Hardware Bootloop and BlueScreen of Death after Cooling-Mod

[Diablokiller999]

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]

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.

 

[Paulsar99]

Sounds like you shorted something out inside your switch.

 

[Xenon Hacks]

You probably shorted a capacitor, time to break out the multimeter and checking for expected reads

 

[Diablokiller999]

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]

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.

 

[Diablokiller999]

Does anyone have the values for these?

 

[Bladexdsl]

you might have to tiny solder to fix it

 

[Diablokiller999]

you might have to tiny solder to fix it

Guess that shouldn't be an issue as a systems engineer ^^

 

[Xenon Hacks]

Guess that shouldn't be an issue as a systems engineer ^^

It's an inside joke about the tiny solder guy on gbatemp

 

[Diablokiller999]

It's an inside joke about the tiny solder guy on gbatemp

OK.......
Anyway, does someone have the right values for the capacitors so can check them?

 

[Diablokiller999]

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?

 

[Hayato213]

..

 

[mattytrog]

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]

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.