"krw" wrote:

VanguardLH wrote:

"krw" wrote:

...and how are you going to regulate the temperature on this mass? It
has to be quite closely regulated.

Hence why the DIY'ers that will do this task are those that have
soldering stations. You know, the ones where you can dial in the
temperature. However, as pointing out in the videos to which I link,
others have been inventive in finding cheaper means of doing the
soldering, reflow, or desoldering.

"Soldering stations" are *NOT* intended for BGA work. boggle You
need at least hot air and preferably a controlled oven for this.

How does having a soldering station preclude your ownership of a heat
gun? How are you going to cleanup the solder left behind after removing
the BGA chip? With a little soldering iron repeatedly trying to wick up
a few solder remnants at a time? Or put a wide tip on the station iron,
lay it across a length of wick, and use the whole length to capture a
lot of solder remnant at a time?

Please don't generalize some $40 soldering station with those costing
hundreds that ARE designed for BGA rework. Sorry if you mistook my
"soldering station" to mean some style that isn't designed for the task.
If I said you need a new tire, I really shouldn't have to specify what
tire fits your car. Besides, that small and simple soldering iron
station with temperature control still suffices for BGA rework, too. If
you watched the videos, you'll see that removing the BGA device doesn't
require the use of the lowly soldering iron station, and neither does
the installation of the BGA chip. Users have found pancake griddles
(with their temperature control) and heat guns sufficient for removal
and installation. Yet that lowly soldering iron-only station does come
in handy when cleaning up all the solder remnant and re-balling the BGA
chip.

It means that no retailer is going to sell this stuff to you.

It means they will void the warranty.

No, it means that they will not be in this market at all. The number
of DIYers who can do this is close enough to zero that it's not a
business.

So you're claiming the DIY'ers are incapable of learning new skills. If
some college dude in a cramped dorm can use a pancake griddle and heat
gun to reflow the solder for a BGA GPU to fix cold solder joints and
another guy can use the same griddle and heat gun to replace a BGA chip,
why can't others? The hardest part of the entire process is the time to
protect the area outside the chip by applying foil tape (as a heat
deflector for the heat gun's airflow), all the solder and rosin cleanup
after removing the BGA chip, and re-balling the BGA chip and none of
that requires super-wizard skills by a DIY'er. Doing the desoldering to
remove and soldering to install are the easy parts. It's a lot like
painting a house: most of the effort and time is spent in preparation
and the actual painting goes quick and easy.

Yes, there are different levels of DIY'ers. Sorry, but I'm not terribly
concerned about the lowest level of them that have troubles figuring out
why an AGP video card won't fit in a PCIe slot or cannot figure out how
to determine the orientation of a non-polarized IDE ribbon cable. Ever
visited the Darwin Awards site to know the premise of its "awards"?
Some folks should never be an DIY'er but that doesn't stop them.

As I mentioned, the most likely
scenario is that you order the CPU you want with the mobo you want and
the combo gets delivered to you with that setup.

No, the most likely scenario is that this business won't exist. If
there is any DIY market, you'll buy the board with the CPU (and
perhaps the memory, too).

Isn't that what I said? The initial purchase when you spec out your
build would be to decide on a mobo+CPU combo and that's what gets
delivered to you with the CPU already soldered on. Hell, you can do
that now with ZIF-socketed CPUs by buying a combo the vendor already
came up with (and usually includes a bundling discount): they
pre-install the CPU into the ZIF socket and may even attach the HSF
(although I still prefer to do my own so to including lapping of the CPU
metal plate and the heatsink and making sure the proper dose of good
thermal paste gets used). So, yes, the initial buy will have the CPU
already soldered to the mobo.

So how does that stop DIY'ers from upgrading their CPUs if they don't
care about warranties or after the warranty has expired? Only if they
cannot get the BGA CPU chips will stop them. Sorry, but I don't think
the market for BGA CPUs is unsustainable so I believe there will be a
market for them - but at a price premium since such DIY'ers are not
volume buyers - and there will be warranty (which means the DIY'er has
no recourse if they get a bad chip).

