Could removing dedicated graphics chip "revive" a laptop?

[Juhele]

Hi,
this is rather hypothetical question. Many laptops have both dedicated graphics chip (AMD or nVidia) soldered on motherboard and also have integrated one in CPU.

Malfunction of "death" of this dedicated graphics almost always equals to total death of the laptop so it is only usable as source of used spare parts to sell on Ebay etc. However the integrated graphics still work so why it is not possible to run IGP only? I assume the BIOS somehow still detects the dedicated one and crashes.

Could a safe removal of the damaged dedicated graphic BGA chip using appropriate tools like hot air etc. make the motherboard work again using integrated graphics only? At least some of the motherboards are sold with or without dedicated graphics although the PCB is the same design - one has dedicated graphic chip soldered while the other not. So theoretically you could turn the board to the other type by removing the dedicated chip.

What do you think? Would it work?

thanks

 

[Quarkzquarkz]

Hello there,

While it's true that many laptops today have both integrated graphics as well as a dedicated one such as laptops w/ GTX with SLI etc... I don't think that simply removing the faulty chip would make the laptop work again. I say this because during initial startup, the motherboard would check for a certain voltage or a load and if it's not present it simply wont turn on.

You can possibly just replace it but you would need to be 100% sure it was the faulty integrated chip causing the laptop to fail and not possibly the other components that could be in question.

Or maybe, just maybe it could've been a bad bios setup that you need to simply change the correct GPU to the one that isn't faulty. But how can you do that when it won't even turn on in the first place? That's a tricky one. Good luck!