raspberrypi

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Community about the single-board computers, micro-controllers and related projects.

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Am I being overly worried about small defects? (lemmy.douwes.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Since they have come back in stock, I bought a Pi 4 2GB and a Pi 4 4GB. the 2GB model had 2 bent GPIO pins and rattled when shaken, so I opened an RMA request for it. the 4GB model has arrived, and it has small solder blobs on the back of the board (see images)

Is this normal or have I just got unlucky with both Pis? I managed to scrape off solder on the first image but they have left a mark on the board.
The 2GB model seems to be completely working and the 4GB one boots to the bootloader but I'm out of SD cards to test it any further. Should I also RMA the 4GB model or am I being silly here?
Thanks.

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[–] 8bittech 1 points 10 months ago

I know this is an older post, but for anyone else reading. This is solder slag from the selective solder process (and very poor QA). It really should be removed to avoid becoming dislodged in the future and causing a short somewhere on the board. Use a wood or plastic item and some denatured alcohol to carefully remove.

[–] Tanel 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those leftover solder “blobs” are quite usual on raspberry. Better than pure chinesium quality though.

The small marks are just on the PCB’s clearcoat and will not matter electronically.

Just test it out. You can boot from USB without a sd card with PI4 ;)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can I/Should I just scrape off the leftover blobs?

I didn't know I could boot from USB, thats cool. If It's booting to bootloader it's probably fine though right? I'm replacing an existing 2GB anyway so I'll see soon enough.

[–] Tanel 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I would scrape them off without using much force. Otherwise they can come loose on a worst time possible and maybe short circuit some pins when the board is powered. Probably will never happen if the raspberry is statically mounted somewhere, but you never know when you are going to drop it while powered.

[–] Tanel 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

P.S If you are going to run some servers/services off the raspberry do not use regular usb sticks or sd cards. Get a USB ssd or USB to sata or M2 adapter. Some write intensive applications burn through quality sd cards/usb sticks within a year

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This Pi will just be a router, later I will run some DB stuff though so I'll get an SSD. I have another Pi I do some intensive Data stuff with and I have a sata SSD for that one.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There where some bits I didn't see before and I scratched the PCB a bit, does this look good?

EDIT: my phone did some weird things to the photo lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I replaced my old Pi and it's working fine. sadly the heat pads on my argon one have disintegrated in the process lol

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