The "OFFICIAL" Onkyo RC270, NR708,NR808, NR1008, NR5008, Integra 80.2 Failure Thread - Page 52

I am considering buying the Onkyo-5509 Pre Amp Processor .Does it have the same problems as the 08 series?I have a 3008 which is 2.5 years with no problems as of now.I run a fan on the top back and it releases a lot of the heat and also do not use the Amps and run complete pass through to my Pioneer Plasma .Maybe this is why I have not had a problem as of today.I would love to buy the 5509 but am a little scared.

I thought about getting one of those myself as it might be the last Onkyo with multichannel analog inputs. The problem is, no one really knows if the xx09 units are safe because the HDMI failures usually happen about 18-24 months in, and the xx09 has only been out for a year. We'll know about 1 year from now if the XX09's are fixed.

Sadly enough, if I HAD to purchase a replacement for my 5008 right NOW (or within the next month), the most likely candidate would be the discontinued Denon 4311 (discontinued but still available online). Decent price, has XT32 as well as Pro capability. Multichannel analog inputs, up to 11.1 AND most importantly, has been out for some time now with no critical failures.

Onkyo, if you bother to read this, you need to make sure the HDMI board problems are absolutely resolved in all future models. Don't skimp out on cheap capacitors or capacitors that are smaller for reduced costs. Don't cheap out on the board regulator designs. Penny wise, pound foolish. You save a few cents on parts in avrs that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and you WILL lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in customers losing faith and jumping ship to other brands.

And when you give the rest of the world Audyssey Pro-ready capability while giving US customers the finger by handicapping US models to force customers to Integra if they want Audyssey Pro, you'll end up forcing them to Denon.


Max

If your unit has not experienced any issues you should just knock on wood, because has it has nothing do with with the fans and the use of external amplication. Right now you've just been fortunate.

Have you any info on the Onkyo-5509? I beleive it will be the last with analog hook ups.

Unfortunately I don't, but do your home work, because these type items should be an investment.

well my "repaired" 80.2 is back to the dealer for another go-round...

installed the loaner in my system again and everything works perfectly.

a PITA but i'm thankful my dealer's customer service is the best around. has anyone else had this problem with a "repair"...?

gotta say i don't have much confidence in the long term reliability of this next repair...

Yes! My 5008 has made the trip twice.

how long a time frame between repairs...?

About 10 months apart. I've had the unit for over 18 months and I have been without it about 2 of those months. In addition, it has less than 125 hours on it.

No AUDIO FIX

Hello all,
A couple of weeks ago I posted about the problems I was having with the 3008 receiver.
The symptoms
No audio - amp relays not latching and no network control and greyed out in the menu.
Troubleshooting – I troubleshot the problem extensively to find out the cause to be the HDI board, specifically the DD/DTS chip on the right hand side. This chip can be easily identified because as it is one of two BGA (Ball Grid Array) chips. This means is that the chip is soldered to the PCB from the bottom whereas traditional SMT chips have the pins exposed.
It is a known problem that this type of surface-mount packaging may have some non-compliant connections/leads. See Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_grid_array#Noncompliant_leads
So this is not an inherent Onkyo design flaw.
Fix: Board solder Re-Flow. Oven method. Re-flowing the board melts the solder slightly and ensures a good contact.
While this may sound technical, it’s only a 30 minute job and a very good alternative to sending your receiver in for repair if its out of warranty or you don’t want UPS/FedEx to destroy it in transit, or don’t want to be out of pocket for a long time.
All you have to do is:
1- Remove the receiver cover.
2- Remove the HDMI board.
3- Cover the HDMI board on aluminum foil with the exception of the 2 BGA chips.
4- Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.
5- Place HDMI board on cookie sheet and insert in oven.
6- Bake for 2 minutes.
7- Raise temperature to 385 degrees F.
8- Bake board for 8 minutes once 385 degrees F is reached.
9- Turn oven off, open door and DO NOT touch board.
10- Let board sit for 15 minutes.
11- Carefully remove aluminum foil and inspect board to ensure integrity.
12- Re-install.
13- Done!
This worked perfectly. The caps and all board materials are UL94V-0 compliant so there is no need to worry about doing this.
This is only intended as a guide for those with the skill to do this.

