GPU Repair Pricing in Hong Kong Explained: Three-Tier Fees, Which Tier Applies, and Why Inspection Comes Before the Quote
Key Takeaways
GPU repair pricing on this site is published as three reference ranges — Tier 1 HK$400–HK$780, Tier 2 HK$480–HK$1,380, Tier 3 HK$680–HK$2,800 — spanning HK$400–HK$2,800 overall. The tier describes the depth of the work, not a price ladder. No fee is fixed until inspection, because a symptom is not a fault point: the actual fee is always the post-inspection quote.
Introduction: Why the Price Is a Range, Not a Number
"How much will my card cost to repair?" is the first question most owners ask, and the site's answer is deliberately a set of ranges rather than a single figure. That is not evasiveness. A graphics card is a dense assembly of power stages, memory, a core, connectors, and firmware, and one visible symptom can come from several different fault points. Until the fault point is located, no honest price exists — only a budget reference.
This guide explains the three published tiers exactly as the pricing page lists them, how to tell which tier a job belongs to, what a quote is made of, and why inspection comes before the quote. Every price in this article is a published reference range, and every price is followed by the same rule: the actual fee follows the post-inspection quote.
How the Pricing Page Presents Itself
The pricing page introduces its model as a fully transparent tiered fee structure, referencing the pricing approach of international repair workshops such as NorthridgeFix and Krisfix: a precise quote after inspection, work starting only after the customer confirms, and no hidden charges. Its badge reads "Transparent Quoting · No Fix, No Fee".
The page's four information panels read, in the site's own words:
- Free Diagnosis — if you decide not to repair after diagnosis, no fee is charged at all.
- Same-Day Quote — quote via WhatsApp within 24–48 hours of receiving your card.
- 90-Day Warranty — free re-repair for non-human-caused damage. (The actual warranty period for a given repair is the one on the quote or warranty card — see the warranty section below.)
- Fast Repair — the page describes most repairs as completed in 1–3 working days. That is the pricing page's panel wording; the per-tier times and the terms-of-service window are set out separately below, because they describe different things.
The pricing page's disclaimer, quoted verbatim, is: "The above are reference price ranges. The actual cost follows the quote given after the engineer's diagnosis. All repairs include a 90-day warranty." This article treats that disclaimer as the governing sentence for every price that follows.
The Three Tiers, Exactly as Published
| Tier | Published name | Reference range | Reference time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Basic Diagnosis & Maintenance | HK$400–HK$780 | About 1 working day |
| Tier 2 | Component-Level Repair | HK$480–HK$1,380 | 1–3 working days |
| Tier 3 | BGA Chip-Level Repair | HK$680–HK$2,800 | 2–5 working days |
The overall span, HK$400–HK$2,800, is the bottom of Tier 1 to the top of Tier 3. It is not a single charge, and no job is priced as "the HK$400–HK$2,800 repair". The services page repeats the same three tiers with the same ranges and times, and adds the same two conditions: no fee if you decide not to repair after diagnosis, and a 90-day warranty after completion.
Tier 1 — Basic Diagnosis & Maintenance (HK$400–HK$780, about 1 working day)
The pricing page lists five items:
- FLIR thermal imaging diagnosis
- Full multimeter voltage-rail testing
- Ultrasonic board washing
- PTM7950 phase-change thermal pad replacement
- Fan PWM control testing
Tier 1 is diagnosis plus maintenance and cleaning and cooling service. It does not involve replacing a major chip. The work is inspection-led: find what is wrong, clean and service the board, and renew the thermal interface.
Tier 2 — Component-Level Repair (HK$480–HK$1,380, 1–3 working days)
The pricing page lists five items, and marks this tier as the most popular:
- 12VHPWR connector replacement
- DrMOS / MOSFET power-stage replacement
- PWM controller chip replacement
- HDMI / DP output connector repair
- PCIe gold-finger copper repair
Tier 2 is the replacement of one component or a set of discrete components or connectors: a power stage, a control chip, a connector, or the gold-finger contacts. The work is at the level of parts that can be individually desoldered and replaced.
Tier 3 — BGA Chip-Level Repair (HK$680–HK$2,800, 2–5 working days)
The pricing page lists five items:
- GPU core BGA reballing
- GDDR6X VRAM chip replacement
- VRAM expansion soldering upgrade (10G to 20G)
- MODS / MATS VRAM diagnosis
- BIOS chip programming repair
Tier 3 is chip-level BGA work: reballing a core, replacing memory chips, expanding soldered memory, or programming a BIOS chip. These are the deepest operations on the board, carried out with BGA rework equipment and micro-soldering.
