USB-C Thunderbolt jack on Latitude 7480 (2017)

[FredSRichardson]

So I got my wife a Dell refurbished Latitude 7480 which held up pretty well with the sole exception of the Thunderbolt port which failed.  I actually thought it was the TB16 dock that was failing but then found that wiggling the cable "just so" would consistently reconnect/disconnect the Thunderbolt dock device (of course I don't want to do this a lot and risk frying the controller chips).  So I am fairly confident that the Thunderbolt jack is failing physically.

 

There are a few videos on YouTube demonstrating how to replace USB-C ports on motherboards, but it is a fairly advanced operation and that's assuming I can get the replacement part and adequate desoldering/soldering gear (I used to do a lot of soldering - so I think I can manage the skill set).  Does anyone have any experience doing this and have a recommendation?  The laptop is on it's 6th year, so replacing the unit is not out of the question.  I just don't like the waste.

 

As an aside, does anyone else miss the old Dell docking stations that weren't USB-C?  IMO having such a fragile point of failure for the docking station is an insane design decision - especially when replacing the physical jack is so difficult!  Maybe a socketed or clip in jack would make a bit more sense if this is the way it has to be.

[Reciever]

The only thing I can say as an absolute amateur as to not use more heat than you need for the board, Im interested to see how you do!

 

I also wish that the connection had a larger wall to prevent sag and thus stress to the port itself, usb C become the future, even if USB itself became a mess as a result 😞

[Aaron44126]

I wish they had the physical dock port still.  I think it's a space-saving thing more than anything else — once the technology to move the extra "dock ports" off of the motherboard and into an external box matured enough, they no longer saw a reason to use board/surface space for that giant dock port.  (My experience has been that the newer docks have a lot more flaky behaviors than the old ones, which basically didn't have much inside in the way of electronics and were just hookups to ports hosted by the mainbord itself).