E-Waste laptop repair adventures.

[Kodehawa]

Hello TPU.

So a friend gave me a old gaming laptop they were throwing out and wanted to get rid of (that's why the title). Turns out, it's a pretty good laptop! i5 8300H, 1050 Mobile, and a 1TB SSD. It had no RAM as it was taken out.

This is how it was handed to me:

Uh oh -- hinge was completely screwed and somehow corroded shut -- possible water damage.

Indeed, the hinge was literally corroded shut. Somehow the hinge mechanism is what failed instead of the hinge mount, although the hinge mount was also completely gone. It had to be rebuilt regardless.

So it was time to test if it worked aaand...

We have picture! Also turns out it had 4GB of soldered RAM for some odd reason. I just threw a 8GB stick on it later, so it has 12GB of RAM now. Kind of an odd number.
The fans and heatsink also were cleaned fully in the meanwhile.

So it was time to fix the hinge!

Soaking it in vinegar for a few hours got rid of all the corrosion. I had to take apart the entire hinge (remove the nut and clean between the mechanism), but that wasn't captured.

In the meanwhile, got to repasting it with PTM.

All good, although the old thermal paste was incredibly dry and hard to remove. I pretty much had to scrub with a toothbrush and alcohol here for a whiiiiiiiiile. Temperatures now are completely fine even when hammered at the stock 90/60W PL1/PL2. Decided to change the wifi card to an AX210 (not captured) to make use of my WiFi 6 router.

Aaand gotta fix the hinge. Thankfully only the post on the laptop side was broken, so I re-added the screw posts with a soldering iron, reinforced them with two-part epoxy resin and waited.

So with thaaat, we have a usable laptop again! Here's the original broken side. Still bent but that's because the plastic spent 3 years bent like this in storage and it was impossible to get it less bent ):

And the lappy itself!

All in all, I'm happy with the result (and the laptop). Sadly the battery is dead (fully, will not charge) so I need to get a replacement for that, although I have no hope the battery would last anything even with a new one.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Very nice job!!!!!! I like how you saved that still quite usable laptop!

I've been known to do stuff like this too, as I hate seeing usable systems go to the landfill. I keep an assortment of small waste plastic pieces around, especially the pocket clips from Sharpie marker lids, specifically to melt into damaged laptop housings to fix broken hinge mounts. Older Toshiba laptops are notorious for cheap/broken hinge mounts - have repaired several over the years with some plastic melting and patience!

 

[Palindrome]

Love this. Shame about the battery, but even so, hopefully it can continue to be useful for someone rather than wasting away.

 

[Kodehawa]

Very nice job!!!!!! I like how you saved that still quite usable laptop!

I've been known to do stuff like this too, as I hate seeing usable systems go to the landfill. I keep an assortment of small waste plastic pieces around, especially the pocket clips from Sharpie marker lids, specifically to melt into damaged laptop housings to fix broken hinge mounts. Older Toshiba laptops are notorious for cheap/broken hinge mounts - have repaired several over the years with some plastic melting and patience!

Yeah! Thanks you :3

It's honestly not even too old. It does everything I would want a laptop to do so I am probably going to keep it.

Love this. Shame about the battery, but even so, hopefully it can continue to be useful for someone rather than wasting away.

Thanks! Probably will buy another battery and see how long it lasts for. I imagine the battery cells went way below nominal working voltage from being stored for so long and probably having something drain it. The BMS is just not letting the cells charge.

 

[1freedude]

Very cool. Is it a 3 cells in series battery? If you have access to the battery wiring, put 12 volts to the battery, at the battery. Obviously, positive to positive, neg to neg. The BMS might be sleeping or in a protection mode. A quick 1-2 second pop might wake it up. If not three cells, adjust voltage.

Edit, or try to manually charge the pack, or the indivudual cells.

 

[_roman_]

Good Job.

I would not waste money on laptop batteries to be honest.

Those hinges were a common MSI and ASUS problem over 10 years ago also. Cheap stuff in the area of the hinges. plastic breaks because there is too less injection molding in that area. Hinge got stuck after a while.

 

[Kodehawa]

Very cool. Is it a 3 cells in series battery? If you have access to the battery wiring, put 12 volts to the battery, at the battery. Obviously, positive to positive, neg to neg. The BMS might be sleeping or in a protection mode. A quick 1-2 second pop might wake it up. If not three cells, adjust voltage.

Edit, or try to manually charge the pack, or the indivudual cells.

Yeah it's a 3 cells in series battery. Could definitely try that if any of my friends have a way to do that

Good Job.

I would not waste money on laptop batteries to be honest.

Those hinges were a common MSI and ASUS problem over 10 years ago also. Cheap stuff in the area of the hinges. plastic breaks because there is too less injection molding in that area. Hinge got stuck after a while.

Thanks :3
Yeah I'm kind of on the fence on whether I'd want to buy the battery or not. In one hand, a replacement is plenty cheap ($30 ish). On the other hand, that's a fair chunk of the value of the laptop as a whole.

 

[eidairaman1]

That looked like it sat in water for some time

 

[Kodehawa]

That looked like it sat in water for some time

It really does. A surprise it works fine.

Actual motherboard had no water damage either that I could see