D
Installed mine today in about an hour. Soldering took about 15 min using a cheap iron and $10 jewelers glasses. But I use to install original 30 wire xbox chips, so this was easy even with my now bad vision and shaking hands.
I thought I would share my progress so far with my preparation for this install.
I've been soldering for years but I've never done any SMD work, tiny or otherwise. It's something I've always wanted to do and I figured this would be a good time to learn a new skill and pick up some new kit.
The first thing I did was to pick up a practice SMD soldering board from ebay to see what kinda components I was dealing with. I got one of the 'blue' kits as they allowed you to practice with a decent range of package sizes down to 0402. I didn't know the switch capacitors were 0201 at the time, I'm going to look for a practice board with those on next. This is the blue practice board kit:
To get a scale of size, this is a MicroSD card and a grain of rice in comparison to the 0402 resistors...and bare in mind that the 0201 resistors are even smaller than that. I've posted Theorem's picture below for comparison again:
It was pretty obvious that I'm not going to be able to do this without some kind of magnification. I had previously tried using a 1x-14x head mounted magnifying visor in the past but I just couldn't get on with it. The main problem was the focal length. The greater the magnification, the smaller the focal length was. If I was using the higher end of the magnification the focal length was only a couple of inches which meant your head/lenses were right near the part and you risked stabbing yourself in the cheek with your iron
I know people do use these and use them well but they're just not for me.
After a lot of research looking into various types of magnification I decided that a stereo microscope was most likely going to give the best results. There are not too many choices for stereo microscopes. It seems to be either mid range hobby level or top end pro level. I opted for the former and bought a [Swift S42-20 Stereo Microscope].
I've got to say, equipment-wise this is one of the best things I've ever bought. It comes with 10x and 20x lenses, so far I've been doing everything with the 10x lenses which is more than adequate for 0402 and I imagine 0201 would be fine too, if not the 20x would certainly cover it. The two goose neck lights are great too but the best thing about this kind of magnification is the focal length! It's about 250mm/10" which is loads of room to swing your soldering around under and it's a much more comfortable height to be working at. The 'down side' to equipment at this price range is the fact that you do only have 10x and 20x fixed magnification. This is still fantastic though and I can't really see me needing any further magnification range or adjustment at this time. If you want to go down that route you're looking at something like the [Amscope SM-4B] that has adjustable 7x-45x magnification but it's also 2x the price. Maybe an upgrade for further down the line if required.....
Anyway, I digress. Using a microscope like this makes everything so much easier. I've never soldered any SMD stuff before and this made it a breeze, it almost feels like cheating
Initially, I had a TS-100 soldering iron with a stock TS-B2 tip and I only had some 1mm(0.040") solder as that's what I've generally been using for my cable assembly soldering. I did use these for a start to see how I got on and to be honest, I managed 'ok' with them. This is the stock TS-B2 tip and 1mm solder next to a 0402:
As you can see, the solder is pretty huge in comparison to the components and the iron tip isn't much better. I did manage to solder with these but it was hard to control the amount of solder and get nice concave joints. Even just tinning the stock tip put too much solder on for a 0402 component.
I picked up a TS-I tip for the TS-100 and I also bought some 0.38mm (0.015") and some 0.25mm (0.010") 63/37 leaded solder.
For comparison this is a TS-BC2 tip, the stock TS-B2 tip and the TS-I tip:
This is the 1mm solder, 0.38mm solder and 0.25mm solder:
There's not a massive difference between the 0.38mm and the 0.25mm solder in terms of usability. The 0.25 is a little more controllable but it does seem to be much harder to come by than the 0.38mm/0.4mm solder. If you can only get 0.38/0.4mm then that should be fine.
Just for comparison again, here's the 0402 resistors next to the TS-I tip and the 0.25mm solder:
I found the TS-I tip with it 0.2mm radius much easier to use and the finer solder made it much easier to apply an exact amount of solder. I know some people prefer the stock tip for micro soldering but I much prefer the finer one.
Side note: I picked up a [2UUL Universal Double Shaft High Temperature PCB Board Holder Fixture] which is ideal for this type of thing and should come in useful for lots of projects:
So my next step is to pick up some 0201 components and a test board. I'm pretty confident that I can do this install though after this bit of practice. If anyone is wanting to do this to their switch I would at least recommend picking up a practice board and trying out your soldering on that before attacking your switch. Most of the install videos I have seen so far have made me wince!
If I can give any other advice it would be:
Clean everything with IPA before starting.
Make sure you use flux, and use it often.
Watch your temps and solder time. You are better off using a higher heat for a short period of time than a lower temp for a longer period. Once again, practice.