A jobber at some point
after the chip manufacturer but before the retail/online vendor does the
work or is contracted out or however the vendor wants to get made the
hardware config that you order. Sometime later you want to replace the
CPU because it went bad, like you overclocked or overvolted it, or you
want a better CPU. Do you really buy a mobo with a CPU and then
immediately discard the CPU to buy a more powerful CPU and put that one
in? No, you buy your hardware list, fab the parts together, and
sometime later decide to upgrade. Users of mobos that have expired
their warranty won't care about what the retailer will sell them since
they already have it, it's out of warranty, and they've decided they
will change the CPU.

No, you buy a new board, too. The choices of CPUs will be very
limited, too.

Now you're guessing even worse than the hypothesis claimed in the
article that started this whole discussion. You don't know and neither
do I as to what will happen regarding availability of single-unit
purchases of BGA CPUs. I suspicion there will be availability and
disagree with you. You suspicion that there will not be availability
and disagree with me. So, so far, we've agreed to disagree.

I don't see that this will impact the initial or first sale of hardware
when you fab your homebrew host. You're going to build your shopping
list, get the parts, and slap it together. Sometime later you decide to
make changes. In this case, it's not a question of whether a retailer
will sell you a CPU and mobo separately and warrantly their users
soldering expertise. It'll be whether or not non-commercial or
non-volume users can purchase the BGA CPUs to acquire them to sometime
later swap out those CPUs. If you can't buy one BGA CPU at a time, it's
not likely you're going to buy 100 or 1000 of them to change the CPU on
your one home computer. My bet is some volume buyer will resell the
individual units at a markup and make some good money at it. Of course,
they aren't going to include a warranty with it.

You're dreaming.

Oh, you're one of those "odd" purchasers that build by buying parts that
you will immediately discard to then buy some other part to replace
those you already purchased. So how do you buy mobos and CPUs now? Do
you really buy a mobo one month and then months later buy a CPU for it?
Do you really buy both a mobo and CPU (separately or as a combo) but
upon delivery discard the CPU and go buy another CPU? Or do you buy the
mobo and CPU and *use* that hardware in your build?

I didn't say there would be as great a selection of combinations of
mobos and CPUs. The selection will probably be less as vendors will
offer only certain combinations. This in itself will eliminate
consumers getting the wrong parts and reduce returns to the vendors.
You will pick from what BGA CPU and mobo combos the vendors do provide
just like you do now with CPU and mobo purchases. If the CPU makers go
to BGA chips and force the mobo makers to follow then the computer
vendors will have to follow, too. So, yes, you CAN make your inital
purchase with a BGA CPU and mobo combo and, no, that doesn't preclude
you from changing the BGA CPU later whether you do it, get a more expert
friend to do it, or pay a shop to do it.

The videos show doing BGA is not rocket science. It doesn't even
require high-tech equipment. It obviously will void any warranty but by
the time you upgrade the warranty is irrelevant. If, as you claim, the
consumer is going to buy a new BGA CPU and mobo combo as the upgrade or
replacement, they're going to still have that old BGA CPU and mobo
hanging around so why not experiment since you have nothing to lose.
If, as I claim, DIY'ers won't care about warranties, especially after
they've expired by the time they choose to upgrade, and they'll be using
low-tech gear to desolder, cleanup, and solder the BGA stuff.

So it doesn't seem your argument really hinges on whether DIY'ers can
learn how to handle BGA chips (since I've already shown that's not true
by reference to videos). Instead it really hinges on availability of
the BGA CPUs for single-unit purchases (i.e., where a user can buy just
one). From what I've seen at eBay, even when something is normally
available only through volume purchases, someone goes ahead anyway to
buy a 1000 for their own use of one and then sells off the rest either
individually or in lot sales.