Oscarav098,

Aarghh!!! Really? Bake the HDMI board in the oven? Yeah, I'd call it a design flaw, just like in my Dell XPS1710 laptop. That stupid thing's graphics board couldn't take the heat and would start glitching and fail after some time. Scoured the web for a solution and found the 'bake the board in the oven' recommendation on a French forum years ago.

At the time, I thought, "Really?!", but had nothing to lose as the laptop was non-functioning and out of warranty, so I tried it, and it worked. Temporarily. It would fail every few months and I'd have to pull the darned graphics board and bake it again. Finally got sick of baking it after it failed for the 6th or 7th time and replaced it with a Sager, built to vent heat very effectively. Built with an Intel 980-X (hot desktop CPU in a laptop Clevo chassis, built specifically to handle desktop CPUs and GPUs). Haven't had a problem since.

As I said, designing something that can't take the heat of being used as intended = design flaw. I got sick of baking my laptop parts (although it DID extend the usable life by just over 2 years), I sure as heck can't be bothered to bake my avr parts. Is there a way to permanently fix it so it won't fail from heat and will never need to be baked?


Max

Djbluemax,
I think you may be letting your emotions get the best of you. My point is that, based on some basic research, this seems to be an industry wide problem with this kind of SMT technology and not just an Onkyo problem. To wit: Your Dell laptop had the same problem. This may stem from a fundamental process spec problem for mounting these chips on a CCA. To mitigate the possibility of this happening again due to heat to my receiver I placed a few heat sinks on each of the main processors on the HDMI board.
In the end you can do what you will with your equipment. Just trying to help.

I wanted to report in that my TX-NR808 started having the issue where it was taking longer and longer for audio through HDMI to click on when first turning on in the morning. Like others have reported, the network does not function when this is happening. Finally yesterday, it never came on at all. I'm about 2.5 years since purchase and this just so happens to be one piece of equipment that I can't for the life of me figure out where I bought it from or find a receipt.

Anyway, I was getting ready to look at the doing the cap replacement, but after seeing this, decided to try this first. And.... IT WORKED! The audio came on immediately after install and then again this morning after being off all night. Thanks oscarav098, time for me to get a couple of heatsinks for those BGAs.

A quick question if someone knows, I've been checking the unit from time to time and have not seen the fans on at all. Are these fans supposed to be on all the time or are they temperature driven?

Thats great to hear. Please pass it along.

IIRC, I believe I read that they were supposed to come on based on temp.

John

Oscarav, Thank You for this info. Possibly not a permanant fix, but certainly a fix. Especially for those that would otherwise have out of pocket expense, not to mention down time. The only other thing that has been discussed in depth is that folks running additional cooling have still experienced this trouble in about the same time frame as those without external cooling. If it is really a heat related issue, one would think the extra cooling would either keep the failure from happening or delay it for some period of time. (Just thinking out loud.) FWIW, I purchased a kit from coolerguys for mine once I got it back. I figure it cannot hurt, even if it does not help.

John

You welcome. I think this could be a permanent fix for those of us experiencing this problem. Remember that not all receivers are failing due to this problem, only an undetermined fraction, so I believe the failure may stem from a combination of a BGA chip process spec issue combined with a cold solder. When you perform the reflow you are in fact fixing the cold solder (and in fact removing you receiver from the group with these symptoms) and may never see this issue again. But as with any fix time is the only true test.

I think you might have misunderstood my post. I commend you for finding this solution. Having said that though, there ARE solutions available.

Dell remedied the problem in later generations of their XPS laptops, and Denon hasn't had reports of this particular issue, so it IS possible to design equipment without this issue, ergo, it is a design flaw.

I might have to consider the heatsink mod, since, as I mentioned, the oven bake fix proved to be a temporary fix for the Dell.


Max

Hello everyone,

I have a TX-NR5008 that seems to have just died and would appreciate some advice on what to do.

Aside from occasionally turning on and off by itself for no apparent reason, and a blown KEF Q900 speaker that shouldn't have blown, everything has worked fine for the 2 years and 3 months I've had it. That being said, I've only used it for watching TV and playing CDs and DVDs through, so it's possible other features could have problems too and I just not know about it. I did buy a Square Trade warranty from Amazon when I bought it but I think that it expired at the two year mark. It will turn on and I see the lights and hear the normal clicking when coming on, but just have no sound from it at all, not even from FM radio.