Normally I pre-tin everything prior to bringing parts together and soldering but looking at the videos I have seen so far I think I'm going to get everything into position and then pre-tin the pads and then solder at the same time on this particular installation.
Hope that helps a little. I'm looking forward to the install once the chips are available!
I've been soldering for years but I've never done any SMD work, tiny or otherwise. It's something I've always wanted to do and I figured this would be a good time to learn a new skill and pick up some new kit.
The first thing I did was to pick up a practice SMD soldering board from ebay to see what kinda components I was dealing with. I got one of the 'blue' kits as they allowed you to practice with a decent range of package sizes down to 0402. I didn't know the switch capacitors were 0201 at the time, I'm going to look for a practice board with those on next. This is the blue practice board kit:
To get a scale of size, this is a MicroSD card and a grain of rice in comparison to the 0402 resistors...and bare in mind that the 0201 resistors are even smaller than that. I've posted Theorem's picture below for comparison again:
It was pretty obvious that I'm not going to be able to do this without some kind of magnification. I had previously tried using a 1x-14x head mounted magnifying visor in the past but I just couldn't get on with it. The main problem was the focal length. The greater the magnification, the smaller the focal length was. If I was using the higher end of the magnification the focal length was only a couple of inches which meant your head/lenses were right near the part and you risked stabbing yourself in the cheek with your iron
I know people do use these and use them well but they're just not for me.After a lot of research looking into various types of magnification I decided that a stereo microscope was most likely going to give the best results. There are not too many choices for stereo microscopes. It seems to be either mid range hobby level or top end pro level. I opted for the former and bought a [Swift S42-20 Stereo Microscope].
I've got to say, equipment-wise this is one of the best things I've ever bought. It comes with 10x and 20x lenses, so far I've been doing everything with the 10x lenses which is more than adequate for 0402 and I imagine 0201 would be fine too, if not the 20x would certainly cover it. The two goose neck lights are great too but the best thing about this kind of magnification is the focal length! It's about 250mm/10" which is loads of room to swing your soldering around under and it's a much more comfortable height to be working at. The 'down side' to equipment at this price range is the fact that you do only have 10x and 20x fixed magnification. This is still fantastic though and I can't really see me needing any further magnification range or adjustment at this time. If you want to go down that route you're looking at something like the [Amscope SM-4B] that has adjustable 7x-45x magnification but it's also 2x the price. Maybe an upgrade for further down the line if required.....
Anyway, I digress. Using a microscope like this makes everything so much easier. I've never soldered any SMD stuff before and this made it a breeze, it almost feels like cheating
Initially, I had a TS-100 soldering iron with a stock TS-B2 tip and I only had some 1mm(0.040") solder as that's what I've generally been using for my cable assembly soldering. I did use these for a start to see how I got on and to be honest, I managed 'ok' with them. This is the stock TS-B2 tip and 1mm solder next to a 0402:
As you can see, the solder is pretty huge in comparison to the components and the iron tip isn't much better. I did manage to solder with these but it was hard to control the amount of solder and get nice concave joints. Even just tinning the stock tip put too much solder on for a 0402 component.
I picked up a TS-I tip for the TS-100 and I also bought some 0.38mm (0.015") and some 0.25mm (0.010") 63/37 leaded solder.
For comparison this is a TS-BC2 tip, the stock TS-B2 tip and the TS-I tip:
This is the 1mm solder, 0.38mm solder and 0.25mm solder:
There's not a massive difference between the 0.38mm and the 0.25mm solder in terms of usability. The 0.25 is a little more controllable but it does seem to be much harder to come by than the 0.38mm/0.4mm solder. If you can only get 0.38/0.4mm then that should be fine.
Just for comparison again, here's the 0402 resistors next to the TS-I tip and the 0.25mm solder:
I found the TS-I tip with it 0.2mm radius much easier to use and the finer solder made it much easier to apply an exact amount of solder. I know some people prefer the stock tip for micro soldering but I much prefer the finer one.
Side note: I picked up a [2UUL Universal Double Shaft High Temperature PCB Board Holder Fixture] which is ideal for this type of thing and should come in useful for lots of projects:
So my next step is to pick up some 0201 components and a test board. I'm pretty confident that I can do this install though after this bit of practice. If anyone is wanting to do this to their switch I would at least recommend picking up a practice board and trying out your soldering on that before attacking your switch. Most of the install videos I have seen so far have made me wince!
If I can give any other advice it would be:
Clean everything with IPA before starting.
Make sure you use flux, and use it often.
Watch your temps and solder time. You are better off using a higher heat for a short period of time than a lower temp for a longer period. Once again, practice.
Normally I pre-tin everything prior to bringing parts together and soldering but looking at the videos I have seen so far I think I'm going to get everything into position and then pre-tin the pads and then solder at the same time on this particular installation.
