broken piece of a motherboard! help!!

[og fancy sauce]

I accidently broke this piece off my mobo when i was installing a back plate for a new heatsink i got. Question is: what exactly is this component and is this fixable? It's located on the underside of the motherboard where the CPU is.

Am i screwed and have to buy a new motherboard?

 

[utahraptor]

It appears that you have accidentally knocked a capacitor off. Do you know anyone that is good at soldering tiny components? If not, you might have to send the motherboard in to be repaired. What brand is the motherboard and where did you get it? I don't think I would risk running the PC in that condition.

 

[Bubbaleone]

SMD work with a soldering iron requires considerable skill. If there's a local electronics repair shop, with someone well qualified in PCB and SMD rework, you could take it them for an estimate.

I'd suggest getting a local estimate, with a guarantee of serviceability, so you can decide if the cost of a repaired board is worth it. It took a considerable amount of force to break that solder joint, and it's possible that there's other damage that won't show up until the board is tested at the component level.

 

[og fancy sauce]

So after reading a few things, people say that the importance of 1 small mount capacitor is either a hit or miss.

I decided to go through with installing the heatsink, and voila..the blissful noise of the POST beep.

So far so good, has been running a solid 15 mins with no hiccups.

I will run prime95 to test the stability of my system, without that 1 SMD.

If I do need to solder that smd back on, a local electronics shop quoted me $40 for the job. sound reasonable?

 

[Harvey]

The part could be either a capacitor or a resistor. Some other components also come in that form factor. If you can read any printing on it (you may need a magnifying glass), you may be able to determine what it is and its value.

Assuming it's a capacitor, it's probably used for decoupling, which means its job is to remove noise from clocks, etc. from the power traces. It's good design practice to use a little more decoupling than the product needs to account for worst case conditions so losing one may or may not be critical in any given product.

If it starts having problems, such as spontaneous rebooting or data errors, and you can determine exactly what the part is, and you're good with a low wattage solder iron, you could replace it. If you're not experienced at soldering, have the work done by someone who is.

Hope that helps.