NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RAXE500 BCM54991 bypass
So i was having a issue with the router no longer working so i looked it over with a thermal camera to find that the bcm54911e chip that drives the 2.5gb port was cooking like a frying pan. once remo...
If it is the chip next to the port and located on the top of the board, then that chip needs a heatsink, and should have a thermal pad on the heatsink in the spot where that chip is located. Since the chip essentially has no additional encapsulation and no heatspreader, it will get hot. If using a thermal camera to try and measure the temperature of the chip, you may get inaccurate results unless you cover the die with a thin layer of thermal paste (so that the surface doesn't remain highly reflective), though operating without a heatsink may be difficult. While not the best or neatest solution to measuring thermals of components like that, for chips that use a thick thermal pad, you can measure their temperature without too many issues by spreading a thin layer of a viscous thermal paste such as K5 Pro, then place a thermal probe on the die (provided its thickness is less than the lowest point of the original thermal pad), then add more K5 pro on top of it to fill the space between the chip and heatsink, and ensure that the cable for the thermocouple is secure.
Ideally, this shouldn't be needed for a consumer device, especially if it is still under warranty. and in cases of if they are out of warranty, then a failure of that chip should be covered, and if not under warranty, a repair will be difficult unless you can find a new chip that has the solder balls pre-applied where all you need to do is align the chip and use hot air.
Many broadcom chips are hard to get as many common suppliers rarely stock them, and router and AP makers don't seem willing to sell individual components. It is overall a bad situation as repairs like that will often require finding broken donor boards that you can salvage components from, but when it comes BGA components with a high pad count, you will need to find a stencil and reball them, and it is extremely hard to find. Outside of that many chip suppliers that you will find on sites like octopart will have very consumer unfriendly order policies where they will not sell you a single unit, and instead may require you to purchase an entire reel.
If we would face a 10 Gb PHY here, there could be some heatsinks required, indeed. On a tiny 2.5Gb PHY, probably operating on a GbE link only (you have not mentioned any details), quiet mainstream these days, even if operated at the full nominal speed at the maximum cable length 24*7, there can't be any critical heat developed. Unless there was some soldering or chipset level issue...
I for sure think it was a chip failure since the design doesn't involve a heat spreader or thermal compound on the chip. Sadly I believe my only option is going to be to find another router with the same lan chip and transfer it over which isn't really hard.
