Dealing with a stubborn cold solder joint on a 2018 Samsung TV last night in my garage.

I spent nearly 2 hours tracking down a flaky connection on the power board after a lightning strike near my house in Phoenix, and I was wondering if anyone has a go-to method for finding these hidden breaks without a thermal camera?

2 comments

2 Comments

jason3286d ago

Try using freeze spray on the board while the TV runs - the bad joint will frost up first.

anna_carter5311d ago

Honestly man, 2 hours on one joint on a 2018 Samsung? I get it's annoying but those TVs are pretty much disposable at this point. I'd have just swapped the whole power board for like 30 bucks on ShopJimmy and called it a day. Your time has to be worth something, and poking around for that long on a 6 year old set feels like overkill to me unless it's a super expensive model. Lightning strikes can mess with way more than one joint too, so even if you fix that one, another one could pop up next week. I usually just go for the shotgun approach and replace the whole board on anything older than 5 years, it saves the headache.