldering ribbon cables you have unlocked god mode in electronics repair. Video, time, upload, you know I know it all detracts from the fixed number of minutes you have for the day and I appreciate the fact you share your allotted minutes with us....
Given the market right now, repairing GPU's is probably fairly profitable. Sure, a lot of cards on eBay are complete duds. But often times people just don't bother running full tests and end up selling a card that has a simple fix. Hell, my R9 290X was a repaired card. Just needed a BIOS flash after it'd been used for extreme overclocking and it worked like a charm for almost 2 years.
Most broken video cards probably need reflows. Not exactly easy or cheap. Most of the broken ones I see on eBay the sellers already list the problems. So that makes it even more difficult to want to purchase next to how over priced broken GPU's are. I can find betters deals in online auctions any day of the week. Few weeks ago I won a Clevo Sager P750DM-G laptop for $159. Worth about $900 if I part it out.
@@wmp0074 i repair graphics cards. A reflow isn’t actually fixing anything. Most gpus end up having a dead core from the vrm failing and sending 12v directly to the core
@@CocoaEm More than often VRM failure is caused by overclocking. Exceeding the VRM's thermal limits or simply a piss poor design on cooling. I believe cracked solder joints is a more common issue though. Seen it many times on laptops and TV's.
@@wmp0074 this is partially due to the nature of the beast , no one games 24/7 . Heat cycling is unfortunately a surefire way many fpgas and similar components crack the traces. Rendering the gpu inoperable but not always and a lot of folks try to oven it . which can possibly work if the done correctly and if in fact that was the issue. if not you run the risk of potentially dislodging another component
Sad that they've moved to ribbon cables. I've spliced wires before for GPU fans to rebuild mining cards but broken ribbons are one step too far for my basic soldering skills!
Repairing traces is the most hard for me when repairing board. You need a huge patient to be good at that. Unfortunately i've only have a little while opportunity to practice trace repair when i'm working in electronics factory before i lost my job because of the pandemic. I hope i can buy professional microscope one day and start again my because it's quite expensive in my country.
Man, I went "nooooooo" when you said that it was soldered backwards. Been there so many times when soldering connectors, Props for showing the mistakes and the successes.
@@Tronicsfix Please do. I love console repairs, but as the PC gaming consumers are out there we want to learn more in case we need to learn how to fix out hardware instead of having to replace and buy a new gpu that is gonna scalp us. Plus I really enjoyed this video. 1000%
Hey man! Just wanted to leave a comment here, I´m an electronic engineer starting to watch your videos and really enjoying them. I just LOVE seeing you take apart things, inspecting them to see every single detail that could be malfunctioning. Keep the videos up bro!
That threading of the ribbon cable reminded me of the nightmare of (I think was) the 3DS screen ribbon threading. Great video as always. Perfect for a Saturday morning here in AU.
I did this exact same repair but didn't use wires. It was a clean tear so I taped a piece of tape to my workbench sticky side up. Then I put the two pieces of the cable on it lined up. I scraped a little of the plastic away and used a conductive pen to repair the connections. After each dried I put some enamel paint on each repaired section and then did the same to each subsequent conductor. Then I taped it fully together for strength. It worked great.
Same Thermal pads i used when i cleaned my Xbox one x,and i put on the perfect amout of thermal paste on the apu chip,ur x1x vid on how too replace it was very usefull Cheers from the artic circle city norway🥃🇳🇴
I was replacing some SMT LED’s on some light bars on our fire engines yesterday. The disassembly was involved . I managed to install all 12 LEDS backwards! Soooo back apart, reinstall LED’s correctly and reassemble. A 2 hour job turned into 5. It happens I guess.
Great video Steve. Love seeing you tackle different tech. I had to repair my graphics card fan a few years back...... Had some fun with a dremmel. Keep up the good work man. 👍👍👍
I've done this repair twice. I use old IDE cables with solder mask and some very sturdy hand work. This way you can cut down the cable to remove the crispy bits and lengthen it to the correct size. All the wires are attached to each other so once you have the corners done the rest is easy without worrying about melting the IDE shielding. I'm 'legally' blind so all my work needs to be done under a microscope where it's big and bright enough for me to see. I've even made a pair of glasses that magnify the same as my scope.
Oh I've been waiting for a PC hardware like this. I remember requesting you to fix PC parts and/or building PCs too. So i appreciate it. I didn't check my last comment to see how many liked my comment. . But I can tell you approve it because you worked on your first GPU. So never mind about my last comment haha.
