I have a graphics card with a dead cooler. I have a replacement cooler for it, but the graphics card is a bit non-standard and the cooler won't fit --- the heat pipes hit some components on the board.
As said components are a big, chunky capacitor and a two-pin inductor, all connected via wires through the board, it should be easy enough to move them to the other side of the board to make room for the cooler.
Unfortunately I seem to be totally unable to make the solder on the board melt.
I have a 70W gas soldering iron. It melts my solder fine. I've heated the joints up as much as I dare and they don't even show signs of softening. If I add some of my own solder to the joint, I can then melt that, but the original joint stays solid.
Is there such a thing as high-temperature solder? Would they have been likely to have used it on a graphics card? I'm aware that this kind of PCB is likely to have a thick copper ground plane, which will suck away heat from the joint, but that doesn't explain how I can melt my solder but not their solder in the same joint.
The soldering iron does have a hot-air-gun mode, but I have no experience of that and would rather not set fire to my graphics card...
(I want to get the components off intact because I need to attach them again. The capacitor is easily replaceable, but the inductor is just a black cube with 1R0
written on it, and I'm not confident of my ability to find an exact duplicate. If I cut the pins it will then be too short to reattach.)