Shorted high side mosfet = always a dead CPU or GPU Acer Nitro 5 AN515-55 not coming on or charging 

A simpler method for identifying a shorted MOSFET without removing any component is to connect the coils to the ground. This will cause the faulty component to illuminate under a thermal camera, and it will also protect the CPU/GPU from excessive voltage because it will clamp it to ground. Just a tip.

Doesn't matter if you didn't fix it Sorin, still great tutorial video. Thank you!

Good morning, having my coffee and Sorins morning video is just the perfect start of my day.

Sorin of I was 50 yrs younger I would love to learn the knowledge you have gathered and given to us. And I'm still learning at 70 because you can't stop learning as it is one of my big interests hobby wise. Thank you Sorin

Just had the same issue and on the same mosfet today. I actually plugged the power and saw the main power Moffett getting hot because of that little mosfet was shorted. I removed the little mosfet (same as you in the video), and the power actually went and powered the motherboard for a second only to stop right after. Again, under the thermal, the CPU was lighting up like Christmas. Defintly not worth repairing it. It's better to keep it for parts at this point

I’ve got the same kind of laptop, power just shut off all of a sudden and the screen went black, opted for a new power supply still nothing, thank you for this video. You’ve saved me many many hours of heartache

I think the manufacturers should do more to protect these bga ICs like cpu and gpu etc from high voltage or these ICs should have sockets.

I had same laptop with same issue.. was driving me nuts… after I watched this video I was relieved.. thanks Sorin

Eu estou com o mesmo defeito em um LA-K861P. Comprei mosfet novos no aliexpress AON 36352 e ficou no mesmo sintomas que este vídeo tutorial. Obrigado por sua experiência e explicação sobre este equipamento.

It's ridiculous how manufacturers do laptops so powerfull but there's no safeties for this kind of scenario. As always, awesome video 👍

I just No-fixed an ACER Predator Helios 300 (Same motherboard shown in the video) with the same exact fault. I started by removing the two input MOSFETS and the 2 resistors. I Injected 1V/3A on left PAD of current sense resistors and found the shorted CPU MOSFET to be the one on the Far right. After removing it the short on the +19V input went away, but sadly measuring 0.3 Ohms to GND on the 4 CPU VCORE phases... :( RIP CPU. The MOSFET at position PQB11 was also shorted. When I looked in the barrel of the charger plug, there were scorch marks, and the charger was not outputting 19V. My guess the charger (aftermarket) may have been the fault.

My gaming laptop last 2 years and it blew a IC chip. Since it's a build in gpu, cost 1000$ to repair. I'm convinced.... NOT MORE GAMING LAPTOPS! Stick to desktops when you want power. And this guy says 80% of his repairs are laptop boards? Enough evidence that too much power in a tight enclosed case will ALWAYS lead to destruction. We don't see this in tower pc's.

Hi Sorin, you are always good at this job

Hi sorin little bit advice I'm watching always your video, if you remove a upper mosfet or high side mosfet don't plug in a charger without new mosfet, because the source of the upper mosfet is 19v, so they chance to wild that area because no mosfet detected by vcore ic, and is possible the lower mosfet will switch the ground in the cpu inductor

How did you know it's a dead high side mosfet from beginning? Can we guess it from charging current before opening the laptop?

I wish I could still be in uk to send you my alienware r5, I'm pretty sure you could fix my rgb lights as they are not working at all and it's not a single case, great videos by the way!

Hardest part of these cases is giving up. You feel that maybe one more look/test will find something that can be repaired, make the customer happy and get paid full fee!

19.8v @ 1.6ohms = 245w through the CPU right? Such a sad loss, I hated it when intel made the switch to BGA after Haswel era 😞

Thank you so much for this! It is very timely as I have just had the same issue on the same model and thanks to your tutorial I could quickly figure out the laptop is gone before making more costly repair attempts.

