I've done a few trace repairs with conductive pen and it works fine.

Depends. If it's just VCC or GND, it will work fine. For traces carrying signals with high clock speeds however, a conductive pen is not good for fixing it. It will make the signal end up being distorted. Better use a fibreglass pen to expose a few millimeters of the trace where it is broken and join it using solder.

derSammler wrote:

Depends. If it's just VCC or GND, it will work fine. For traces carrying signals with high clock speeds however, a conductive pen is not good for fixing it. It will make the signal end up being distorted. Better use a fibreglass pen to expose a few millimeters of the trace where it is broken and join it using solder.

It's a signal trace between the northbridge and some controller chip near the COM headers. It is also in a spot where many thin traces are tightly packed together so chances are I would just short a lot of traces and cause more issues.

I was considering buying something small and cheap like this: https://urun.n11.com/diger/gumus-iletken-boya … 2-ml-P307243636 and see if it would work, but I guess I am better off just using a jumper cable as ugly as it may be..

What conductive pens (very fine) are really good for is *testing*.

I mean, if it's not the solution, why solder in a wire?

But even if it works it's kind of temporary. Under some circumstances it might last a while, though.

derSammler wrote:

Better use a fibreglass pen to expose a few millimeters of the trace where it is broken and join it using solder.

This. Use flux and a tiny amount of solder on the iron's tip, this way you won't join traces together, and reseal it with uv curable mask.

konc wrote:

derSammler wrote:

Better use a fibreglass pen to expose a few millimeters of the trace where it is broken and join it using solder.

This. Use flux and a tiny amount of solder on the iron's tip, this way you won't join traces together, and reseal it with uv curable mask.

I just splash on some flux onto the area, tin the iron, then touch it to the damaged trace, and that's it? Solder flows onto the traces?

appiah4 wrote:

konc wrote:

derSammler wrote:

Better use a fibreglass pen to expose a few millimeters of the trace where it is broken and join it using solder.

This. Use flux and a tiny amount of solder on the iron's tip, this way you won't join traces together, and reseal it with uv curable mask.

I just splash on some flux onto the area, tin the iron, then touch it to the damaged trace, and that's it? Solder flows onto the traces?

Yes, exactly. Try it on some dead pcb first just to practice and feel safer. You should add a really tiny amount of solder to the tip and quickly run it over the trace before it gets burned, you don't want to create a blob over the traces