What to do with an MSI GT660 laptop trash-pick

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FredRdr88

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May 26, 2017
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A friend showed me an MSI GT660 laptop that is dead in the water - it won't boot properly off of either a flashstick, the hard-drive, or a CD-ROM drive. But if I put a flash stick in, it almost sort of boots. I'm guessing it's fried video graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285M with TDE+ CPU +GPU Turbo.

It's a game computer and it probably got some high amount of pushing the acceleration and it crashed. When this happens, it sometimes takes more than just the graphics chip but in this case, it might just be the chip itself.

So I have two questions (firstly, I DO intend to fix it just for the fun of soldering in a new chip):

1) Can I disable the onboard video and hook up an external monitor (sorry I don't know this yet).
2) Can I get a new graphics chip to solder in, and any other fried chips.

It's an i7 with about 6GB RAM (enough for fun), and 500GB HD.

It could be a fun toy.

Any help appreciated. Sorry, I was not quite able to get this thing to boot and it eventually puts gibberish up on the screen - unrecognizable. It's at a specific point in the boot process that it goes from bad to worse which suggests that some driver perhaps causes the abort. It's probably hardware troubles in there. If I could disable the onboard hardware, I could then sort out motherboard vs. graphics chip issues better.

By the way, it will only even give me the boot options screen which has F3, F11, etc.. if I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del after a failed boot to the HD or CD or flash stick. So far the flash stick is the best option but the CD might work.
 
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If it's a discrete GPU you can probably find a replacement on Ebay. If it's soldered... I think this is beyond the capabilities of an hobbyist. It's not impossible, but I work at a professional prototype PCBA shop and we frequently have to use an Xray machine to verify that the BGAs (like you'd find on a GPU) are properly aligned and soldered. I think you'd have a really tough time finding a chip for sale. You might find one on another scrap PC but you'd run into possibly damaging the new chip during removal or reinstallation. You are welcome to have fun, but I wouldn't expect to "recover" a damaged gpu.
 
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I believe the graphics card (as they call it) is removable. I would need to find another one that works which might be hard but not impossible, although they are probably quite expensive. I'll look around.
 
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I just disassembled the laptop - pulled the battery, took the little screws out, pulled the fan, the cpu and graphics tubular heat-sinks, snapped up the monitor attachment cover took those 4 screws out, detached the monitor, pulled up the plastic and pulled the graphics card out. I might have taken more apart than I needed but after about 15 or 20 screws I found the graphics card and it measures only 3 1/4" x 4 1/8" in size. So I sent that info to the guy who might have a used one. I'll see what happens. Meanwhile, all the parts are sitting in some boxes. The chip on the graphics card says NVIDIA N11E-GTX1-B1 and PC7663.01R A TAIWAN and a couple other numbers (after I wiped off the heatsink compound).

I should mention that it's not necessary to disassemble the entire laptop as the graphics card sits right near the external vga port right near the rear of the case and on top of the bottom when you take the bottom plastic off. It's very easy to get to the graphics card and slide it out.
 
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I know I can buy a brand new chip for that card for 42.00 - I just need to use a magnifying glass - LOL! It's hard to replace them so I might just replace the board and gradually do the surface mount solder job. Could take a while.
 
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If you really are looking at doing the solder I would very seriously consider getting some solder paste (the finest grain size you can find) and a syringe to use as an applicator. Then I would look at a building a hot air gun. Not a heat gun, like you would use to strip paint! Or modding a toaster oven into a reflow oven. It is sooo easy to screw up an IC like that using an iron. I'm really surprised the IC is available and that it's a package that could be soldered using an iron. I would have expected there to be a heat slug at least on the bottom if not a series of data lines.
 
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Somewhere in my box of soldering irons, wicks, solder-sucker tools, wires, crimps, paste, etc.., I have a surface mount de-soldering kit. Maybe that will help. But my biggest fear is that there could be BIOS issues, but I actually think that my motherboard won't care too much what I throw at it, as long as it works. In the worst case, I might have to re-flash it. I think it will work.
 
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The chip comes pre-mounted on a frame - it's a through-hole job. I only need to desolder the bottom - not from the side. I just need to de-solder the bottom "pegs" of the frame off with some paste I think. Probably doable - it's not like one of those 289 pin 25mm Zephyrtronics jobs - perhaps a little easier? It's small but possibly a pencil iron can be used. I have a picture but I don't know how to post a pic.
 
