Currently, we continue with the typical thinking that if something breaks, it is better to pull an RMA and if that is not possible to buy another new product. But for those who are a little do-it-yourself and do not want to wait for the typical bureaucracy of manufacturers, there is a very interesting and at the same time curious solution that no one had thought of. What if you could change, test and repair the chips of a RAM memory »hot“? Well, with this accessory now you can.
It’s a tedious task to test module by module until you find the error and if it happens, we don’t know what’s really going on. There is no software, for the moment, that can diagnose in which chip the fault is detected, so we should replace the complete RAM module or better, the kit in order to adjust the tertiary timings as much as possible and obtain the best performance. It can be in the past seen the seen.
Century Micro launches DRAM tester
Take it out like this ☝️ pic.twitter.com/YPFtorjbwR
— Century Micro Co., Ltd.[Officiel](@CENTURY_MICRO) March 4, 2022
There are two ways to approach this particular accessory and all still from a repair perspective: do it in situ in the module or do it outside in a NAND Flash tester. Either way, there’s a common previous move, and it’s nothing more than desoldering each chip.
Logically, these come with pretty good flux with the PCBs, so we’ll need to have a pretty good soldering station with a blower and some quality solder solvent to do this effortlessly and in the shortest possible time. In this spirit, the accessory of Micro Century This is particular, since it is a kind of structure that adheres just above the RAM module as if it were a heat sink.
This is partly because it touches the NAND flash directly and helps to dissipate the heat generated, but this is not its main function. What this accessory does is press the chips optimally taking into account whether or not they may have their solder done. For this there is a mold that leaves the chips in their perfect position and a lid adapted to the millimeter seals them so that they do not move.
Repair RAM memory and its chips hot
This is not the typical repair where with the voltage in the module you replace one chip with another, this obviously cannot be done as was done with the BIOS EEPROM back then. Here what is attempted is to desolder the chips and test module by module with stress software such as Karhu or RunMemtest Proremoving and inserting chips to determine what is failing,
A NAND Flash tester can tell us if the input and output voltage is correct, but it won’t tell us if the memory cells are working perfectly. With this accessory we can remove or add chip by chip and try the software until we find the one that fails, being able to buy a new one, solder it and finally replace it in a few minutes.
This very particular Century Micro repair accessory is available for DDR3 and DDR4, where they can have DDR5 ready in no time.
