I am very much a noob when it comes to smd soldering, and I’ve chosen the wrong job to improve my skills… Still, I haven’t damaged any pads or blew off any other components, and there’s no visible damage to the board. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting the right amount of solder onto the pads to form good connections, so my replacement IC has been heated up an embarrassing amount of times, a lot of no clean flux has solidified on surrounding areas as a result. On the latest two attempts I’ve been getting what seemed to me as a satisfactory connections on the properly aligned IC… but still no signal.
Xbox works over LAN, the filters after the retimer seem to be fine, I get the 5v on pin 18. The HDMI port itself seems to be in good condition.
I’m thinking I might have too much solder now and the pins are bridging to ground OR I burnt the IC by heating it numerious times for extended periods… I’m waiting on extras on Monday but is there anything else I should look out for? There aren’t really that many parts in the circuit; are there any other common failure points ? I’m also worried I might’ve damaged C43 or C50 with all the heat…
I haven’t bothered to clean up the solidified flux, I can heat it up and scrape it off with something non-metallic, some isopropyl, etc… can it cause any issues? It’s chipquick smd291 no clean flux… and I’m pushing my station to it’s 480F limit…
Hey there,
usually, leaving flux on the board for prolonged periods is not too good. I don’t know about your ChipQuik, but flux might be lightly conductive, might cause corrosion or simply keep gunk on or between your contacts, causing problems. I always try to remove it as fast as possible after soldering.
My guess is that you’ve probably caused the retimer to go bad by heating it that much. I’d remove it and clean the area all up then install a replacement once you get the new ones. Keep in mind that a faulty hard drive can also cause the no display issue.
Also, make sure there are no shorts to ground on the circuit traces around that little silver BGA chip on the lower left of the HDMI port.
I’ve since randomly found a used one X with a faulty chip and fixed it, didn’t burn any chips this time. 1/2 price 1X It was definitely dumb to do mine on my first attempt at qfn / smd soldering but I really didn’t have anything similar to practice on and I was clearly too impatient to wait until I found something.
Just a small piece of advice for anyone trying to replace a hdmi retimer chip on an xbox one x. Use a preheating plate as well as a hot air. Makes life so much easier. In fact I wouldn’t do it without one you’ll cause yourself allot of stress. The board is too good at conducting heat which make repair very difficult. I do retimers on Ps4s and Xboxes without a preheating plate fine but this board (xbox one x) it’s a must. So if any of you have been struggling, try a preheating plate in conjunction with a hot air station. Probably best to leave the solder as is it too just flux and replace. Hope that helps someone
If you have a pretty high powered hot air station it should work fine. My Hakko FM 206 does these just fine but the Quick does not. A pre heater would be a good idea in that case.
Hello. I followed the video to confirm my retimer ic chip need to be replaced. The issue is though, after replacing it I now have no power when partially re-assembling and pressing the power button. Any suggestions? Is it possible I damaged something related to power when heating the retimer ic chip to remove the faulty on and place on the new one? This was my first de-soldering of a chip (not using an actual solder iron to de-solder)
Something similar happened to me, after replacing ic chip the xbox was turning off a couple second after turning on… i just replaced the chip for a new one… did you check ic is correctly soldered?
Thank you for the information. In regards to if I checked if the ic is correctly soldered…no, I have not. I’m not even sure how to do this. I looked at it under magnification, although, I’m not sure what I’m looking for though. If it is too far up or down, do I need to replace the ic or can I de-solder, then readjust and solder it again?
So how do I make sure I solder it correctly. I have the dot on the chip on the same side as the dot on the board. What am I looking for under the microscope? Can I use the same ic chip again or do I need to order a new one again?
It was definitely dumb to do mine on my first attempt at qfn / smd soldering but I really didn’t have anything similar to practice on and I was clearly too impatient to wait until I found something.