Damn this was precision work. These cables are a lot smaler than many peole think they are. A good way to imagine how smal they are is to look at a USB-C connector (Like on your phone). The cable is about half as wide and can be stacked about 10-15 times in there. Not ripping them off, considering their placement and the weight of the card (as well as the fact that these cards are not really that easy to hold with one hand), is possibly harder than ripping them of.
Just repaired my GPU recently by putting in new thermal paste and thermal pads. Much better than spending absurd money for scalped graphics cards! I'll keep this one running as long as I can.
I think if that happened to me i would just use a regular 120mm fan and take power off a fan fort on the mb or take 12v off the psu and just have the fan run full speed all the time. Cool you were able to salvage the old fan thoigh, i didnt know you can sand and solider to ribbon cables like that. Or use it as an excuse to buy a water block and do a open loop setup.
Thank you for including the mistakes you make. Everyone makes them but not many people have the confidence to show them. By including them people will understand better how easy it is to get something backwards and that it's not the end of the world when it happens.
I would love and watch a video of you repairng gaming desktop im asking for a hot air station for christmas and and looking forward to all the new things i could fix. Love your channel keep up the great work.
Nice job, I had to do something like this recently and that's not an easy job whatsoever. Especially without a microscope. I used a small 10 times lens.
I wonder if its possible to find a similar sized ribbon cable and scrape of the mask and lay it on top of the broken one exposed copper to exposed copper with a little solder and heat it so it melts together?
dont you think was a good idea to put mask to the actual wires because the are expose to metal brackets casing?or even some thermal shricking tube...thanks for the video
Nice video! Cool that you include all mistakes. Just a note (not sure if is the same case for 3080) I had a gtx 970 that recently broke on me because I put to much thermalpaste. I had my GPU send to an expert and he told me that for CPU you are suppose to have a thick layer of thermalpaste but for the GPU there should be just a thin layer. I put way less thermalpaste om my GPU then you did in this rebuild and it still splashed over the chip cousing it tp break. As I said, i'm not an expert myself and I am sure that someone in the comments can correct me if I am wrong. I got that information from "Inet" that is swedish biggest computer store. Great job with the rebuild!
When ever you do non game console repairs. I am just waiting for you to do a video where your like. “I bought this used nuclear reactor. Let’s see if I can fix it.”
I know exactly how much of a PITA it is to work on those founders edition ribbon cables! I had a joyous time doing it when I installed a waterblock on my 3080 Ti Founders Edition card! Lol
Sorry if this is a bit off topic Steve, but I can't wait to see how the steamdeck fairs after its release date In February. Hoping its a decent product and you don't see too many broken right off the bat. I wonder if valve would let you open one up and review (without having to purchase lol). Keep up the great work!
amazing job as always steve.. plus that zelda tidbit is much appreciated .. ive been googling zelda puzzles since the olden times of ocaria of time.. up to botw XD
For anyone wondering this fix and the graphics card worked great. The viewer who sent it in updated me after the video was already edited.
Thanks for the update.
That's wonderful!
Nice! I don't think it was even the fan cable fix that did it. It was because of the perfect sized slices of thermal pads!
I was wondering if it was a successful fix...
That’s great to hear it worked
I asked Steve to not mention my name in the video as I am embarrassed I broke that cable. Thank you Steve for only mentioning my name a few times! :-). Steve did an awesome job on this repair. I can confirm the card is still running perfect a month after receiving it back. The GPU is running a lot cooler thanks to the premium heat pads and the perfect amount of thermal paste. I do not see the temps of the VRAM well into the 90s when gaming anymore. 95C is the max temp for the VRAM chips recommended by the manufacture and this card can easily go above that when running demanding games. For those curious about frames per second, I did not run a benchmark with the stock heat pads before the repair so I can’t confirm a performance increase but the lower operating temperature should help prolong the longevity of the card. There is probably a performance increase in some games as the card will not have to reduce voltage to reduce temperature as much. That fan wire is a lot smaller than it looks in the video. As I remember, it is only 3 or 4 mm wide. It takes a great deal of talent to fix something that small. If anyone owns a Nvidia founders edition 3000 series GPU, I recommend the heat pad replacement for cooler temperatures (some report a 20C drop in temps after replacing the heat pads) but be very careful with those three small cables! Thank you Steve for the repair! I love this GPU and I am happy to have it back and running cooler.
I love that you don't mind showing mistakes. Too many people go out of their way to make it seem to be afraid of showing a mistake on camera. Keep up the awesome content!!!
Only whenever he puts on thermal paste. He has to use the perfect amount for every video. No way he's that good!
What makes this guy so sympathetic is that he also shows his own fails ... just to encourage others and himself to make it better and to take lessons about own fails! That's a great attitude!