Why the Ranges Overlap: Tier Is Depth of Work, Not a Price Ladder
Look at the boundaries. Tier 1 runs to HK$780 while Tier 2 starts at HK$480. Tier 2 runs to HK$1,380 while Tier 3 starts at HK$680. The ranges overlap, and that overlap is the point.
The tier classifies the depth of the work, not the price. It is not the card's model, not the symptom name, and not a ranking of cheap to expensive. A complex Tier 2 job can cost more than a simple Tier 3 job, because the fee follows the parts and the labour the specific job needs, not the tier label. Anyone who reads the three tiers as "Tier 1 is cheap, Tier 3 is expensive" has misunderstood the structure: the tiers tell you what kind of work is involved, and the quote tells you what this job costs.
That is also why the site never publishes a fixed price for a named fault. The published material gives tier ranges and item names only. There is no published price for "a burnt 12VHPWR connector costs HK$X" or "one VRAM chip costs HK$X", and this guide does not invent any. Picking a number inside a range and presenting it as the typical or representative price would be fabrication, and it would mislead in exactly the way the tiered structure is designed to prevent.
What a Quote Is Made Of
The site's FAQ gives the composition of the total fee as a formula: total repair cost equals original IC / chip spare-parts cost plus engineer BGA micro-soldering labour. The FAQ also states that common chips have a public price list. This article states the formula and stops there, because the site publishes no per-part price breakdown, and splitting the total into invented per-part figures would be fabrication.
Two further terms-of-service points belong here:
- The quote already includes all original-grade parts needed for the replacement (DrMOS, connectors, VRAM chips and similar). The quote is not a labour-only figure with parts added later.
- The quote is valid for 7 days.
Why Inspection Comes Before the Quote
A symptom is not a fault point
The same symptom can come from different fault points. A black screen or no signal can involve the connector, a power phase, the memory, the core, or the BIOS. Artefacting on screen can be a memory chip that is itself damaged, or a BGA solder joint that has cracked — two different faults with two different repairs. The symptom name is the starting point of the investigation, not the diagnosis. A price fixed from the symptom alone would be a guess, and a guess that is wrong in either direction harms someone: too high, and the customer overpays; too low, and the work is cut short or repriced midway.
Inspection is locating, not guessing
The published inspection sequence works from the least destructive step to the most specific:
- Check for a short before applying power. Resistance to ground is measured on the voltage rails without powering the board blindly, so that a short is found before it can spread and damage the main chip.
- Locate the hot spot. A low-voltage, high-current pulse is injected and FLIR thermal imaging finds the component that heats up — the shorted part.
- Separate chip damage from a solder fault. A Linux MODS/MATS memory diagnostic reports the faulty memory channel or address, distinguishing a damaged memory chip from a cracked BGA joint.
Only when the fault point is located is it known what has to be replaced, what procedure is needed, and how much labour that takes — and those three things are the basis of the quote, matching the "parts cost plus labour" formula above. This article describes the principles and purposes of these steps only. It gives no voltage, resistance, or temperature thresholds as do-it-yourself instructions, and it does not encourage readers to power up a faulty card or take it apart to measure it. The steps exist to explain why inspection precedes pricing, not to teach home board repair.
Quote first, work second — protection in both directions
The site's own formulation is: a precise quote after inspection, with work starting only after the customer confirms. That confirmation gate protects both sides. The customer decides with the price known, rather than discovering it after the work is done. The repair side does not have to reprice midway or cut corners to fit a price that was fixed before the fault was known. The quote's 7-day validity gives the customer time to decide without the price silently changing underneath the decision.
Inspection can also end in "not repairable"
"Quote after inspection" includes a possible answer that is easy to overlook: after inspection, the card may be unrepairable. The site's FAQ describes the case where inspection confirms the card cannot be repaired — for example the GPU die core is punctured and damaged with no replacement part — and states that no hardware repair fee is charged in that case. Inspection is not a promise that a repair exists. It is a finding, and "cannot be repaired" is one of the findings it can produce.
