Hey there..

D504 looks bad. Located on the back of the board looks disconnected.

I'll look a bit further once I have a minute.

However, here you'll already have the full schematic:

There are many testpoints that are described in the schematic. This should give you a good head start to verify if the voltages are all in place.

This is not liquid corrosion.
There's a fashion trend (mostly among HDD manufacturers) to silver-plat the PCB.
The purpose of this is unclear, as silver and sulfur form a this black coating.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-10-04, 10:25:

Hey there.. […]
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Hey there..

D504 looks bad. Located on the back of the board looks disconnected.

I'll look a bit further once I have a minute.

However, here you'll already have the full schematic:

The attachment msi_ms-8984_rev_00a_sch.pdf is no longer available

There are many testpoints that are described in the schematic. This should give you a good head start to verify if the voltages are all in place.

Thanks, man, you're a lifesaver. I went over it and fixed the soldering. Not my best soldering work, but at this scale without a microscope that was the best I could do.

I want to test it with this repair, but I also noticed C125 (the big capacitor between memory chips) had extremely low resistance to ground, like around 47 ohms on + and 17 on ground. I have no idea if that part south of the decoupling capacitor is supposed to be so low resistance, but again, no detected shorts on power pads so far.

shevalier wrote on 2025-10-04, 10:59:

This is not liquid corrosion.
There's a fashion trend (mostly among HDD manufacturers) to silver-plat the PCB.
The purpose of this is unclear, as silver and sulfur form a this black coating.

The corrosion I was talking about (on open solder pads mostly) was cleaned from the PCB. It was more reddish-yellowish. But it can be what you said. First time I'm seeing this tbh. Thanks for the heads up.

shevalier wrote on 2025-10-04, 10:59:

This is not liquid corrosion.
There's a fashion trend (mostly among HDD manufacturers) to silver-plat the PCB.
The purpose of this is unclear, as silver and sulfur form a this black coating.

D509 just looks suspicious, but is not populated normally. Otherwise the regulator next to it and all the other resistors etc. Should be in place.

See https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/msi-nx6800-td256e
For reference.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-10-04, 11:11:

D509 just looks suspicious, but is not populated normally. Otherwise the regulator next to it and all the other resistors etc. S […]
Show full quote

shevalier wrote on 2025-10-04, 10:59:

This is not liquid corrosion.
There's a fashion trend (mostly among HDD manufacturers) to silver-plat the PCB.
The purpose of this is unclear, as silver and sulfur form a this black coating.

D509 just looks suspicious, but is not populated normally. Otherwise the regulator next to it and all the other resistors etc. Should be in place.

See https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/msi-nx6800-td256e
For reference.

Pretty sure D509 is not populated.

So I guess this might be the final update on this card. After resoldering the two banged up elements mentioned by you guys, the card is alive and kicking. Guess one more card saved from the scrapyard.

I assume it got stored improperly in the seller's storage and got pushed against other cards, which would account for the beaten up heatsink shroud and the disconnected components.

I'm very grateful to everyone who helped me do this; for some reason I was convinced it was too complex for me to fix it - and you proved I was wrong about it.

Now I wonder if C125 could be moved to another location, because I have an Arctic Accelero X1 somewhere in the storage but even though it is said to be compatible with 6800 series, I'm not sure it will fit with the cap in place. Guess they meant the 6800GT series, not the plain 6800.

Glad to hear! Much fun with it.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-10-04, 12:35:

Glad to hear! Much fun with it.

Considering back when it came out I only had a 6200 (which I tried, unsuccessfully, to mod into a 6600, iykyk), I sure as hell will 😀) guess a 2004 dream build is coming.