I'm very surprised that Alex took it that far. If those mosfets are welded to the ground pad like that, you have a 1 in 7 chance of getting them off. Dremeling them off down to the pads is how it's done but it's time consuming and messy.

You can grind the part of. When you reach solder stop grinding and solder the new part on top of what you get. you need a stronger grinder than your grinding pen .

When I have such a repair, I use the Dremel grinding and polishing disc to sand the transistor down to the pad so that all the pads are preserved if they are not already short-circuited internally

Big greetings to northridgefix from Bolivia - La Paz, thanks to your videos I learn more every day, bless you and keep going: sincerely Felix Choque, your continuous follower

I've had a computer repair business for 16 years and over the course of those years customers would bring me laptops of all brands. I ended up with a literal STACK of HP laptops in my closet. Either a GPU would die or hinges would break or the screen backlight would fail or the board would fail and they would just leave them with me and go buy a new laptop. I would NEVER buy ANY HP product. Everything they have ever made has been absolute shit...except for maybe a first gen laserjet 4.

This video has been very interesting; as it highlights and talks about the several reasons such as this one are deemed to be "no fix"

Very interesting to see what is practical in terms of repairs and when you should throw in the white towel. Thank you Alex for this video!

Sure was glad to get my NF fix in, was going into dt’s, Thank you Alex

Wow! How common is it to find components that have welded themselves directly to the copper trace like that? I wonder if it matters if they used too little solder paste at the factory or something... Oh, and a late Happy new year!

missed you. Welcome back.

I'm glad I've never purchased an HP system, laptop, or otherwise. Even though it was a no-fix, it still highlights important information. Have a good day, and keep up the excellent work!

I predict that some of the layers were already shorted together when it came in. I wonder whether milling the components off with a cutter to board level would allow placing new parts though.

for welded tough ones like that I use a dremel grinding disc to cut a waffle criss cross pattern on the component .....very careful not to go through to board then flood with low melt solder and usually they let heat in for success

Best bet is to grind the mosfet down to the pads. little messy but it's the only way to do it without doing more damage.

it's good to see even the no-fixes , and learn what is economic from your business viewpoint. thanks alex.

Well done again Alex, greetings from UK

I had one of the diamond cut ones and was underwhelmed. It always had the fan roaring and felt hot. Then it just died - with the caps lock flashing. After a lot of faffing I got ti to boot but as soon as it was warm it died again with a gibberish pattern over the screen. I won't touch HP stuff now. You made it clear at the start that these are a major problem and you made the right call in declaring a no fix.

Alex if you have time could you please tell me based on your experience what the best make of Laptop would be to buy? Thanks in advance..

It would be helpful for people shopping for a laptop, if you published a ranked list of products you see come in for repair. The only laptop I have had fail (so far), was an HP. I would love to know which brands and models are least often repaired.

hello Alex what do you think about laser soldering ? I see some products about that like tbk r-2201 or lws-301 laser soldering station. Do you recommend these kind of products?

i would watch this just because alex rapping the sponsor text lightning fast

Hello. After the big Boss disassembly the laptop and you repair the motherboard, do you repaste the CPU am GPU?

I would suggest using air nozzles on your heat gun for more focused heat being applied. I have universal ones that attach to my heat gun with a screw. The air speed setting on my heat gun has to be turned up to max so the heat doesn't build up in the nozzle and damage the heat gun. Also, hot knife soldering tips used for engraving leather and wood would give you a few more options for removing something like this.

Alex, are *any* laptop manufacturers worth a darn these days? Seems like they've all gone to garbage.

Oh no! I have one of those diamond cut HPs. I hope it doesn't break soon 😢

why didnt grind the those mosfet with a grinder from top to the traces bottom

I bought this laptop in 2019, had to have a complete replacement sent within a year. That replacement is now overheating and crashing. It's always the same issue for me, overheating.

what if you had a mini circularsaw that you can align directly with the board (so the circular saw is flat on the board) and saw those components off?

I purchased an HP gaming laptop with a gtx 1650 and ryzen 5600h(?). I had to send it in for RMA just a couple months after buying it because it wouldn't power up anymore. Mind you I didn't use it much and the only gaming it saw was me firing up dota and RE2 remake for a few minutes just to see how it ran. It's been running ok since receiving the repaired unit back but I've only used it for basic tasks and it doesn't inspire much confidence that it died so quickly in the first place with light use.

Btw. How has it been going with cracked PCB's when talkin about 4090? Have manufacturers given refunds or sent new ones? Or do they just say that there is no problem (user fault)?

Is using a grinding pen to completely grind them?

Finallly new video

Interesting to see that the donor board has two different MFG MOSFETs. One being Alegro Microsystems

I have the Spectre X360 Spectre 14 with the 13th gen chip (2023 version). It's quiet, bright, and the keyboard/trackpad are exceptional. It beats the hell out of my experience with my Dell XPS 13 at work. We've enjoyed HP's through the years and have had some failures after 4 years. That's about what I expect.

Say you did get those MOSFETs off the board cleanly, but the short persisted? That could have been a deep rabbit hole. My Bosch oven relay board had a shorted Darlington Transistor array chip, and that was it. 60 cent part vs buy a new $400 board. Of course I did the repair vs buying new.

Any idea what made it break in the first place? Users fault? Bad design? Bad luck with poor quality components?

Happy New Year! 2024 should be "better than factory" 😊🌻🤗

What if a customer says you did that to my board and then decided not to fix how do you actually deal with that?

Ooft. Bad quality mosfets or just bad board design?

Do you offer trainings?

