BGA Reballing (Ball Grid Array)

Category: infrastructure

The process of replacing the microscopic solder balls beneath an integrated circuit chip to restore structural connection.

Ball Grid Array (BGA) chips (like GPUs or CPUs) are surface-mounted via a grid of tiny solder balls. Over time, thermal cycling creates micro-fractures in these joints, causing device failure. Reballing requires desoldering the chip, cleaning the pads, applying fresh solder spheres via a precision stencil, and reflowing the chip back onto the board.

Common Examples

• The laptop’s display glitches were traced to cracked joints under the GPU, necessitating a full BGA reballing procedure.
• BGA reballing requires a specialized infrared rework station to heat the board uniformly without warping the substrate layer.