Board-level electronics repair · Salzburg, AT

not
dead
yet

Two engineers, one hot-air station, and a queue of things everyone else already wrote off. Graphics cards, consoles, laptops, and the appliance boards that fail three weeks out of warranty.

CH1 · 2 V/div · 5 ms Signal restored
147Boards revived
31Declared dead, honestly
612 kgKept out of landfill
€0Charged for a diagnosis

The patients

Every episode is one board, start to finish. Nothing edited out — including the times we lose.

CASE 041

RTX 3080 · No display

Fans spin, PCIe 12 V present, no signal on any output. Core rail dead at 0.02 V.

Traced to a shorted MOSFET on phase 4. Two replacements, one reballed memory module, and it posts again.

Revived38 min
CASE 040

PS5 · HDMI dead

Console boots to fan and light, blank screen. Retimer IC reads open on two data pairs.

Bent pin on the port plus a cooked retimer. Port swap, chip swap, hot air, done in one sitting.

Revived44 min
CASE 039

Bosch dishwasher board

Programme starts, drops out after four minutes, no error code on the display.

Three bulging electrolytics near the heater relay and one cracked solder joint. Ten euros of parts against a €280 board.

Revived26 min
CASE 038

MacBook Pro · Liquid damage

No power. Corrosion across the SMC section, several pads lifted under the connector.

Cleaned, rebuilt two traces with jumper wire. It ran for six hours, then the CPU rail collapsed for good.

Parts donor52 min
CASE 037

Washing machine · Motor control

Drum stutters on spin, burnt smell, brown residue around the triac heatsink.

Triac and gate resistor gone, snubber cap out of spec. Replaced all three and added a proper thermal pad.

Revived33 min
CASE 036

Switch OLED · Won't charge

Dead on any cable. USB-C port looks fine under the microscope, PMIC gets warm.

Fake third-party charger took out the M92 chip. Replaced it, reflowed the port, tested on four cables.

How an episode runs

Same four stages, every time. If we skip one, we usually pay for it later in the video.

STAGE 01

Intake

What it did before it died, and what the owner already tried.

STAGE 02

Diagnosis

Schematic, multimeter, scope, thermal camera. Measure before touching anything.

STAGE 03

Surgery

Hot air, microscope, and the actual technique — filmed close enough to copy.

STAGE 04

Verdict

Works, or it doesn't. Cost of parts against the cost of a replacement.

Guides

The groundwork. Watch these first and the teardowns stop looking like magic.

Send us your dead

Got something written off by a service centre? Tell us what it is and what it did. Interesting failures get filmed, and you get the board back either way.

We reply to everything, usually within a week.

  • What we takeGraphics cards, consoles, laptops, appliance control boards, power supplies.
  • What we don'tData recovery, anything still under warranty, and phones with the screen already off.
  • CostNothing for the diagnosis. Parts at cost if you want the repair done.