Most of the time I used it to watch TV, in 7.1 with a Dish Network 722k box. Then about a month ago I upgraded to the Dish Hopper, and that worked OK for a couple weeks then one night I lost all the sound on the standard definition channels (but still had the picture). The next night I lost the sound on the HD channels too , so then I had no sound at all for TV.

Checking in to what was wrong, I then noticed I also had no sound if I played a CD or DVD through my Oppo BDP-93 or even FM radio. Everything is plugged in to a Panamax M5400-PM voltage regulator, so I doubt whatever has happened could have been caused by a voltage issue. Dish sent me out a new Hopper but that didn't fix anything, and I have separate issues with it which are a pain too, but that's a different subject. I've spent about three hours on the phone with advanced tech support with Dish and they can't figure it out other than it just looks to them like it was a coincidence that I lost the sound on the SD then HD channels and then noticed I had no sound at all from the Onkyo. And of course they say there's no way the Hopper could have caused the problem with the Onkyo. I have no idea if that' true or not though.

In any case, I have a TX-NR5008 that seems to have suffered a fatal blow of some sort and I understand several other people have had problems with theirs too, so I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice on the best way to deal with Onkyo. Naturally with so many people having problems with their 5008s, I'd like to upgrade it to a newer model, but I doubt I could get them to do that for me.

There are so many posts in this thread and I don't think I could ever read through them all, so can anyone recommend any particular ones to read or a certain point to start? At this point all I know is that a lot of people have had problems with their 5008s, and I haven't contacted Onkyo yet.

Thanks in advance...


P.S. I'm not sure I've posted this in the correct or best place, so please let me know if it should go somewhere else.

Call Onkyo customer service on Monday and they should take care of you on the repair. You'll be without your pre/pro for a few weeks though.

What about the issue with it appearing the problem was caused by the Dish Hopper? Does it seem reasonable the problem could have been caused by it or does that just seem to be a coincidence?

I am on hold with Onkyo as I write this and have been on hold for 20 minutes and nobody's answered yet....

just got my 80.2 back and all hooked up...

so far so good...everything is working properly and, after running xt32, sounds great!

it has been a bit of an ordeal...but i feel pretty confident in this 2nd repair for some reason

Well, unfortunately, the "bake" fix did not keep it fixed for my TX-NR808. Been about a month, and started having issues again. I baked it again, and again, it is working perfectly again. Will see how long it lasts this time, but I have a feeling this will be a regular thing that has to be done to keep it working. I think I'm going to at least start looking for a replacement.

Berlin,
The bake fix can be aided by using liquid flux. You may want to get some of it and try it again.

Thanks for this great set of instructions. I'm going to try this tonight on my 708 since it is out of warranty and I'm having the same problems as you mentioned.

Question regarding #3. When you say cover the HDMI board with aluminum foil, are you completely wrapping it, top and bottom, but cutting holes for the 2 BGA chips on the top and bottom, or what exactly? I haven't taken the chassis apart yet, so maybe it will make more sense once I do it tonight, I'm just trying to imagine exactly how you're wrapping it. Thanks for any tips.

The BGA chips are on the top. Also, use liquid flux. You can get it on eBay. Before you place the board in the oven soak the chips under with liquid flux. This helps on the reflow.

Thanks oscar!

Foil: I left both BGA chips open on top but only the DTS open on the bottom. I waited until the DTS chip area showed first signs of smoke and pulled the board from the oven. Re-installed and working well for now. I'll follow-up if anything changes.

Holy cow this works!!!

I don't know how you came up with the time and temperature settings, but you are a genius.

I got the flux and gave it a go and my 80.2 is working as before with all settings intact. I will admit to being very nervous, but it went well. I did monitor the temperature with an electronic oven thermometer because oven thermostats have a wild hysteresis.

Thank you for posting these simple instructions.

Keep us posted on how long the fix continues working for ya.

When I had to bake the graphics card in my laptop, I eventually discovered that it would mess up again every few months, requiring a re-bake, which eventually proved far too annoying.


Max

I had high hopes for this - it failed Thursday, April 4th. It lasted a little over a month. I am not sure what I will do next....