Graphics card capacitor/resistor damaged. Help identifying replacement!

[Matt Dower]

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Hello,

I have a Zotac GTX 970 4gb graphics card that has a damaged capacitor/resistor on the PCB that I am hoping to fix by replacing it.

I have attached pictures.
Can anyone help me identify what the resistor/capacitor model or type is so I can buy a replacement.
Any links to replacements as wel would be great.

Thanks in advanced!

 

[jimmysmitty]

I will be 100% honest, its going to be very hard to find. We would need to find the tech sheet for it. Plus replacement of the component itself will be very hard. Its a surface mount part and they normally wave solder them. Using standard soldering equipment will prove very difficult.

I did some research and can't find a decent spec sheet for it.

 

[molletts]

It looks like both capacitors in the pair are damaged. They're surface-mounted chip capacitors in, I would guess, the 0402 form factor (0.04 x 0.02 inch). I can't say what capacitance with any degree of certainty as it's not printed on them (actually, I've never seen it printed on a chip capacitor for some reason, unlike SMD resistors) but, if I had to pick a value out of the air, I'd say 10nF seems a sensible figure given their purpose. They're most likely used for power supply decoupling (basically, smoothing out the lumps and bumps that are introduced by high-speed logic switching) and are in parallel with all the other similar pairs (and many others all over the board adjacent to chips, etc. - it's best to do the smoothing as close as possible to where the noise is generated) so the card would almost certainly work without them - a couple missing is likely to be "within design tolerances" unless the designers are sailing very close to the wind.

Replacing (or removing) them is doable with a very steady hand and a small soldering iron; if you have access to a hot-air SMD rework tool, that may be easier (or maybe not - it could be an acquired skill). I've known people to successfully do mods on games consoles (involving similar stuff like changing/removing surface-mount components) with just a small Antex CS iron that I would have thought twice about attempting with "the proper tools".

That said, I'd have to question what other damage may have been caused by (or been the cause of, or resulted from the same fault that caused) their failure. If the card doesn't work with the two caps removed, it's probably because something else is damaged, not because they're essential to it working. The fact that they appear to have gone bang (there's evidence of smoke nearby on the board) suggests that they may have gone short-circuit and passed a large current briefly before breaking.

 

[grimfox]

That's probably a pretty common part that should be pretty easy to get. You could probably get it at digikey for $0.10. They might require you to buy a strip of 10. The trick will be identifying which one to get. To do that you need to get your hands on a capacitance meter, a good one. Measure the component itself and those around it. All the little tan guys around the base serve the same purpose and should be the same value.

Getting it replaced, is another challenge. With the right equipment and training this is a 2 minute procedure. Maybe longer if there is damage to the board. It's hard to tell in the photo, but seems likely. In which case it's a 30 minute procedure. It can be done with a soldering iron but you'll want an ultra fine tip on a quality iron (if the handle for your iron plugs into a wall it's not good enough quality, rule of thumb) Ideally you'd use a hot air gun.

So, those are the rough steps to replace that part. If you want to carry on let me know I can provide more details. I do this for a living. Well, not GPU repair specifically, but electronics assembly.