Brilliant job on this Steve. The precision and patience required for this type of repair is impossible to understand until you see it. Keep it up 😁
This was a tough one. Especially when I realized my mistake and had to redo everything I'd done. Still a fun one though!
@@Tronicsfix lol yeah that would have annoyed the life out of me 😂
@@Tronicsfix it just goes to show that mistakes are a part of the learning process. :)
When you start soldering ribbon cables you have unlocked god mode in electronics repair.
Video, time, upload, you know I know it all detracts from the fixed number of minutes you have for the day and I appreciate the fact you share your allotted minutes with us....
Given the market right now, repairing GPU's is probably fairly profitable. Sure, a lot of cards on eBay are complete duds. But often times people just don't bother running full tests and end up selling a card that has a simple fix. Hell, my R9 290X was a repaired card. Just needed a BIOS flash after it'd been used for extreme overclocking and it worked like a charm for almost 2 years.
Interesting. Hopefully I can find more to buy and get some easy fixes.
Most broken video cards probably need reflows. Not exactly easy or cheap. Most of the broken ones I see on eBay the sellers already list the problems. So that makes it even more difficult to want to purchase next to how over priced broken GPU's are. I can find betters deals in online auctions any day of the week. Few weeks ago I won a Clevo Sager P750DM-G laptop for $159. Worth about $900 if I part it out.
@@wmp0074 i repair graphics cards. A reflow isn’t actually fixing anything. Most gpus end up having a dead core from the vrm failing and sending 12v directly to the core
@@CocoaEm More than often VRM failure is caused by overclocking. Exceeding the VRM's thermal limits or simply a piss poor design on cooling. I believe cracked solder joints is a more common issue though. Seen it many times on laptops and TV's.
@@wmp0074 this is partially due to the nature of the beast , no one games 24/7 . Heat cycling is unfortunately a surefire way many fpgas and similar components crack the traces. Rendering the gpu inoperable but not always and a lot of folks try to oven it . which can possibly work if the done correctly and if in fact that was the issue. if not you run the risk of potentially dislodging another component
Sad that they've moved to ribbon cables. I've spliced wires before for GPU fans to rebuild mining cards but broken ribbons are one step too far for my basic soldering skills!
Just takes a little more practice. And a microscope helps
Wires are so much better. There's flat style wires out there, it'll look better as well as be more durable.
Repairing traces is the most hard for me when repairing board. You need a huge patient to be good at that. Unfortunately i've only have a little while opportunity to practice trace repair when i'm working in electronics factory before i lost my job because of the pandemic. I hope i can buy professional microscope one day and start again my because it's quite expensive in my country.
I'd like to see more graphics card repair, laptop repair and desktop repair Steve
Check out "Adamant IT" that's all he does its a great channel as well!
I'll try to add that into my normal mix.
Would definitely love to see you getting into more graphics card and/or gaming PC board repairs!
Man, I went "nooooooo" when you said that it was soldered backwards. Been there so many times when soldering connectors,
Props for showing the mistakes and the successes.
NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!! UP SIDE DOWN. Man it takes patience and calmness to deal with repairs like that. Well done.
Great job Steve, I've done a repair like this before as well inside a Droid turbo 2. It is not for the faint of heart.
People would pay top dollar to get their GPU's fixed, considering the market for it right now. I hope you upload more of GPU repairs.
I might have to do that!
@@Tronicsfix please do! I'm sure views will increase because of that
@@Tronicsfix Please do. I love console repairs, but as the PC gaming consumers are out there we want to learn more in case we need to learn how to fix out hardware instead of having to replace and buy a new gpu that is gonna scalp us. Plus I really enjoyed this video. 1000%
But you're not "people"
MORE OF THIS! salvaging graphics cards is a monumental service to the gaming community. you are a hero.
That was a sad plot "twist" at 3:04. But a great content as always.
Agreed!
Excellent work. I’ve never seen someone do such good work with such precision
I always wondered what was inside of a graphics card. Thanks for this my man!
Hey man! Just wanted to leave a comment here, I´m an electronic engineer starting to watch your videos and really enjoying them. I just LOVE seeing you take apart things, inspecting them to see every single detail that could be malfunctioning. Keep the videos up bro!
Weekend saved. Thx Steve the Grand Master of the perfect amount of Thermalpaste 🙏
Keep on going with this computer repair approach. You are growing your channel and pulling in viewers who watch Louis rossman vids
That threading of the ribbon cable reminded me of the nightmare of (I think was) the 3DS screen ribbon threading. Great video as always. Perfect for a Saturday morning here in AU.
That’s a difficult repair!
Awesome! Thanks again for my dose of fixing broken electronics ocd
MY pleasure!
