So my HP Pavillion dv9667 laptop recently went "pop!" and stopped working. After a thorough web investigation, I've concluded that the nVidia video card has fried (an all too common occurrence in these models). The video card is integrated on the motherboard and so the only solution is a motherboard replacement.

Of course its now well out of warranty (2yrs old) and I've been quoted CAD$300-400 to get it repaired professionally at a local shop. No thanks, I'd rather put that kind of money into a brand new (non-HP) laptop. But that will leave me with a large & worthless paperweight that I might as well experiment on. So just how feasible is a DIY motherboard replacement with some cheap Ebay parts? Will I need a soldering iron, clean room and electron microscope, or will a set of tiny screwdrivers & some patience be enough? All techie tips and advice welcome!

(I picked up a USB/SATA drive enclosure at the weekend to get the data off the hard discs, so once that's done there's not much else to lose.)

For a laptop, forget it. That'll be a specialised HP part which won't be readily available, nor easily replaced.

A motherboard replacement won't be too hard if you can get your hands on the same laptop with a different fault, such as cracked screen.

It should just be a process of screwing the board in and plugging all the various leads into it. Open yours first to check, but you shouldn't be needing to get stuck in with a soldering iron! Just open it first to check before you buy another donor.

Or, the easy option, sell it for spares/repair, or even split it and sell the screen, keyboard, battery & charger, DVD drive etc etc.

If it has a working screen I would be tempted to put it on the bay for spares or repair.

Laptop motherboards are a bit of a git to replace sadly. I used to have to do it for a living – its like car dashboards. The manual makes it look easy, and it may only have one spanner in the haynes book, but you will be messing around with it for ages and never quite get it right.

David.

I've never found laptops to be overly complex to pull apart, generally they only go back one way and providing you don't break parts by forcing them the only problem you tend to have is finding you've forgotten a screw at some point during the re-assembly. Having said that, I'm fairly used to pulling stuff apart so I'd probably not recommend it to a beginner unless you have nothing to lose (cheap laptop and spare, worth a go etc).

If you can find one with a dead screen on t'ebay i just switch the screens over, as it's a far less risky job than a motherboard swap.