LetiferX Posted April 17, 2015 Share Posted April 17, 2015 This is pretty much a shot in the dark. I haven't had much luck looking up what I think is a fuse.On the top side of the board, opposite the MXM connector end, One of the two E7 ER [+] labeled chips blew out the side.The machine was unphased when it blew during powerup and continued to boot into windows while I was holding the power to force shut down. This is what makes me think it was a fuse that successfully ate the power spike or something along those lines.It will be headed off for RMA soon. I'm curious if anyone knows what the chip is? If it's fixable, I'd love to keep this 980M since it can handle +370/+425 @ +125mV.Thank you in advance for any information you can provide. (I have pictures, but it looks like I don't have enough posts here yet to put them up from my pc?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LetiferX Posted April 18, 2015 Author Share Posted April 18, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khenglish Posted April 18, 2015 Share Posted April 18, 2015 That's a Vin capacitor. All it does it remove some voltage ripple from the power into the card. It's not necessary and you can just remove it and forget about it.If you want to replace it, you can use any capacitor rated for 25V or higher that physically fits. The one that died is likely 15uF, and you can easily get 47uF for that form factor. Just search mouser or something for a SMT (surface mount) capacitors that are no more than 4mm or whatever long. The C76 and C66 pads are also for Vin capacitors, but are not present. You can add some more to those spots if you want as well.Also you are certain it is from the E7 cap and not the much bigger 470uF caps? The 470uF caps are much more important and missing one will hurt your overclock (meanwhile adding more will improve your overclock). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LetiferX Posted April 19, 2015 Author Share Posted April 19, 2015 Big thanks for this information, Khenglish!I'm going to get in touch with rjtech and request prioritization of keeping the card. I'd like to avoid the silicon lottery after winning it the first time.I will look for threads related to adding more of the 470uF capacitors, also. I'm pretty curious how this would work, since I don't know where they could be physically placed off the top of my head.I'm 99% certain it was only a small E7 ER that blew and not the larger ones. In the photo it looks like everything is in bad shape because of the debris, but it was all from the one source point.I have one question about all of this, should I be worried that this happened in the first place? Is the power distribution of the pack/motherboard/mxm just going to spike like this again and kill more capacitors in the future? If I replace the broken one and add two more new ones like you mentioned, will they randomly die again or was this a low quality part chosen by nvidia to limit the potential of the cards?I may not have mentioned it before, but I had the graphics card at completely stock settings when this happened. I had been restarting many times in rapid succession as I tried different system memory overclocks (which might have been bad for how these capacitors are used), but everything was stock on the graphics card. Maybe too many boot spikes in power overwhelmed the capacitor when it hadn't been fully discharged from the previous times it was on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khenglish Posted April 20, 2015 Share Posted April 20, 2015 Eh, some caps are just made poorly and may die.For adding caps you can piggy back them like what is done on the clevo 7970m. There is room to stack one row higher on the existing 6 caps. I did this to a 680m and my 1.05V overclock improved from 1019mhz to 1045mhz when going from 6x 330uF caps to 11x 330uF + 1x 470uF caps. The 980m has a 3rd power phase and the existing caps are 470uF vs 330uF, but adding 6 more I expect would still get another 13MHz. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LetiferX Posted April 26, 2015 Author Share Posted April 26, 2015 Eh, some caps are just made poorly and may die.For adding caps you can piggy back them like what is done on the clevo 7970m. There is room to stack one row higher on the existing 6 caps. I did this to a 680m and my 1.05V overclock improved from 1019mhz to 1045mhz when going from 6x 330uF caps to 11x 330uF + 1x 470uF caps. The 980m has a 3rd power phase and the existing caps are 470uF vs 330uF, but adding 6 more I expect would still get another 13MHz. Khenglish, thanks again! I will be attempting the fix and adding additional capacitors as well. Do you know the voltage of those two sets of caps? The E7 ER are on a 12V line, and the set of 6 ( plus the two down and right?) are at core voltage so ~1V ? Would I be okay with 16V+ on the small caps and 2V on the set of 6 (+2 extras) ? You mentioned 25V before, which seems really high unless it's to protect against spikes (or the line is actually that high.) Wouldn't 16V with higher capacitance/lower ESR be superior? I could find some with greater handling of spike current also. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khenglish Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Those should not be 12V. If they are 12V caps then that explains why they blew. Those caps have the power brick voltage, which is 19V, or 19.5V depending on your brick. 20V is cutting it close while 25V has room for error. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaredhello Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Those should not be 12V. If they are 12V caps then that explains why they blew. Those caps have the power brick voltage, which is 19V, or 19.5V depending on your brick. 20V is cutting it close while 25V has room for error.12 volt capacitors aren't even really a thing in the first place, though. Usually it's 6.3 volts, 10 volts, and then 16 volts on capacitor ratings. Those caps were put in place by Nvidia... and I'm 99% sure they know what they're doing in regards to voltage and capacitor requirements. Asides that, the voltages that they deal with on cards are usually bucked down to lower voltages. That's what the inductors are there for, they're all part of the switching power supplies that are all over the card to help reduce the voltage down more. The cap probably blew due to an overcurrent condition, it overheated, or it was just a premature failure. Sometimes that happens, since manufacturers can't make perfect components 100% of the time. As long as you replace the cap with another capacitor of the same or greater capacitance, you'll be fine. The voltage also needs to be the same, or greater as well. Aka, 16 volts at 47 uF or greater. Looks to be like, 1210 package size. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khenglish Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Oh I missed he also wanted to replace the 2 big Vcore caps and not just the blown Vin cap. Yeah there is a 2.5V and 2V standard that would work well for them. You can get up to 560uF for that size and voltage. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LetiferX Posted April 26, 2015 Author Share Posted April 26, 2015 Thanks again Khenglish and jaredhello, this was very helpful.I find it interesting that the high voltage rail is tied to external supply voltage. I would have guessed that it matched desktop rail standards, basically that the motherboard dropped it down to 12/5V before sending the line to the card. The bigger pipe is less power limiting, so that must be the thinking. Limits using higher voltage supplies with future laptops, but I suppose there isn't much reason to go above the voltage specs of the 330W Clevo bricks.I'm going to spend some more time of Digi-key now. I believe I already found the matching 2V 560uF caps. Originally Panasonic caps all around based on the pictures, but maybe I can top them from someone else.Thanks for an estimate on the small cap size, finding that one has been killing me. I'll look for 24V+ in that size and find the best capacitance/esr balance. Kheglish, you mentioned two Vcore caps, are the two down and right not the same as the array of six above? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khenglish Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 The 6 in a pack are vcore. I was thinking that you wanted to change the 2 discolored ones. The 2 caps on the side of the card are for memory voltage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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