The primary PCIe x16 slot stopped working and the only damage I can find is these two missing SMDs. I suppose I shaved them off with a card bracket. Great!
I can't find a photo out there with enough resolution on this to see what they were. Any thoughts?
Seems they were capacitors (C777 and 778), a picture wouldn't help you much as they have no markings on them. Anyway, I think it's unlikely that your PCIe slot problem is related to them, due to their proximity to the LAN chip. You have a chance to find out their values if you can trace them to some pins of the chip and get hold of its datasheet.
Yeah I agree it does seem unlikely that those caps are involved with the PCIe slots. Seems more likely they are connected to the Marvell secondary ethernet chip (which I never used).
It's a classical case of half-dead nForce 4 chipset. You have two options: heat it up to fix BGA contact temporarily or get a new chipset.
Theoretically you don't even need the heat gun, just disable the cooler and the chip heat will fix it for you.
I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.
