Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-08-21, 03:14:

BTW I was going to ask what equipment you use but can see from one of your youtube videos that you've got a hotplate and a decent hot air station, it must take some experience to be able to swap over chips like this, I wish I was better with BGA.

Unfortunately yes. Not to brag but reballing big chips like GPUs is the ultimate discipline in BGA soldering. Tons of stuff can co wrong and sometimes the chips just die anyway for seemingly no reason. I got the temperatures down to 200°C preheat and 230-240°C top heat by using one of these adapters for my hot air station. It's very easy to toast them otherwise.
If you want to get into BGA more, start with memory chips. They are a lot easier to work with.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-08-21, 03:14:

For temperatures on the FX series, do you use temp ranges for leaded solder or were they using lead-free by this point?

Nvidia was using leaded solder up to the 6000 series, ATI up to the X1900 series (I think). So thankfully the temperatures don't have to be quite as high when soldering. 😀

Tried MATS with the card