I have the same laptop. I get 19v on the first mosfet and then 14.6v on all of the following. No short. would that mean that the first mosfet is bad?

nice morning sorin with coffe and a lesson for you.thanks

when u injecting voltage, why do u not measure voltage on coils? if high side mosfet is shorted, there should be some voltage, yes?

4:58 how is the motherboard is shorted to ground and when u plug thee power supply ,itss didn't show it , normally the voltage drop and the current got drawn , someone explain pleasee

I miss the good old times when Sorin didn't have a thermal camera and he would have to use his hand. It would sound something like this: We have a proper nice laptop here. i7, separate graphics, SSD, proper nice. Let's connect it to the power supply. No, no, no.. I can't find anything that's getting hot. No... It can't be a faulty CPU. No.. It will be a sad day if it's a dead CPU because this is a nice laptop. *AJAJAAJAJAJAJAJ* this is mad hot! I burned my finger! It's a hot capacitor! The CPU is fine! 😃 Those videos were suspenseful and interesting until the last second 😂

Morning Sorin, early morning post

The question is what caused the fault. The mosfet blowing the cpu or the cpu causing the most stressed mosfet to short? Up until the last couple of years it was never the cpu especially on desktop boards, now we are seeing a lot more dead cpu's.

Please do more tutorials on Acer Nitro 5 laptops. I have the same issue with my laptop since last week and I don't know why this laptop is that strange and weak. Sadly my Acer Nitro 5 AN-515-58 does not turn on and does not show any sign of life. I am desperately seeking a way to fix it, and there is no on in Missouri to fix it. All they can do is replace the mainboard with a new one which I also can do it myself but I need to make sure it's a dead laptop.

I have a Predator Helios 300 with the same problem (a dead cpu) .Will a new motherboard get my laptop working again .Many thanks

They could protect it easily. Just disconnect power when some mosfet is not switching. Nothing get burned

Not always, I think. I have here an ASUS ROG which had a shorted high-side MOSFET and got 19 volts. It survived because of the working protection in the power supply.

Do the VRM fail becouse of heat? i know some people that want to play on a laptop but dont want to have any fan noise, could it be that most of the laptop that comes in are people that sett custom fan curve, or dont want the laptop to make any noise? i remember sorin once said that heat is the nr 1 factor that vrm fails or am i wrong? so playing with full fans on a laptop is not such a bad idea maybe hehe or am i wrong?

Sorin , se poate sa iei un CPU de la alt board sa-l pui pe motherboardu tau ? Aia din China cum fac ? Doar intrebam si eu, ca tot ce am invatat e de la tine , acuma stiu si eu sa schimb un super IO datorita tie. Multumesc pentru toate videourile tale.

I have no thermal camera but one of my cpu side mosfet has exploded in flames. Does that means it is getting hot ?

They are dual mosfet. With only one you control high and low side. I have same laptop for repair and the mosfet is shorted in high, low side, even the gate is shorted. Mine doesnt show screen also, after short is gone without faulty mosfet, but i can see that mosfet controller measure the sum of the mosfet output rail, and is probably that no screen image by this, another bad possibility is dead cpu, the worst thing, same thing that this video show 😰

@9:30 - you did not show how you knew that mosfet was the cause of the shorts!!! - was it getting hot, like the CPU?

My laptop having kind of same problem it is not charging and not turning on I showed it to a guy and he did some repair and laptop turned on but only for two times and again got same problem as before what should i do I gave him my laptop 3 times still facing same problem he is unable figure out what is the exact problem Each time He done repair laptop turned on but only for 2-3 times then didn’t open Please reply me what should i do

i changed battery and it turned on then it shut down and blue light blinks 5 times, i could not charge. any ideas???

Careful when heating near those aluminium capacitors... They can pop with little heat 😢

must be something that is common with acer nitro laptops mine got very hot and died within a couple of weeks of the warranty running out and I've tried all of the things acer said to do its a shame really seeing as it cost me £1000 still i guess i will have to treat myself and build a pc now

LEARN STUFF - THINGS I DO- This is a great video to LEARN about things you USE daily and how to repair them.

