My favorite example of this sort of nonsense was an advertising image I saw when I was looking for a digital microscope. Had some very tiny wires to solder and wanted to get a feel for prices.
Behold:
The stethoscope!! 2real4me
Just listening to the AC DC via soldering iron. Tbh when IA art becomes super believable this is what IA art is gonna look like.
Ha! At least that one seems to be in jest.
After working in IT since 1999, I can count on my dads lefthand fingers the times I've had to solder a graphics card.
PS: My dad lost his left arm in 1996
I've done it twice actually... But I come from an embedded engineering background.
Replaced some dead caps on an expensive GPU once and the other time it was a laptop where some of the GPU memory had broken(? IDK really how it happened, it was my boss's personal machine, so few questions were asked) the connections.
In the latter case we desoldered all the tantalum caps and put the motherboard in our reflow oven. Then resoldered the tantalums. The fear being that tantalums wouldn't survive the oven we used for prototypes in the RD department I was in at the time (I count this as IT, as the admin was also an RD developer).
Both times it worked.
With that said, I don't think that I've even seen a soldering station in an IT department since the mid 00s.
My dad lost his left arm in 1996
If you manage to find it, you could still probably use it for counting. Just make sure to use a Clorox wipe on it first.
There's a few tricks you can do in overclocking where you replace shunt resistors. It bypasses power limit protections by making the board think it's drawing less power than it is.
That and replacing dead caps is about the only reason to touch a soldering iron to a GPU.
Only time I manually overclocket a PC was with a leaded pencil in the good ole days of AMD Thunderbird
How many times did you do it on the wrong side though?
When I worked at a computer shop if I thought a power supply was iffy I would plug my backup in outside of the case just like that. Was great for diagnosis.
I would also solder some laptops, dc jacks mostly. But not like that.
If you've never run a computer with a PSU hanging out the side powering your extra hard drives have you even lived?
I’ve used an extra PSU to power a graphics card. Things weren’t properly compatible, so I had to improvise a bit.
When you start the computer, you also need to use a paper clip to start the second PSU, because otherwise the graphics card will scream in terror until you give it the power it demands. It was probably the most ghetto style computer I’ve ever had.
Hell, I once ran a PC regularly with parts strewn all over my desk.
Gotta poke everything a bit to make sure it's still working, and what's better than a hot soldering iron for poking?
There was a point around the early 2000s where having a second PSU was a possibility for overclocking. I've still got my modified case with a second PSU in the optical drive bays.
From memory, the Pentium 4 would draw something like 120w, the hard drives would draw a bit more, then the graphics card would, and if you were pushing your limits, you'd have loads of fans and maybe a peltier cooler. Now known to be massively inefficient, we thought they were great at the time.
On top of that, you could only usually get low powered PSUs at the time. 350w and 500w were the norm, and you could get 650w if you were lucky. 800w were seen in magazines, but you'd have to remortgage your parents house to get one.
And those 350W ones might catch fire if you tried to pull more than 200W. There's an old video of a 300W supply being pulled at its max rating, and it was taking 900W from the wall. That's 600W it's turning into heat.
Johnnyguru may have singlehandedly fixed the whole PSU market. There was so much garbage back then, and few other places were giving them the tests they needed.
I have a server with two PSUs… hahaha
Redundancy though, it’s not a standard desktop
Spot on. I used to run a second PSU for my peltier cooling back in those days when overclocking. PSUs were also not nearly as powerful as they are now. 300w was average.
At least he is not touching the ouchy part of the soldering iron unlick a famos other stock footage
Excellent form, your non-soldering hand must have good contact with the PCB. Then you wave the iron like a wand, and incant "solderus fluxus", pay special attention to your pronunciation, and try not to blink as you envision the tiny components rearranging before you.
Tbf, I once ran a PC with two PSUs at the same time, because I suspected one to overload, but had no 2nd powerfull enough to run the whole system. It kinda worked, bjt the system broke down due to other reasons...
I bought a Cooler Master Stacker 810 back in 07 almost exclusively because it could fit two PSUs. All the cool kids over at XtremeSystems were doing so teenage me thought I should as well.
I never got around to needing another PSU, but I did learn to jump start an ATX PSU, and I still have the case.
I too like to solder a graphics card while holding it in the air. Helps with precision.
Do you also like to solder on the component side of the board?
That’s best side to solder on in fact.
Maybe they just have a 4090
What is he even supposed to be doing? Just melting circuits with a soldering iron like Phoebe's brother?
"Oh, no, the capacitor burst open on my video card Guess I have to buy a new one."
I dont see your point since one of them is just sitting on the bench.
Seen enough Dawid Does Tech Stuff to know the sign of a good bodge job is a second psu.
Also, yay for holding the soldering iron correctly.
The pros point with a cold iron, and solder with their eyes by intensely staring at it (pictured)
An expert can reflow a board with nothing but a heated stare
Ah yes, just let me get out the soldering iron and touch it to this GPU I'm holding...
I don't always hold a soldering iron, but when i do... i hold it like a baseball bat.
Yeah, my two main servers use redundant power supplies, my AI GPU server has no less then five, non-redundant power supplies, and my partner’s and my gaming rigs have two each, one for the damn GPUs and one for the rest of the system.
God damnit who hired swedish chef into the IT department.
I have daisy chained two PSUs to power a motherboard with 4 GPUs. Would recommend buying appropriate gear unless you like the smell of melted electrics
More power equals more fast, everyone knows this.
I run a server with 2 PSUs. If one craps out, the other can keep things running
I had a PSU blow out in my server once and troubleshooting looked almost exactly like this. Minus the guy with the soldering iron.
Dr Strange has really fallen on hard times
A powerful picture
To be fair, literally everything in that picture is bizarre or weird.
I have 3 of that exact video card.
Do you use only lead free solder on them?
I see the problem! My dude isn't grounded. Static electricity is a killer!
I have that exact GPU in my closet.
Is that a Radeon 9500? 9300 maybe? Cooler and board colour looks exactly like the 9800 but the board is smaller.