Online estimates are not quotes
The site's AI instant quote, AI temperature assessment, and AI chat functions are for reference only. The actual repair plan and fee follow the engineer's formal post-inspection quote. Do not treat the top of an online range, or an AI estimate, as the quote for your card.
The Quote Flow, Step by Step
The terms of service set out the process in six steps, in this order:
- Handover. Bring the card to the Shek Mun shop in person, or send it by SF Express. On receipt, the shop sends an SMS or WhatsApp confirmation with an RMA tracking number.
- Free inspection. The engineer completes a preliminary diagnosis within 24–48 hours of receipt (FLIR thermal imaging, multimeter voltage-rail testing, visual inspection).
- Quote. After inspection, the shop provides a detailed repair plan and a precise quote by WhatsApp. The quote is valid for 7 days.
- Confirmation, then work. Work starts only after the customer confirms. Without confirmation, no work begins.
- Stress test. Every completed repair gets at least 12 hours of FurMark or 3DMark stress testing to confirm stability.
- Payment and collection. Payment comes after the repair is complete and has passed the stress test — at collection, or before a return parcel is sent. Return shipping is paid by the customer, except for a re-repair inside the warranty period.
Steps 3 and 4 are the heart of the mechanism. The quote is not a notification of a price already decided; it is a proposal that needs the customer's confirmation before any work starts. That is what "inspection first, quote second" means in practice.
How long does it take
The site carries several time figures, and they must not be merged into one:
- Tier 1: about 1 working day. Tier 2: 1–3 working days. Tier 3: 2–5 working days.
- The terms of service give a general repair window of 1–5 working days, depending on fault complexity.
- Large jobs such as VRAM expansion soldering may need 5–10 working days.
- The pricing page's information panel describes most repairs as completed in 1–3 working days.
No single "typical" number covers all of this. The tier times are reference times per tier; the terms window is the general window; large jobs have their own longer window. The quote after inspection is the figure that applies to a specific card.
Free Diagnosis and "No Fix, No Fee"
Two related promises appear across the site, and they need to be read precisely.
Free diagnosis. Inspection is completely free. If the customer decides not to repair after diagnosis, no fee is charged. The pricing page's information panel and the terms of service both state this in those terms.
No Fix, No Fee. The site's FAQ states that if inspection confirms the card cannot be repaired — the example given is a GPU die core punctured and damaged with no replacement part — no hardware repair fee is charged. The basic professional microscope and circuit preliminary inspection is completely free; only where large-scale VRAM desoldering or high-end BGA work is needed does the shop first provide a precise quote and start work only with the customer's agreement. A second FAQ entry states the "No Fix, No Fee" policy in the same terms: where microscope and oscilloscope inspection confirms the chip core is shorted and damaged with no replacement value, no repair fee is charged.
What these promises do not mean is equally important. Free diagnosis means the diagnosis is free, not that the repair is free. "No Fix, No Fee" means no hardware repair fee where the card cannot be fixed, not that every repair outcome is free. And the free-inspection promise is stated in the pricing page and terms-of-service wording; this article does not present any other figure for a declined repair.
Warranty: The Pricing Page's 90 Days, and the Actual Period on Your Documents
The pricing page's disclaimer states that all repairs include a 90-day warranty, and the terms of service state that all repair items carry a 90-day non-human-damage warranty from the date of pickup or sign-off. The site's warranty pages also carry other wordings — a 30-day basic tier and periods by item. This article does not declare one single number as the whole-site rule, and it does not repeat any longer period. The safe and accurate statement is: the pricing page and terms state 90 days; the actual warranty period for a given repair is the one on the quote or warranty card.
What the warranty covers. It is limited to the specific fault item of that repair. If the same part or circuit that was repaired fails again with the same fault, it is re-repaired free of charge, where the damage is not human-caused. The warranty page lists coverage details including: the same repaired circuit area failing again; BGA reballing or expansion-soldered chips developing a cold joint; a 12VHPWR connector melting again under normal use with a standard terminal properly latched; and a PTM7950 thermal service where the hotspot rises above 100°C again within 90 days, with a free re-application of the phase-change coating.
What the warranty does not cover. The terms list six exclusions: human damage (liquid ingress, dropping, impact, improper installation); faults the company did not repair; unauthorised third-party modification or disassembly; natural disasters (flooding, fire, lightning); secondary damage caused by a power supply unit fault; and damage caused by overclocking or voltage modification. The warranty page adds detail: liquid ingress or a fall after handover; private disassembly or third-party modification, including tearing the tamper-evident sticker; a poor-quality power supply shorting or a lightning surge; and extreme over-voltage flashing of an unknown BIOS (the example given is an XOC 1000W unlocked BIOS causing permanent core puncture).
