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Im having problems with a toshiba satellite l850. Gpu is dead. I tried to reflow the chip but now the motherboard doesn't even post.. The power led is blinking white, and I get no image on the screen (as expected).

Before I change the motherboard, im trying to cut the power of the gpu chip, making the motherboard ignore the gpu and use the cpu as primary graphics (Intel).

But I don't have a clue in how to find the right conector to cut the power. Does anyone know how to do that?

Or any other idea to make one laptop work without GPU...

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  • I hope you didn't attempt to "reflow the chip" by putting it in the oven. "But I don't have a clue about how to find the right connector to cut the power. Does anyone know how to do that?" - It is a horrible idea but just look at the schematic for the motherboard.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 16, 2018 at 15:22

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Sounds like a very bad idea.

  1. Laptops aren't desktops, you can't randomly add or remove parts. Laptop's BIOS is built to support specific hardware and expects it to be present at all times.

  2. Desktop PC components are designed to be removable. Connectors like PCI-E are built so that the device may or may not be present. Chips soldered on the motherboard aren't designed to be removed and doing so will most likely result in useless motherboard.

  3. You can't just cut power and assume that a component will act like it's non-present. Integrated circuits are way more complicated than that, they always somehow affect other parts that they are connected to. Unless system is built with partial unplugging in mind, this won't work, and no laptop manufacturer would design motherboard so that you could cut some GPU pins.

  4. Motherboards have multiple layers and it's highly unlikely that ones you need are easily accessible.

  5. Motherboard does already use Intel's GPU as primary GPU, that's how hybrid graphics are built. Dedicated GPU never replaces integrated one, it only works as an accelerator.

TL;DR: Don't do that.

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It should already work without the GPU.

The same thing happened to me. All you had to do was reinstall windows and not install the graphics card drive. Then it just used the Intel GPU. There's no need to do all this. You probably destroyed something vital when you "reflowed" it. That's never recommended. There IS a professional way to reflow chips. That is not the professional way.

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  • Reflowing a laptop is a terrible idea. The display, CPU, GPU, RAM... All are heat sensitive at as low as 300°f. Your laptop is probably bricked now, and isn't worth trying to replace the motherboard, since unless you removed the display to reflow the computer, that is shot for certain at minimum. The amount of money and time that would have to go into this are far more than the machine's value
    – matterny
    Oct 27, 2017 at 1:12

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