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The laptop is up and running. I still have some work though. There are still 16 screws to put in and I have not put heat sink compound on the graphics chip yet. And there is one little plastic tab and a metal bracket that I don't remember where they go. But on first boot, the BIOS recognized and did something to accomodate the new graphics chip, then it had a perfect screen. I also was unable to get any more than two screws into the display holder. Perhaps two of the screw holes are stripped? So still some work to do and I honestly just forgot to install most of the 16 screws.
The worst thing I did though, was not to put the screw in that holds the DVD rom. I wonder if it will work. Some aspect of the boot up sequence saw the device and some aspect did not. So I probably have to disassemble the display off and pull up the plastic or something. I'm not used to taking laptop's apart. Not that hard though.
 
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Now I have three new problems.

1) I pulled the little black end piece off of the little cable that connects to snap-over part that goes just above the keyboard. I was just trying to see if it was connected because my keyboard does not work. And I dropped the tiny little black end-piece. So I need a new ribbon cable - they are small and I'm not sure what they or the black cover is called.

2) Other than that, I have a small problem with my flash stick that I'm booting to that I don't need to worry about right now.

I don't think it's this part and I'm not sure if a cable for a GT660R would be the same.

Wow, I really need that little cable. I want to replace the whole thing.

And in the meantime, I need to understand if I unhooked something to the keyboard.

I would guess I can manually rig the laptop to start up without that little tiny ribbon cable above the keyboard and below the snap-in cover that says Dynaudio on it (the one I broke).

I guess I can wait a month to work on this until I can find parts. I'll keep looking for the little black connector. Maybe I'll find it.
 
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I just posted a message to a guy, I'll see what he says.

"Hi, I believe you have the cable I need but it's really the connectors at the end - the little black things that allow you to plug it in that I need (I need the cable with those connectors installed on the ends or at least the connectors so I can try to install them myself with a magnifying glass) - do you have those also by any chance or do you have a cable with those already on it?

New JI-HAW Ribbon Cable AWM E118077 2896 80C VW-1 80mm 10.5mm 20-pin end-to-end"

God, I hope he or someone can come up with a cable that has the connectors or that I can find a connector and painstakingly attach it to the ribbon cable so I can plug it in.
 
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I'm trying to analyze videos and trying to learn myself by trying different orientations how that connector goes on but I wonder if I need the ribbon cable on it for it to work.

I wish I had a picture of how it looks so it's not so much trial and error. It's a 12N connector but I can't find anything on it online.
 
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I think I just need to feed the blue side up part of the cable on TOP of the connector and sandwich it in there by holding it all in place with tape. My first try didn't work because I did it on the bottom which is probably not making contact.
 
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I found a disassembly manual online which shows a pic and it shows the connector down BELOW the 12 pins. So perhaps I need to try a different level on the connector when I try again. There is daylight above the black 12N piece. This could be the answer I need.
 
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I can get it to go on and off by pressing down on the cable while turning the button on. Now I need a way to shim it in place more permanently as I simply taped it to the bezel. I dropped the little plastic thing again and it's probably gone forever. But at least I'm making progress. I can actually turn the computer on and off. It's just that it takes pressure. I need to wedge it in there better.
 
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When I went to fix the keyboard, I finally realize how the ribbon cables connect. They just stick on. Being somewhat of an old guy, I hadn't ever seen a stick-on ribbon cable with a plastic lock over it. I simply pressed the keyboard cable back into place - it had unloosed when I took the laptop apart. Now the keyboard works again. I want to make a new flash stick for this pc as it won't boot to the flash anymore - I think I messed something up. At least I made a lot of progress in the hour I put into this today. I learned how ribbon cables work. Some of them are so tiny I have trouble seeing them without a magnifying glass. I now need to disable the ethernet controller somehow but there is no BIOS setting for it. I wonder if I have to reset the BIOS somehow - I know there are procedures for these things but not having a manual I'm pretty much stabbing in the dark. When I first fixed the graphics card, I was actually having fun using the laptop for a while. Then the keyboard stopped working. Then I couldn't boot from the flash. I just need to fix these little problems when I have the time.
 
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On the hypothesis, that I had done something bad to the flash stick I was booting from (obvious), I took the flash to another PC and burned it again, this time also with a newer .iso file. I was little worried that it was finding the wrong NVIDIA drivers on boot even though it had done it right once, and now the computer got all the way through the boot to the desktop. This time I will NOT save the session. I will try to scrounge around for a used laptop hard-drive and only use that for saving, other than saves that the user controls which can be to the extra partitions I put onto the flash.

So at least I have not ruined this laptop and I can go out and get a wireless so it can be used to browse the Internet.

One minor problem - the display is not real dark - perfectly usable but I need to adjust the brightness.

So I will pick ME as the solver even though it's easy to drop in a new GPU card - I just wanted to use my soldering iron on this one and it worked great. LOL
 
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