How to claim. Notify customer service online (WhatsApp +852 6558 6806 or phone 2186 8010), giving the RMA number and a short video of the fault screen. Then hand the card over or send it back by SF, marked as a warranty item with a priority RMA. The warranty process provides a 24-hour priority diagnosis, free replacement of the faulty part, and a 12-hour burn-in test. Where re-repair proves impossible in exceptional force-majeure circumstances, the warranty page describes a refund safeguard as the final step; it is not a general refund promise, and this article does not present it as one.
Two misunderstandings to avoid: the warranty is not "any fault on the whole card is covered free of charge" — it is the same fault, on the same part or circuit, for non-human damage. And the warranty is not a replacement-card promise — the remedy described is free re-repair.
One general principle for owners: the manufacturer's own warranty (RMA) and a third-party repair warranty are two different things, and opening a card or removing a tamper-evident sticker can affect the manufacturer's warranty. Before choosing third-party repair, consider whether the card may still qualify for the manufacturer's own RMA route. This is a principle for the reader to weigh, not a conclusion for any individual case.
Seven Misconceptions, Corrected
- "HK$2,800 is the repair price." No. HK$2,800 is the top of the Tier 3 range. The actual fee follows the post-inspection quote, not the top of the online range.
- "If I can describe the symptom, I can get a price." No. A symptom is not a fault point. Inspection comes first.
- "Free inspection means free repair." No. What is free is the inspection and preliminary diagnosis. The repair itself is charged per the quote.
- "A higher tier is always more expensive." No. The ranges overlap, and the tier is the depth of the work, not a price ladder.
- "The warranty covers everything." No. It covers the specific fault item repaired, for non-human damage.
- "The online range or the AI estimate is my card's quote." No. Both are reference only. The formal quote follows the engineer's post-inspection diagnosis.
- "Once inspected, I have to repair." No. Work starts only after the customer confirms. After inspection, you may decide not to repair.
How to Read Your Quote
When the WhatsApp quote arrives, check it against this list:
- The fault point as diagnosed — what was found, in the inspection's own terms.
- The repair plan — which of the published tier items it corresponds to (for example a connector replacement, a power-stage replacement, or a BGA reball).
- The fee — a single figure for this job, not a range. The tier range was the budget reference; the quote is the price.
- What the fee includes — the quote already includes the original-grade parts needed.
- The validity period — 7 days.
- The warranty period on the quote or warranty card — this is the period that applies to your repair.
- The expected time — the figure given for your job, not a merged site-wide average.
If any of those seven is missing from the quote, ask for it before confirming. A quote you can check line by line is the practical meaning of transparent pricing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can't I get a price by describing the symptom over WhatsApp?
Because a symptom maps to several possible fault points, and the fee follows the fault point, the procedure, and the parts. Inspection locates the fault point; only then does a precise quote exist.
My card's symptom sounds exactly like a Tier 2 item. Can I assume Tier 2 pricing?
No. A symptom is not a tier. The tier is fixed after inspection locates the fault point. The published tier item names are examples of what belongs in each tier, not a symptom-to-tier map.
If inspection finds the card cannot be repaired, do I pay?
No hardware repair fee is charged in that case, per the site's FAQ. The basic microscope and circuit preliminary inspection is free.
Is the quote binding?
The quote is valid for 7 days and work starts only after you confirm it. It is the agreed price for the stated repair plan, not a notification.
Does the quote include parts?
Yes. The quote already includes all original-grade parts needed for the replacement.
Does "No Fix, No Fee" mean the repair is free if it fails later?
No. It means no hardware repair fee where inspection confirms the card cannot be repaired. A later failure of a repaired fault is handled under the warranty, which covers the same fault on the same part or circuit for non-human damage.
What if a new problem is found during the repair?
The shop notifies you at once and provides an updated quote. The original quote does not silently absorb a newly found fault.
Can I compare these prices with other shops or with the manufacturer's price?
This guide does not make market comparisons, because the site publishes no market-comparison data. Judge the quote on its own terms: the diagnosed fault point, the stated plan, the included parts, the validity period, and the warranty period on the quote or warranty card.