Hope that helps a little. I'm looking forward to the install once the chips are available!
Hi,
Since txswitch doesn't take preorder anymore, do you have other retailers with (relatively) good prices?
I only saw a few retailers asking more than 150$ for the preorders (trusted retailers according to TX).
Thanks
Since txswitch doesn't take preorder anymore, do you have other retailers with (relatively) good prices?
I only saw a few retailers asking more than 150$ for the preorders (trusted retailers according to TX).
Thanks
When you put it back together, where did you redo the thermal paste? The chip of course but did you cover the caps too or other places?
You only need thermal compound on the chip die and the place where the heatpipes touch the chip shielding. The excess paste all over the caps is just a result of Nintendo applying too much of it.
When you apply paste, make sure you have enough to cover the whole die and any areas where the hear pipes touch the shielding, just like Diskun said. It'll probably squeeze out and cover the caps around the die when you screw in the heat sink, but that's fine. It's better to put more paste and be certain that the surfaces are properly covered than to not have enough and leave some of the die uncovered, just make sure you use paste that's non-conductive electrically.
just search sx lite and you'll find one. I bought one sx core in aliexpress. It's easy to get a refund just in case it turns out to be a scam or not in aliexpress.
I thought I would share my progress so far with my preparation for this install.
I've been soldering for years but I've never done any SMD work, tiny or otherwise. It's something I've always wanted to do and I figured this would be a good time to learn a new skill and pick up some new kit.
The first thing I did was to pick up a practice SMD soldering board from ebay to see what kinda components I was dealing with. I got one of the 'blue' kits as they allowed you to practice with a decent range of package sizes down to 0402. I didn't know the switch capacitors were 0201 at the time, I'm going to look for a practice board with those on next. This is the blue practice board kit:
To get a scale of size, this is a MicroSD card and a grain of rice in comparison to the 0402 resistors...and bare in mind that the 0201 resistors are even smaller than that. I've posted Theorem's picture below for comparison again:
It was pretty obvious that I'm not going to be able to do this without some kind of magnification. I had previously tried using a 1x-14x head mounted magnifying visor in the past but I just couldn't get on with it. The main problem was the focal length. The greater the magnification, the smaller the focal length was. If I was using the higher end of the magnification the focal length was only a couple of inches which meant your head/lenses were right near the part and you risked stabbing yourself in the cheek with your iron
After a lot of research looking into various types of magnification I decided that a stereo microscope was most likely going to give the best results. There are not too many choices for stereo microscopes. It seems to be either mid range hobby level or top end pro level. I opted for the former and bought a
I've got to say, equipment-wise this is one of the best things I've ever bought. It comes with 10x and 20x lenses, so far I've been doing everything with the 10x lenses which is more than adequate for 0402 and I imagine 0201 would be fine too, if not the 20x would certainly cover it. The two goose neck lights are great too but the best thing about this kind of magnification is the focal length! It's about 250mm/10" which is loads of room to swing your soldering around under and it's a much more comfortable height to be working at. The 'down side' to equipment at this price range is the fact that you do only have 10x and 20x fixed magnification. This is still fantastic though and I can't really see me needing any further magnification range or adjustment at this time. If you want to go down that route you're looking at something like the that has adjustable 7x-45x magnification but it's also 2x the price. Maybe an upgrade for further down the line if required.....
Anyway, I digress. Using a microscope like this makes everything so much easier. I've never soldered any SMD stuff before and this made it a breeze, it almost feels like cheating
Initially, I had a TS-100 soldering iron with a stock TS-B2 tip and I only had some 1mm(0.040") solder as that's what I've generally been using for my cable assembly soldering. I did use these for a start to see how I got on and to be honest, I managed 'ok' with them. This is the stock TS-B2 tip and 1mm solder next to a 0402:
As you can see, the solder is pretty huge in comparison to the components and the iron tip isn't much better. I did manage to solder with these but it was hard to control the amount of solder and get nice concave joints. Even just tinning the stock tip put too much solder on for a 0402 component.
I picked up a TS-I tip for the TS-100 and I also bought some 0.38mm (0.015") and some 0.25mm (0.010") 63/37 leaded solder.
For comparison this is a TS-BC2 tip, the stock TS-B2 tip and the TS-I tip:
This is the 1mm solder, 0.38mm solder and 0.25mm solder:
There's not a massive difference between the 0.38mm and the 0.25mm solder in terms of usability. The 0.25 is a little more controllable but it does seem to be much harder to come by than the 0.38mm/0.4mm solder. If you can only get 0.38/0.4mm then that should be fine.
