Modern video cards are complex devices that require careful diagnostics and accuracy in the repair process. But some breakdowns require a completely different approach. So, video card repair specialist KrisFix discovered that in order to repair a faulty Radeon RX 6900 XT model, in some cases it is necessary to … drill two additional holes in the printed circuit board.
KrisFix received an MSI Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card for repair with a rare issue ─ fans and LEDs are working, but the device is not displaying images. Moreover, this is not such a rare problem. According to the engineer, she met on 6 or 7 video cards among the hundreds that he repaired. The source of the problem was a break in the trace between the GPU and the memory chip, which in some cases led to the complete inoperability of the video card.
Modern top-end video cards use printed circuit boards with 15 layers. Fixing damaged traces that are deep inside the PCB is a difficult and time consuming task. But KrisFix went the other way. Instead of looking for a break inside the circuit board and trying to repair the track, he drilled two holes in the PCB. The craftsman then soldered a tiny wire to a pin on the memory pad at one end and to a pin on the GPU pad at the other end. Thus, he created a workaround. He then soldered the DRAM and GPU chips into place.
This is not to say that this is a simple process. It also requires extreme precision, using a microscope to solder a hole, solder wires, re-solder damaged capacitors, and repair broken traces on the top of a PCB. It also remains an open question how changing the length of the track will affect performance. In any case, such an extraordinary repair method by adding unforeseen holes for laying a new track made it possible to restore the video card to working capacity.
Source: tomshardware
