See how iLogix Computer Solutions fixed a Dell 5420 that would not switch on.
Disclaimer: iLogix Computer Solutions will not be held liable for any damage to persons or properties should you follow this article. We are not recommending that you follow this blog as it is for advertising purposes only. Unless you are trained in working on electronics you risk serious burns to yourself and permanent damage to the device.
The Dell 5400 Series are good laptops. They support USB-C charging, they are fast and responsive however they have a common issue in that the charging circuit is prone to failure and as we have noted in previous blogs the USB-C ports are prone to damage. We have taken these laptops apart before and found the USB-C port loose in the case.
In this blog we will talk about a Dell Latitude 5420 that would not power on.
The first thing we wanted to do, after we establish that the ports are still soldered in place, is put an amp metre in the charge port and connect power to the charger to see what is being drawn by the device. This model has two USB-C ports and we found that one port was showing just over 5v and the other port was dead. We should be seeing around 20v on this model. This usually indicates an fault in the charging circuit.
We dismantled the laptop and tested around the Power delivery IC with a multimeter and found that we had some shorted capacitors. A short circuit is an unexpected and unintended path to ground. It occurs when an electronic component has developed a fault. When a component is shorted it gets very hot, all that electricity is going to ground through the shorted component and this is what causes it to heat up. The heat will lead us to the faulting component. All we need to do is inject voltage into the circuit using a bench power supply and watch under a thermal camera to see what glows.
The following photo is taken with a Thermal Camera. We inject voltage into a shorted capacitor and we see that our power delivery IC is getting hot.
So now we have diagnosed the fault we need to replace the part. iLogix Computer Solutions keep a lot of common fault parts in stock.
To remove the old IC we need to heat up the component with hot air to cause the solder balls under the IC to melt which then allows us to safely lift it from the system board without causing damage.
Once done we clean up with some Isopropyl Alcohol, apply some fresh soldering flux and using our hot air station flow a new component in place.
After we re assemble our Dell laptop we can now power it on....it's a fix.
Do you want to see how small the component is that we just replaced ? the following photo shows the IC next to an English penny.
We are now drawing 20v.
And our laptop powers on.
We have removed part of the image for our customers privacy.
Do you have a broken laptop?
Are you a business with lots of broken laptops?
Do you lease computer equipment and have lots and lots of broken laptops?
Call iLogix Computer Solutions to get you and your users back in the saddle.
01252 962898
Saving the planet one repair at a time.