I had a x360 once, the screen is more fragile than the phone, don't think it's gorilla glass. And the weight of the laptop is many times more, so the screen cracks easily if you drop it. Most importantly, the tablet experience is worse than an iPad, laggy and apps not optimized for tablet.

its funny ive been running my spectre since 2019 and i think its a miracle it hasnt broke

This laptop is designed to be plugged in and not moved at all whilst plugged in. Seen alot of twisted usb c ports on these resulting in dead tps and jlh.

I own one of those. I hope that never happens to mine. Oh well.

What if you grind the two mosfet with grinder is it be possible to fix ?

The component flew and joined The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.

Is the replacement of the mother board able to fix the laptop?

11:30 look at this guy he just want to escape to the 9th dimension. What is this hell 😂

Could you not have just bypassed them by running a wire instead? There are already two other mosfets that would be used for protection anyway.

I hope the video link is shared with the poor customer so he/she knows Alex really tried but it was beyond repair

i loved this one to much haha. jokes were good. good video

That is cool.

HP 360 model: "Winner, winner, chicken dinner." 😂

Nice one, I liked it 😂

finally! new video! very good repair!!

Would it not have been easier to have used the donor board instead and swap parts from that one The donor looked better than the one that was going to be repaired

First apply low temp. Solder on such points than start giving heat..

Do you guys fix Yamaha stereo amps?

we received hp business notebooks, 3500€ per piece and its just cheap plastic and a crappy cam worse than any 5€ cam. but cpu and 128gb ram are nice

Greetings from Poland

Grind them off?

That looks like a work for a grinding pen, not high heat and brute force.

Pourquoi un tel vandalisme et une telle température? Ces composants sont très faciles à retirer avec un mini-dremmel. J'utilise un microdremmel dentaire pour cela...

Whatever happened to quality?

I think the "no fix" is an important video.

What if.. to take a dremel and grind the mosfets or other "fried stuff" off..

I will never buy another HP product ever again after the last support issue I had with a laptop. Under warranty, took 5 weeks turnaround, and 6 chats/calls. Ridiculous.

Ironic the HP X360 Spectre Laptop has a similar name to the Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming console of the distant past. I believe the 360 was their own designed second gen gaming console. The first gen was by Intel, a good hardware maker IMO. The Xbox 360 had a well known issue of overheating over a period of time eventually giving the Red Ring of Dead during power up. Use it sort of lightly like for standard video, will last around 3 years. Gaming can kill the console within months. I will never trust a software maker for hardware again. Additionally I've toasted several smartphones and their batteries. They were fast to fairly fast phones. Now use a low-end Oukitel WP5 with a 8A battery. Slow/sluggish response time, armored body, acceptable image quality and a touch screen that's only fair. Yet I've not toasted this phone in about 2 years+. Learned and made changes, USB gives the option of slowing the charge rate dramatically. Currently charging at about 7% per hour, that's 0.5A with the screen off. Partial screen video playing, charging drops to about 2% per hour. IMO, phone will remain cool enough to run in this mode continuously.

If it is time consuming- it is no fix and a spare board for Alex.

That's not a Hiroshima, it's a Fukushima. THat was A LOT of heat when it popped.

I purchased an HP 15” envy laptop running a Rizen 7 CPU from Best Buy. To make a long story short the CPU failed after 13 months. When the back was taken off the computer, the manufacture date in the back of the CPU was 2019. I purchased the computer November 2021. So the CPU in the computer was three years old. Neither Best Buy, Hewlett-Packard or AMD would give me any help or any relief on repairing the computer. I spent $1000 on the Purchase. As of today the computer is still sitting in the closet. I might buy a new CPU motherboard to repair it. The bottom line is none of these companies are going to stand behind their products and help you. They have no integrity. They don’t care about you as a customer. My next purchase will be an Apple product running iOS. Tired of the windows operating system. This last incident with the HP computer sealed the deal.

I have a 3090 like this. Tried everthing and cannot get the mosfet off

Laptops overheating is a common problem. They blow up components all the time from long usage.

Taking it that far is what it's all about. XD!

That's sad... fried layers

Board is bricked

god those x360 laptops designed to fail...

It's nice to have so much business that you can decline hard jobs

That looks like an attempt from the manufacturer to prevent third party repair of their systems.

Sometimes you just have to let go.......word to the wise, use proper cooling fans when sitting in bed with laptop!

brutal ways ,, grinding hehehe

Can't win 'em all!

Kentucky Fried Circuit Board!

another HP, who would surprised

a laptop should not die this way except HP sacrificed reliability longevity to achieve this form factor

Certainly it's a doomed board.

No Fix... Diag charge.

A sad day. Another doner board is now available to help others.

Can't win them all.

" I do not want to go into a rabbit hole "; Alex, the phrase " _I don't want to open up a can of worms_ " is way better 😄

Not better than factory.

HP=Hardware Problems

Those HP X360 Specters are pure trash, those mosfets always die, even when they're running ok those mosfets run extremely hot, melting the plastic lining. Every single Specter that came in is either bad fused mosfets or brocked charging ports on the diamond model! POS HP!

Alex, the video and sound are out of sync.

This video shows the exact reason why hot air stations are seen as unrefined, bludgeoning tools and a new type of tool is needed to apply direct heat to failed components. Hot air has its place in modern electronic repair but there is a clear need for alternate heat applying tools. The problem of course is that the market for a new type of tool for a niche specialism within a niche specialism (component level repair in micro electronics repair field) is miniscule and manufacturers really only make money when they can mass produce a product. This needs the soldering industry to look at the needs of the repair technicians and to find a new way to deliver the high temperatures needed directly to components at board level without the 'splatter' effect of hot air.

🙏👏👏👏🙏

one must use letcon and heatgun at the same time

Don't buy HP Notebooks always Hopeless Damage if it is broken Repair lvl 0.

:o

Trash it. It's no good.