Had a weird short on a 2018 MacBook Pro board today

I was working on a liquid damaged A1990 board in my shop in Denver, and the 5V rail kept dropping to zero under load. After an hour with the thermal camera, I found a tiny speck of corrosion under a 0201 capacitor near the CD3215 chip, something I would have missed without the cam. Has anyone else run into a short that small causing a full rail collapse, or did I just get unlucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamie94015d ago

Nah, that's pretty normal for those boards. A tiny short can definitely take down a whole rail, especially on the 5V line. The thermal cam is a lifesaver for finding those.

hollyl2515d ago

Jamie940 is right, those tiny shorts are a real headache on that model. It's wild how a speck you can barely see can kill the whole rail. Good call using the thermal cam, I'd have been stuck for hours without one too. Finding it under a 0201 is just brutal luck. Solid work tracking that down.

angela_harris15d ago

Honestly that's not just bad luck, those tiny shorts are super common on liquid-damaged boards.