Advice on LG 55EA9800

[rthorntn]

Hi,

I have an old OLED, the LG 55EA9800, it cost a small fortune when I bought it back in the day.

It stopped working about 2 years ago, blank screen, the power supply tested OK and so I took a punt and ordered a used mainboard from AliExpress which worked for a year and now I have exactly the same issue again.  I suspect it might be a combination of heat and time thats killing the boards.

So I have another replacement mainboard and (if the repair works) I'd like this to last a bit longer, any advice, I was thinking about a few things:

• Cutting a ventilation hole in the back of the TV
• Having a slow quiet fan on it
• Putting heatsinks on the hot bits (as assessed by my FLIR)
• All of the above

Thoughts?

Thanks
Richard

[perieanuo]

Hi, it depends on what failed. If the flash died from bad firmware or poor quality, improving thermal won't help.
Why not try to repair one board and see later what You can do...
Br

[rthorntn]

Thanks perieanuo, I'm a perpetual beginner, more of a computer guy and so troubleshooting (never mind actually repairing) something as complicated as this is probably perpetually beyond me, I might have the tools, not sure, its the theory and skills I'm lacking in.

[perieanuo]

in this case, just put some coolers and it should change your chances it it's heat-related
br

[DavidAlfa]

I’ve seen lots of these failing in forums, sometimes due bad flash, others by CPU balls failing.
The flash on my $800 Sony 55W808C failed two years ago, after just 5 years, and it seems a very common issue on smart TVs.
I replaced the flash, wasn't able to find a working dump, but somehow It worked with the extracted data from the old chip, although the system partion couldn't be read beyond 75%.

Lost some certificates, causing Chromecast, Netflix and so on to stop working.
Bought a Chromecast with Google TV, disconnected the Smart TV from internet, and that was the best decision, let a $50 device do the hard work, if it fails just buy a new one!

[MathWizard]

I would go ahead and cut a few holes and add a little fan over a circuit board, surely most parts would last longer. And if you find this stuff fun, I'd say add some heatsinks too, if you have some around. I know I have a little collection of heatsinks from salvaged junk, including little ones for IC's.

But yeah, I don't have any good way to mount them on a vertical board, besides electric tape. And then I'd have to be real sure the heatsink wasn't going
to move and short something.

A typical 120mm, computer fan might use 12V @ 0.12A, but at startup it might be more like 0.6A. But a lot of those fans will run fine off 5V too, and only use 50-60mA, and also be a lot quieter. But there's no guarantee the TV's PSU can handle the extra load, but I'd try it.