A question about HP Pavilion Intel-based motherboard specs

[Elijah23]

Hello.

tl;dr Is there a separate northbridge chip on Intel-based models of dv6-6000 laptops? Or is it a part of the CPU's architecture?

I own an old HP Pavilion dv6-6c53er model. Recently, I had the malfunctioning cooling fan and thermal paste replaced to deal with the overheating problem. A simple procedure, but it seems the person doing the maintenance managed to damage something on the motherboard. The laptop shows obvious signs of the northbridge chip malfunctioning.

I took it to a local laptop repair shop and was told that the northbridge chip was damaged during the maintenance, they wouldn't be able to replace it because new chips for this model weren't available anymore and they didn't install chips that had been in use due to warranty issues. However, the person who'd been doing the maintenance told me it was rubbish and, supposedly, there was no northbridge chip in my laptop at all due to it being a part of the CPU with the sandy bridge technology, Intel core i5-2450m in my case. So he offered me to have it replaced to see if it helps, but I sensed something fishy and refused. After checking local markets, I can see that such CPUs are available only preowned, so maybe that's what people from the repair shop meant.

I feel I was lied to or scammed by either the person in question or the laptop repairs shop, but I'm not tech-savvy to deal with this issue. So, my question is, Is there a northbridge chip on Intel-based models of dv6-6000 laptops or not? I've checked the Maintenance and Service Guides available for these models (http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03099531.pdf) and on the pages 86 and 87 there's an illustration that clearly mentions the chip on a computer model equipped with an Intel processor. However, the person responsible for damaging my laptop tried to persuade me I'm wrong on this.

I apologise if this topic is rather unconventional for an official manufacturer forum, but due to the low quality of both authorised and unauthorised laptop maintenance services provided in Russia, especially for old discontinued models, I don't really have other means to get to the truth, let alone have my laptop fixed. So a comment on this issue from a qualified person would be appreciated. I just want to know what's behind me losing a good laptop I've owned for many years and maybe have a comment I could provide to the customer support of the aggregator to prove the possible malicious intent of the person responsible for the issue.

[erico]

The manual states only the models that have discrete graphics have the northbridge chip that is part of the discrete graphics module.

Your specific model has UMA graphics (Intel® HD Graphics 3000), so there is no seperate Northbridge chip.

Your specific model uses system on a chip graphics (SoC)  and that is on the same chip as the Processor.