Why after the coil in vcore circuit the manufacturers doesnt put a fuse for this case?

Hi, I just want to ask my issue Acer nitro 5 With rtx 2060, ive install Nvidia driver and yes it was detected in Device manager showing Rtx 2060, But after restarting my laptop it will not bootup but keyboard light is on, I need to reformat the OS to make it running again using Intergrated Gpu of intel, hope you can help me. Thank you 😊

I have 2 questions here? First one is the Mosfet was shorted and caused CPU to fail, is it right? And the second one is, if u had a CPU spare one Exactly same, can u able to replace it and make it work or is the mainboard damaged also and not possible to replace or make it work again?

i was exited and waiting for you to saying ( i can't believe it's working) 😂but nah. next time ❤️

it's a nice laptop, so why not replacing the cpu?

Sorin can u give proper voltage from ur external power supply to the shorted mosfet point to check what happen

Well.. my nitro 5 was up and running fine. Went out side to get my cat inside.. started raining pretty bad. After about 10 minutes. I came back to my laptop powerless.. no lights.. connected to surge protecter.. screen wo t come on. I mean absolutely nothing. Not a single beep. What the heck is going on? I've read post after post about these nitro 5s dieing after a storm.. how can I even fix this?

great video Thank you

Neata, cafeaua cand o bem? Maine dimineata?

Is there way to prevent any consumers from getting this issue ?

is not possible to order and replace mobile CPU?

Dear Sir can you change cpu this model?

good to watch❤

Why not replace CPU?

Yer not much can be done in this case. New/used board or replacing cpu and chance of success is like playing the lottery.

sir every caps are shorted in one section what can i do??😭😭😭😭

Thank you

I have never understood why the CPU gets burnt when the MOSFET is shorted. Normally the MOSFET is conducting current, the same as if it is shorted. Even if you get more Amps momentarily, as explained here, what makes the CPU draw more Amps? Is it a question about Volts?

No fix but nice video as always!

"80% of my jobs are gaming laptops" What could be the reason ? It is the fact that gaming laptops are expensive and worth the cost to repair as opposed to a 350 euro laptop which people might prefer to just throw away if it breaks outside warranty than to spend time and money to get it fixed ? Or other reason (like Sorin is getting the harder to repair jobs (which just happen to be gaming laptops with their higher complexity and discrete video card) after normal shops fail to repair them ? Would be interested to know.

Last week this case came to me i couldn't fix it 😭. In my case the MOSFET was severely burned and it ate the PCB.

nice work

I cant believe why no protection against this. ridiculous. On purpose maybe who knows.

sir i want to become computer technician and i know computer assembling, windows formatting, and all computer works... but i don't know motherboard repairing so please sir give me some advice please🙏🙏I have to get my motherboard repaired from others here and they don't repair anything properly and charges very high

so you will order CPU from China now?

So sad, I feel for the owner. Spending so much on a gaming laptop only to watch it fail and unrepairable. 😟

Change CPU?

Спасибо) очень интересно

Were the other 2 similar laptops the ones he thought was bios firmware failure - lol -.

good...very good

This is why i am afraid to buy new laptop.. just stay with my old asus fx553vd

Go on, try a CPU change for the funs

Now what next

its ok

If it's the cpu dead, then you can replace it . Buy one which is compatible with this modele. Then it's done

my laptop is the same model and have same problem D':

Not only will I never buy a gaming laptop, and not only will I never buy a Lenovo laptop. I will never buy another laptop, I don’t like them anyway. Back to mini towers only. from now.

o come on, replace it with your heatgun!

Thanks... take a coffee.....

Never buy laptop with soldered unreplaceable cpu

RAM?

Order a new processor from China 😂 Maybe this Time come better 😁

💀 cpu that’s……

Wait my comment

Last week I got the same notebook with the same defect, it worked for a week after changing the mosfet until it died for good, that's sad kkkkk

How did you know it's a dead high side mosfet from beginning? Can we guess it from charging current before opening the laptop?