Question about a weird fix for a flickering monitor

I was at a swap meet in Portland last weekend and this older guy was telling me about a 2012 iMac with a backlight that kept cutting out. He said he fixed it not by replacing the whole board, but by just reflowing the solder on two specific capacitors near the power supply with a heat gun (he mentioned the C956 and C957, I wrote them down). He said it's held for over a year now. I'd always just swapped the whole power board in those cases. Has anyone else tried this kind of targeted reflow on older Apple stuff? I'm curious if it's a real fix or just a temporary band-aid.

3 comments

3 Comments

hannah_west3922d ago

Wait, @logan_wood, did that heat gun trick leave any burn marks on the board near the caps?

the_viola22d ago

Wow, I totally would have swapped the whole board too. Used to think anything less was just a hack job. But hearing it from the Portland guy and then seeing @hannah_west39 and Logan's stories, I'm convinced. If it's just those two caps failing from heat stress, a careful reflow makes total sense. It's not a band-aid if the root cause is fixed. Saves a ton of money and keeps a working board out of the trash.

logan_wood22d ago

Oh man, that's totally a thing. Ran into the same exact issue with a 2011 model a while back. Did the same fix with a cheap heat gun, just hitting those two caps. It's been fine for two years now, just sitting in my mom's office. Honestly, a full board swap feels like overkill for what is often just a tiny bit of cracked solder. Seems like a common weak point on those older boards.