[SOLVED] What is a "Q7 chip"?

Danger_Noodle

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Aug 15, 2015
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So I have a MSI Tomahawk B560 Wi-Fi that I've had to RMA twice. After some significant prying this time around I was given a report and told that what was broken/not working was the "Q7 chip." I asked my tech friends and tried to defer to Google but have come up with squat for what this means.

For the record, the board randomly decided one day that it just wasn't going to work anymore. No matter the number of power supplies or anything could not get power to this board. RMA'd it, the sent it back it worked for about 3 weeks and the same thing happened again.

Anyways, does anybody have any clue what this alleged faulty part is or what it does? And will MSI replacing it truly fix this board ?
 
Solution
In electronic schematics, Q is often used as a designation for a transistor. Could literally be a Q7 transistor somewhere on the board that failed. Just a quick look at picture of the board and there are a few 3-pin surface mount packages that could be transistors. Now if they replaced it, and tested it, and everything was working, but it blew up a few weeks later anyway, that just means there was underlying problem that caused that part of the board to be overloaded. Would have taken further troubleshooting to find it, and if it was traced back to one of the major chips, then it becomes a prohibitively expensive repair to swap out a chipset.

They could have swapped the board, certainly, which would be the cheaper option.

Lutfij

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Has me stumped, actually. I'm wondering if they could tell you where on the board the problem is...?

the board randomly decided one day that it just wasn't going to work anymore. No matter the number of power supplies or anything could not get power to this board.
Reads to me like the BIOS chip on the motherboard is corrupt.
 

Danger_Noodle

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Has me stumped, actually. I'm wondering if they could tell you where on the board the problem is...?

the board randomly decided one day that it just wasn't going to work anymore. No matter the number of power supplies or anything could not get power to this board.
Reads to me like the BIOS chip on the motherboard is corrupt.
I'll ask em if this doesn't yield anything after like a day.
 
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Unclegig2018

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did some research sounds like bios chip needs repairing or you can send it back to msi and ask them to send you a replacement motherboard of the same one or ask them to send you a different motherboard and send it back the old one and if not ask msi to refund yout money back and go and get a ASUS rog strix WIFI motherboard
 

Danger_Noodle

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So the board finally came back in today after MSI's RMA process and I never could find out what the Q7 chip is I contacted MSI and they weren't able to tell me which makes me feel like it's maybe an internal term for something.

But also something else weird at The board that came back has some stickers on it that we're not on my board there was like a little skull sticker on the battery and like all want to say it was a Captain America looking sticker on the heat block over the IO shield. Which is strange and makes me think that they probably just replace the board because why would a repair center take time to put stickers on a motherboard that they were repairing. I don't know does anyone have any experience of that?
 

Eximo

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In electronic schematics, Q is often used as a designation for a transistor. Could literally be a Q7 transistor somewhere on the board that failed. Just a quick look at picture of the board and there are a few 3-pin surface mount packages that could be transistors. Now if they replaced it, and tested it, and everything was working, but it blew up a few weeks later anyway, that just means there was underlying problem that caused that part of the board to be overloaded. Would have taken further troubleshooting to find it, and if it was traced back to one of the major chips, then it becomes a prohibitively expensive repair to swap out a chipset.

They could have swapped the board, certainly, which would be the cheaper option.
 
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Solution

Danger_Noodle

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Aug 15, 2015
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In electronic schematics, Q is often used as a designation for a transistor. Could literally be a Q7 transistor somewhere on the board that failed. Just a quick look at picture of the board and there are a few 3-pin surface mount packages that could be transistors. Now if they replaced it, and tested it, and everything was working, but it blew up a few weeks later anyway, that just means there was underlying problem that caused that part of the board to be overloaded. Would have taken further troubleshooting to find it, and if it was traced back to one of the major chips, then it becomes a prohibitively expensive repair to swap out a chipset.

They could have swapped the board, certainly, which would be the cheaper option.
Hey thanks for the response I think you nailed it.

Turns out they were wrong all along. That was the first time that they replaced the Q7 chip. The second time they decided to junk it and send me a "recertified" board, but they screwed up and left whatever gamer bro had it before me's stickers on it. Support apologized profusely because that isn't supposed to happen.

This has been by and large the most hilarious and frustrating RMA I've ever been through.