Just for comparison again, here's the 0402 resistors next to the TS-I tip and the 0.25mm solder:
und the TS-I tip with it 0.2mm radius much easier to use and the finer solder made it much easier to apply an exact amount of solder. I know some people prefer the stock tip for micro soldering but I much prefer the finer one.
Side note: I picked up a which is ideal for this type of thing and should come in useful for lots of projects:
So my next step is to pick up some 0201 components and a test board. I'm pretty confident that I can do this install though after this bit of practice. If anyone is wanting to do this to their switch I would at least recommend picking up a practice board and trying out your soldering on that before attacking your switch. Most of the install videos I have seen so far have made me wince!
If I can give any other advice it would be:
Clean everything with IPA before starting.
Make sure you use flux, and use it often.
Watch your temps and solder time. You are better off using a higher heat for a short period of time than a lower temp for a longer period. Once again, practice.
Normally I pre-tin everything prior to bringing parts together and soldering but looking at the videos I have seen so far I think I'm going to get everything into position and then pre-tin the pads and then solder at the same time on this particular installation.
Hope that helps a little. I'm looking forward to the install once the chips are available!
To be honest, you are overthinking it. It's kind of simple to do. The most important thing is to line it up properly and soldering the anchor points. After that it's cake. Like I was saying, I was using cheap jewelers glasses and one eye closed. Also for me silver bearing core solder worked better and some old flux paste I had laying around.
--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------
When you boot it up, it will create a licence request file, you can upload that file to the SX site to generate a license file you download and put on the SD card, or you can activate right from the switch if it's connected with WiFi.
Oh yeah, this. This is worth noting. Do not use Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut (or any other Liquid Metal) just because it is the best stuff. If you put liquid metal on the die and it goes down to the caps or really any contact in there, your Switch is toast.
Well no use liquid metal, but I'm gonna use thermal conductive.. As long this paste doesn't toch the capacitor, everything will be fine
Thermal paste is expected to be thermally conductive. What you shouldn't use is stuff that conducts electricity as well. Some pastes like earlier versions of Arctic Silver 5 have particles of electrically conductive materials in their composition, usually silver or graphite. Most products nowadays, like MX-4 and Kryonaut don't have that, and can touch components without any issue.
I have kryonaut and it works wonderful on everything I've used it on. I used to use gelid extreme
Applies better and doesn't dry out as early.
Gelid after 2 years did just kinda go blah on my ryzen.
kyronaut has been wonderful on air and watercooling on pc and laptops. I'm hoping on the switch it'll be good too.
Applies better and doesn't dry out as early.
Gelid after 2 years did just kinda go blah on my ryzen.
kyronaut has been wonderful on air and watercooling on pc and laptops. I'm hoping on the switch it'll be good too.
Last edited by caldeio,
I'm installing the SX Core with a 10usd soldering iron and a bunch of liquid flux. Praying that I don't f*** up my console. I practiced on an old xbox 360 board.
Wish me luck on my dumb idea/attempt.
Wish me luck on my dumb idea/attempt.
You can get a variable temp soldering iron from Amazon for $35. I would get that and cheap head band magnifier. Make it a ton easier and improve your chances.
-
The Real Jdbye
*is birb*
-
@
Psionic Roshambo:
So my opinion is that they could age a bit better in the future, and maybe AMD will continue improving them via drivers like they tend to do. No guarantee there but they have done it in the past. Just a feeling I have. -
-
-
-
@
The Real Jdbye:
they definitely will age better but i feel dlss might outweigh that since it looks about as good as native resolution and much less demanding+1
-
-
@
The Real Jdbye:
AMD could introduce something comparable to DLSS but nvidia's got a lot more experience with that
-
@
The Real Jdbye:
least amd 7xxx has tensor cores which the previous generations didn't so there is the potential for AI upscaling
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
@
The Real Jdbye:
i think i heard of that, it's a good idea, shouldn't need a dedicated GPU just to run a LLM or video upscaling
-
-
-
@
BakerMan:
Have you ever been beaten by a wet spaghetti noodle by your girlfriend because she has a twin sister, and you got confused and fucked her dad? -
-
@
Psionic Roshambo:
I had a girlfriend who had a twin sister and they would mess with me constantly.... Until one chipped a tooth then finally I could tell them apart.... Lol
-
@
Psionic Roshambo:
They would have the same hair style the same clothes everything... Really messed with my head lol
-
@
Psionic Roshambo:
@The Real Jdbye, I could see AMD trying to pull off the CPU GPU tandem thing, would be a way to maybe close the gap a bit with Nvidia. Plus it would kinda put Nvidia at a future disadvantage since Nvidia can't make X86/64 CPUs? Intel and AMD licensing issues... I wonder how much that has held back innovation.
-
-
-