Motherboard repair in Elk Grove

A phone that stops charging looks like a port problem, and sometimes that is exactly what it is. Just as often the port is fine and the charging IC behind it has failed, a data line has been pulled off its pad, or a filter capacitor has shorted. The same goes for a laptop with no display: panel and cable can both be healthy while the board never brings up the rail that drives them. Separating those cases takes meter readings against a schematic, and the answer decides whether you are looking at one small component or a whole board.

Micro-soldering. Pads sit fractions of a millimetre apart and some components are smaller than a grain of rice. That calls for a stereo microscope, temperature-controlled irons, hot air and a bench set up for it, which is what we have.

BGA rework and reballing. Ball grid array packages sit on a matrix of solder balls, and heat cycling fatigues those joints until contact is lost. Reballing lifts the package, cleans the pads, fits fresh balls and seats it again. A plain reflow is not a repair; we use it only to hold a device together long enough to pull your data off.

Passive component replacement. Corrosion and surges take out individual capacitors, resistors and inductors. We identify the part against the board's power rails and replace it, rather than condemning the board around it.

IC replacement. Charging, audio and power-management ICs account for most of the phone and laptop board faults that reach us. On iPhones the charging IC is the usual suspect: Tristar on older boards, Hydra and Tigris on later ones.

No-power tracing. Nothing on the screen, nothing on the charger. We meter the rails in sequence, find where voltage stops or where a short is dragging a rail down, and work back to the component responsible.

iPhone logic boards. Charging ICs, audio, baseband, NAND and power management, including the stacked boards whose two halves have to be separated before anything can be reached. More on iPhone repair.

Samsung Galaxy mainboards. Charging circuitry, USB-C controllers and eMMC storage faults.

MacBook logic boards. USB-C and power delivery, T2 related faults, discrete GPU failures on Intel models, and machines showing no sign of life at all. More on MacBook repair.

Windows laptop motherboards. Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus and the rest: no power, no display, no POST. More on laptop repair.

Desktop boards. ATX boards with failed VRM components or bulged capacitors, and BIOS chips that need reflashing. More on PC repair.

iGeek Tech Repair handles phone, tablet, laptop and desktop boards at the Elk Grove shop, and board-level jobs come to us from across the Sacramento area. Typical work: iPhone charging and audio ICs, Samsung charging circuits and eMMC, MacBook power delivery and GPU faults, no-power tracing on Windows laptops, desktop VRM and BIOS repair. Every repair is quoted after inspection, before any work starts.

Component-level repair is not always the right call. Corrosion that has crept under several packages, an IC nobody stocks any more, a board old enough that a donor costs less than the labour to rebuild it: in those cases we tell you plainly and lay out what the alternatives look like, including whether it is worth going far enough to get your data off and stopping there. Turning a job down is better than taking your money for a repair we do not believe in.

Pricing. Board work is priced per fault rather than per device, because what failed and how hard it is to reach change from one job to the next. Every repair is quoted after inspection, before any work starts. Diagnostic fee quoted at check-in and applied to your repair if you proceed. Where the odds of a fix look poor, we say so before you commit to anything.

Timing. Ask about turnaround when you check in; it depends on the repair and parts availability.