7:38 “this is gonna be a ‘b’ right here”
Truer words never spoken
Thanks for you video, great job Steve 🤘
My pleasure!
I did this exact same repair but didn't use wires. It was a clean tear so I taped a piece of tape to my workbench sticky side up. Then I put the two pieces of the cable on it lined up. I scraped a little of the plastic away and used a conductive pen to repair the connections. After each dried I put some enamel paint on each repaired section and then did the same to each subsequent conductor. Then I taped it fully together for strength. It worked great.
Anything electrical I want to try and repair, this is my go to channel for help. Since watching I always get the perfect amount of Thermal Paste.
Same Thermal pads i used when i cleaned my Xbox one x,and i put on the perfect amout of thermal paste on the apu chip,ur x1x vid on how too replace it was very usefull Cheers from the artic circle city norway🥃🇳🇴
Your videos are awesome keep up the good work. I have been watching you for almost a year
Awesome! Thank you!
Another excellent repair video. Great! I'd love to have more PC-hardware repair videos (i.e. motherboards, etc). Keep up the good work!
Dude that was the PERFECT amount of thermal paste
Please do more of these repairs. This is good content👍keep it up steve
Great job Richard!
Thx for video, this is for me personally more interesting than other fixes :)
I was replacing some SMT LED’s on some light bars on our fire engines yesterday. The disassembly was involved . I managed to install all 12 LEDS backwards! Soooo back apart, reinstall LED’s correctly and reassemble. A 2 hour job turned into 5. It happens I guess.
Great video Steve. Love seeing you tackle different tech.
I had to repair my graphics card fan a few years back...... Had some fun with a dremmel.
Keep up the good work man. 👍👍👍
Awesome fix, Steve! Happy Thanksgiving!
Hello Tronics Friday... #TheBestDayOfTheWeek!... Amazing fix once again! 🙂
the perfect amount of thermal paste, most satisfying :)
Awesome video
Awesome, I'd like to see more of these! Also now I'm really looking forward to the salvaged gamepc lot video!
Great seeing you fix this. More laptop repairs!
I ripped same cable on my brand new RTX 3090, took 4 hours to solder, but happy fixed.
Nice work!
This was seriously the best option for him. Finding a new graphics card for a good price right now is like finding a mew.
Really good video an you earned your self a sub 💪
waiting to see you buy 10 broken graphics cards and trying to fix them it will be good to watch ..🕹
Awesome job repairing the RTX 3080!
I've done this repair twice. I use old IDE cables with solder mask and some very sturdy hand work. This way you can cut down the cable to remove the crispy bits and lengthen it to the correct size. All the wires are attached to each other so once you have the corners done the rest is easy without worrying about melting the IDE shielding. I'm 'legally' blind so all my work needs to be done under a microscope where it's big and bright enough for me to see. I've even made a pair of glasses that magnify the same as my scope.
A fan of these more PC/Laptop focused videos. You know your stuff and that knowledge seems to span across a variety of items. Love the channel.
Nice work Steve. A great graphics card is saved ;)
Thanks 👍
I was waiting for the Zelda treasure chest sound effect when all the screw covers were fastened in place
Nice soldering precision there. You should put some Kapton tape around the wires to protect it.
Thanks for fixing that graphics card.
God knows we need all the graphics cards working in these market conditions.
Great vid man. I'd definitely be interested in more PC stuff.
He's magic now. He snapped the thermal pads into existence.
working on cables like that is a right pain haha, well done!
I may have quickly glanced a tutorial for a very few zelda puzzles....lol. Be awesome if you get a test bench to check GPUs you fix.
I'm always impressed with your soldering skills. I take forever to do micro soldering.
Great work, you show tremendous skill! I love this fixes a very valuable card.
You can buy replacements or if under warranty they'll send you a replacement, seems a lot simpler lol
Oh I've been waiting for a PC hardware like this. I remember requesting you to fix PC parts and/or building PCs too. So i appreciate it. I didn't check my last comment to see how many liked my comment. . But I can tell you approve it because you worked on your first GPU. So never mind about my last comment haha.
Fantastic work Steve!
Great video, all you need to test that graphics card is any computer with a PCI Express slot. Good thing it did work.
Awesome as always thanks
Glad you enjoyed it
Damn this was precision work. These cables are a lot smaler than many peole think they are. A good way to imagine how smal they are is to look at a USB-C connector (Like on your phone). The cable is about half as wide and can be stacked about 10-15 times in there. Not ripping them off, considering their placement and the weight of the card (as well as the fact that these cards are not really that easy to hold with one hand), is possibly harder than ripping them of.
