Personally I have done many of these repairs. Many laptop and video card manufactures look for the cheap way out when designing the heat-sinks for their products. What they don’t plan for is environment factors of different households or businesses. Not all people or businesses are in the cleanest locations, and the result is: more dust than expected, animal hair, or lint, and the smoker’s nicotine goo. All of these factors increase the amount of heat necessary to cause the video chip to reach temperatures that cause solder to melt enough to make a bad connection to the motherboard or video card. The free Flow process is pretty simple in terms of the repair.

What you will need

• denatured alcohol
• tinfoil
• heat gun
• thermal laser
• copper shims
• thermal compound

How to free flow solder the video chip

We usually prep the chip by cleaning it with denatured alcohol (you can get it at most hardware stores). We also cover the area we plan to free flow with a thick layer of tinfoil, cut-out for the size of the chip. I have several of these templates in my tool box that vary due to the different sizes we encounter.

At first, I used a butane torch to heat the chip, but found out very quickly that this had more potential to damage the chip. We now use a heat-gun  and a thermal laser to produce the heat and carefully watch our temperature. We normally heat the chip at about 280 to 310 degrees, being very careful to use a circular motion and keeping the heat-gun about an inch and a half away from the board. We apply the heat until we reach our desired temperature (about one minute, we use the low temperature setting on the heat-gun). We then use copper shims  and thermal compound  to add extra heat dissipation.

After cleaning the fans and putting the laptop or video card back together, we test it for a few hours.

Conclusion

The process is usually successful (85% of the time). But I tell all my clients; “Save your data, and save your money for a new computer because I only warranty this repair for 90 days”. Hope this info is helpful. If you need help with the process or you are unsure of the proper steps; call me 24 hours a day 7 days a week at 901.515.8433.