A friend's video card (MSi 1080) has has a capacitor just pop off, so I'm attempting to fix it - as I feared, the capacitor next to it popped off as well, after only a slight nudge during examination, I figure it's some kind of manufacturing flaw.
Here's a photo I found of the exact PCB with all the heatsinks removed, I can take a photo of mine as it is if it helps:
My main issue is, no matter what I try, I cannot get the solder to adhere to the pad on the PCB. The remaining solder would not melt, and I'm afraid to overheat the PCB. I've already made this mistake on a test board, using the heat gun functionality of my
Dremel butane fuled soldering iron, I got a test board specifically so I could make these mistakes, I bubbled the board in one instance, and cooked the components in another case. So for the actual video card, I'm trying not to spend too long on any one area, I don't want to damage it.
Since I couldn't get the existing solder to melt, I gently scraped it off, hoping to bare the original metal pad, though I can see the copper in some spots, so hopefully didn't scrape too far. I did some research and looks like they use special solder paste and cook the board, which would explain the grainy consistency of the existing solder, maybe that's why I couldn't melt it?
Every time I apply a soldering iron to get a bit of solder to adhere to the pad, it just beads. The solder melts and never bonds to the boards, it just forms little beads on the soldering iron tip. I even dared tried using the heat gun functionality for a bit, and the solder beaded again, just sitting on the pad.
I'm using plenty of flux paste to improve the surface area of the heating.
I'm at a loss as to how to get this solder to take, if I could, I could do the technique I saw on YouTube where you put a blob down on one pad, put the component on that blob, melt that foot into place, then solder the other foot down. But I can't get that far.