HP Zbook 17 G5 is Dead (PCH is dead after 3,5 year)

[RNowak]

Hi,

mine laptop 0,5 year after warranty is over got dead. It seems that PCH was corrupted. Were can I buy proper PCH for replacement in Laptop Service ? Need help and don't want to replace whole Motherboard because it is much too expensive (almost the price of new Laptop). Polish HP support didn't helped because laptop is over warranty.

Paid for it lot of money and it worked only 3,5 year this doesn’t seem fair for Mobile Workstation from HP. PCH is ss40e. In typical market all PCH have locked bootloader so they didn’t worked with laptop.

Please someone help me!

Best regards,
Rafal Nowak

[Planndobsolesce]

1. what tells you that the PCH got "currupted" AFAIK this aint a thing...

2. The Chipset on your Notebook should be intel HM370

3.  your Chipset is soldered to the Main board with an Ball Grid Array therefore you would need an quite expensive re-balling service and/or new SoC. Manufacturers usually don't do this because its much easier and cheaper to replace the whole Mainboard.

4. The Intel PCH is usually the very very last thing that breaks so why don't you tell us more about the Problem with your ZBook? Or send/bring your Notebook to an Third Party repair service which is offering BGA soldering/reballing to get your ZBook diagnosed. speaking from experience it can be very challenging to find such a service which wont be either be more expensive than buying a new ZBook or finding someone who aint trying to scam you by offering unnecessary overpriced repairs

But to answer your question: you can buy this PCH on Aliexpress as a Part. or you could salvage it from a defect Notebook/Mainboard bought of ebay

Sincerly

[RNowak]

Hi,

This is laptop made on demand for me by HP fabric. It costed about 4000 Euros.

After some time Laptop had issues with self restarting due to system crashes. After that it stopped to run any more and just power diode blinked 5 times.

It was in one Laptop service which said to me they did the testing and the PCH chip is dead and that they will not try to repair it.

Now it is in second service. They also said that this chip is dead. They tried to buy/order this chip from other places and they mounted it but Laptop didn’t want to run with that chips. They found that this chip has some BootLoader locked. They also said that HP mounted the Desktop chip and not Laptop and this is why it is very hard to buy proper. Now they got some second hand chip from other HP Laptop and soldered it to mainboard. Now it is a bit better – some part of motherboard got power but there is no power to the CPU. Not sure if the second had chip will work or is also damaged.

The service said that this corrupted chip is “ss40e”. So need here some help about the service schematics and the proper “new” chip for this model. And maybe some other help if there are such options.

Best regards,
Rafal Nowak

[Planndobsolesce]

There are several things that sound sketchy...

1.  Bootloader locked on PCH? This is not a thing they scamming you. Try to google those 2 words its just aint a thing. Unfortunately its seems to me like in Cpmuter repair business there is more scamming going on than repairing.

Try to find a Repairshop with reputation, not just Google 5 Starts i mean real reputation. Maybe look in Germany.

To me it seems very very unlikely the PCH got broken. Even if its a Problem with the PCH its more likely the PCH just lost contact to the Mainboard on some Pins (a reballing would solve that)

Also its absolute bs they cant get your PCH sounds like a scam. i can go on aliexpress right now and order that part... or as i said buy broken Mainboarb/Notebook from ebay and salvage the Part from there which is common practice for repair shops. Your repairshop not doing this does also sound like its a scam.

Your ZBook comes with 8th gen Mobile Processor Chip. Those always use the same PCH no matter the Manufacturer its no special Chip. HP does never even for their Xeon class ZBooks use Desktop Chips. THIS REPAIRSHOP IS A SCAM

There is no special chip its just a simple Intel PCH its intercopatible with 8.th gen 9th gen and so on all Processors from that Family... They scamming you of your Money

I would bet they never ordered or changed that PCH Chip

BTW: Look into the Manual of your Zbook online on hp.com what 5 blink does mean... Have you already done some basic Troubleshooting? replacing the Thermal-grease and trying to start the Notebook with the Battery physically disconnected? Than ask y real Repairshop what they would ask for a Diagnose and repair and than Look at ebay what an even newer Zbook 17 costs used.