Hardware Bootloop and BlueScreen of Death after Cooling-Mod

Diablokiller999

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Hi guys!
Yesterday I wanted to pimp my Switch because I hate the stutters in Breath of the wild.
Anyway, I opened up my switch, removed the aluminum shell, the heatpipe and the metal housing on the RAM to put some 0.5mm thermal pads on it and replace the SoC paste / remove the copper shield.
I have to admit, while removing the metal housing there was a spark between two capacitors because I touched it with my tweezer (forgot to disconnect the battery -_-). I started the switch immediatly to see if anything is damaged, just saw the Nintendo / Switch logos and shut it off again. So I replaced the thermal compounds, put everything together and now I've got a bootloop, which later changed into a bluescreen (Kernel problem as far as I know). By inserting a MicroSD card, this went back to a bootloop of the Switch logo. This also happens with an open Switch, so it isn't any additional pressure by the thermal pads I guess.

I don't have any CFW, never used a JIG on it before and it was on 5.1.0.
Did I brick my system or is it just a coincidence this happens with my mod, because I read a lot about this problem with first charge Switches.

Tried the "drain your battery and put it back into the dock"-method this morning but nothing changed.
Any ideas or do I have a 300€ paperweight?
 

Ericthegreat

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Sounds fixable. Put it to charge with the official charger if you have one like all day, but make sure it is actually off and not in autorcm. Try loading a CFW do you see the boot image (like with ReiNX) followed by a battery icon? Worse cones worse, I feel this is maybe fixable by resstoreing your nand. The spark at capacitors should be fine if the capacitors didn't swell(I supposed the location matters), do you have a multimeter, perhaps someone can have you test the capacitors.
 
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Diablokiller999

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I think it were the two big ones at the bottom of the red box


I can check them this afternoon with my multimeter.
But they looked normal to me, so no swelling or anything.
 

ghjfdtg

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Check the fuses and components. Chances are you damaged something with the short. Let it be a lesson to never leave the battery plugged when you open a device;)

edit:
These 2 are ceramic capacitors. They don't swell but crack/short if they are damaged. A (external) short usually doesn't kill capacitors but may damage other parts of the mainboard.
 
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Diablokiller999

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So I checked the capacitors in my switch. If I remember it right, it was the capacitor on the upper side (over the two black ones I previously thought I touched, but the pads are too low for that). All the bigger capacitors give me values of ~175microF, but it's weird that my Multimeter beeps like they have a short when I change to diode testing. So from my understanding they are broken and I don't trust the measurement inside a circuit but to be honest, I'm more into programming and layout design, less in electronics. So I'm open for your opinion.

Does anyone has a circuit plan or sth?

EDIT:
So I took new probes to get to the caps easier, grounded one probe and touched both ends of all capacitors in this area.

The red ones are shortened (give noise) so I guess they are damaged and cause the problem, the other ones give noise at just one pad (as to be expected because of ground). Now I need to replace them and hope they are the only ones dead in the system. Does anyone knows their capacity?
 
Last edited by Diablokiller999,

mattytrog

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So I checked the capacitors in my switch. If I remember it right, it was the capacitor on the upper side (over the two black ones I previously thought I touched, but the pads are too low for that). All the bigger capacitors give me values of ~175microF, but it's weird that my Multimeter beeps like they have a short when I change to diode testing. So from my understanding they are broken and I don't trust the measurement inside a circuit but to be honest, I'm more into programming and layout design, less in electronics. So I'm open for your opinion.

Does anyone has a circuit plan or sth?

EDIT:
So I took new probes to get to the caps easier, grounded one probe and touched both ends of all capacitors in this area.

The red ones are shortened (give noise) so I guess they are damaged and cause the problem, the other ones give noise at just one pad (as to be expected because of ground). Now I need to replace them and hope they are the only ones dead in the system. Does anyone knows their capacity?
I think they are to the buck regulator.

Can`t really test the caps in-circuit.

What kind of resistance are you showing?

Between 70-80 ohms on the caps you have highlighted seems about right based on the bench units I have here. Remember that 70-80 ohms won`t mean anything from the capacitors but may give an indication of the buck regulator condition.
 

The Real Jdbye

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Hi guys!
Yesterday I wanted to pimp my Switch because I hate the stutters in Breath of the wild.
Anyway, I opened up my switch, removed the aluminum shell, the heatpipe and the metal housing on the RAM to put some 0.5mm thermal pads on it and replace the SoC paste / remove the copper shield.
I have to admit, while removing the metal housing there was a spark between two capacitors because I touched it with my tweezer (forgot to disconnect the battery -_-). I started the switch immediatly to see if anything is damaged, just saw the Nintendo / Switch logos and shut it off again. So I replaced the thermal compounds, put everything together and now I've got a bootloop, which later changed into a bluescreen (Kernel problem as far as I know). By inserting a MicroSD card, this went back to a bootloop of the Switch logo. This also happens with an open Switch, so it isn't any additional pressure by the thermal pads I guess.

I don't have any CFW, never used a JIG on it before and it was on 5.1.0.
Did I brick my system or is it just a coincidence this happens with my mod, because I read a lot about this problem with first charge Switches.

Tried the "drain your battery and put it back into the dock"-method this morning but nothing changed.
Any ideas or do I have a 300€ paperweight?
Use ceramic or plastic tweezers next time, then you don't have to worry about shorting anything. :)
But the ceramic ones are very hard, and can easily damage wire insulation if you use it to pull out wires, ribbon cables etc. Plastic is the safest.
 

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