Device: Asus ROG Strix G513Q, sent in by post
Symptom: not working after an earlier repair attempt elsewhere
Diagnosis: the 1.8 V line shorted on the CPU side; the processor itself was damaged
Outcome: not repairable; the owner was told and the laptop posted back
This laptop reached us after someone else had already worked on it. By then, the fault that mattered was one we could not undo.
What We Found
The 1.8 V power line was shorted, and the short was on the processor side. A short turns current into heat at the part that fails, so the thermal camera showed where to look. The processor itself was damaged.
Why It Could Not Be Repaired
On this laptop the processor is soldered to the motherboard. Once it has failed, there is no realistic repair on the board.
The Outcome
We told the owner the laptop was beyond repair and posted it back. If a board repair goes wrong it can turn a fixable fault into a final one, so it is worth asking what a shop will do, and how, before it starts.
How we use a thermal camera: thermal imaging for board diagnostics. More on Asus laptop repair.