Just repaired my GPU recently by putting in new thermal paste and thermal pads. Much better than spending absurd money for scalped graphics cards! I'll keep this one running as long as I can.
Great vid man!!.. I hate those flat cables
I think if that happened to me i would just use a regular 120mm fan and take power off a fan fort on the mb or take 12v off the psu and just have the fan run full speed all the time. Cool you were able to salvage the old fan thoigh, i didnt know you can sand and solider to ribbon cables like that.
Or use it as an excuse to buy a water block and do a open loop setup.
Thank you for including the mistakes you make. Everyone makes them but not many people have the confidence to show them. By including them people will understand better how easy it is to get something backwards and that it's not the end of the world when it happens.
That’s me, lol 😂. If there’s 2 ways it can go, I’ll put it the wrong way first
I would love and watch a video of you repairng gaming desktop im asking for a hot air station for christmas and and looking forward to all the new things i could fix. Love your channel keep up the great work.
I know nothing about electronics, but still really enjoy your videos!
Nice job, I had to do something like this recently and that's not an easy job whatsoever. Especially without a microscope. I used a small 10 times lens.
Those graphics cards are worth a fortune! I’m surprised you even got your hands on a broken one!
Great video! Hope to see more GPU and computer repairs.
Upside down! oh Man!!!!! 3:00 about. well good thing you noticed the orientation before plugging it in.
Yes, that's a good thing! It wouldn't have matched up with the connector how it was.
Awesome Repair video 😎
I wonder if its possible to find a similar sized ribbon cable and scrape of the mask and lay it on top of the broken one exposed copper to exposed copper with a little solder and heat it so it melts together?
dont you think was a good idea to put mask to the actual wires because the are expose to metal brackets casing?or even some thermal shricking tube...thanks for the video
It was just a precaution. The ribbon cable touches part of the case so I just wanted to be safe.
Nice video! Cool that you include all mistakes. Just a note (not sure if is the same case for 3080) I had a gtx 970 that recently broke on me because I put to much thermalpaste. I had my GPU send to an expert and he told me that for CPU you are suppose to have a thick layer of thermalpaste but for the GPU there should be just a thin layer. I put way less thermalpaste om my GPU then you did in this rebuild and it still splashed over the chip cousing it tp break. As I said, i'm not an expert myself and I am sure that someone in the comments can correct me if I am wrong. I got that information from "Inet" that is swedish biggest computer store. Great job with the rebuild!
This is a great video!👏
I bet it works and your pinned comment proofs that. Really nice repair.
When ever you do non game console repairs. I am just waiting for you to do a video where your like. “I bought this used nuclear reactor. Let’s see if I can fix it.”
Excellent episode, Steve.
Oof. Didn't realize those reference cards were that fragile. Nice work and hope it works well.
More of these catastrophic repairs pls, god knows i need them
you can take another 20 degrees C off the memory temps if you put 3mm pads on the back side of the PCB where the memory is!
I know exactly how much of a PITA it is to work on those founders edition ribbon cables! I had a joyous time doing it when I installed a waterblock on my 3080 Ti Founders Edition card! Lol
This is a great video. I’d certainly watch more of these.
Shouldnt you check continuity to each wire to insure there is no direct short between the wires you repaired?
Great vid as usual, but for once I have a suggestion. Why not heatshrink the cable? You think there would have been enough room?
Sorry if this is a bit off topic Steve, but I can't wait to see how the steamdeck fairs after its release date In February. Hoping its a decent product and you don't see too many broken right off the bat. I wonder if valve would let you open one up and review (without having to purchase lol). Keep up the great work!
I already purchased one but not sure when I’ll get it.
@@Tronicsfix Awesome!! I'll be on the lookout for your impressions. Thanks!
You forgot to assign yourself skill points after your puzzle challenge ☺️
Love from India simply loves your videos 😘😘😘😍
Thank you so much 😀
nice job. i love to see that you repair alot of stuff. maybe older videocards
In concept there are easy fixes.., in reallity in needs much patience and skill to make such a tiny job
amazing job as always steve.. plus that zelda tidbit is much appreciated .. ive been googling zelda puzzles since the olden times of ocaria of time.. up to botw XD
I love this new gpu design where you can easily dismantle the thing, my old 1070ti needs like 20 screws to be removed so you can access the board lol.
Just hope you never have to disassemble the cooler, that’s a nightmare in these.
Just build a little test bench. Would be an interesting series to do. 😁
wow this was awesome, what a great looking GPU
Best repair videos 👍
Glad you like them!
@@Tronicsfix I do they so informative and very useful 👌
the moment you talked about googling a Zelda puzzle, I did feel busted! :)