Google Chromecast Teardown

Completed Disassembly

Tools

Steps

Use the Mosaic spatula and double ended hook tool to poke at the slight gap between the casing.
Separate the top casing from the motherboard and HDMI cable. The casing will have a heat sink pad with some thermal paste residue. Use the Double ended hook to help in taking it apart from the EMI (Electromagnetic Interference) Shield.
The EMI Shield is not soldered shut so we can use the Mosaic spatula to remove it from the circuit board.
Using the precision screw driver unscrew the two T-5 screws holding down the connector bracket which is connecting the HDMI Cable to the the motherboard. This will also separate the motherboard from the bottom casing as well.
Using the Mosaic spatula remove the EMI Shield on the other side of the motherboard as well, to reveal the motherboard by itself. The motherboard has 5 chips:
- Marvell Avastar VHT WLAN, Bluetooth, NFC, and FM Receiver
- Samsung 4 GB DDR3L SDRAM — Memory, need constant power to hold memory
- Marvell Armada 1500 Mini Plus dual core ARM cortex-A7 Media Processor — Digital streaming in real time
- Toshiba 2 GB NAND Flash memory– Memory that can be rewritten, doesn’t need constant power
- MRVL Semiconductor DC-DC Regulator- Converts voltages for two connections working at different voltage levels

My thoughts

The motherboard is the heart of the device, and would be more interested in understanding the connections between the different chips. Through some research I was able to understand most of the differences between the chips, but I am still pretty amazed by the speed of these things and how fast they communicate to each other.
Thermal paste can get messy, and seemingly anywhere? Even with the casing, it seems like the paste was a little over the motherboard, I was able to clean up using my tools. I wonder if this could be causing overheating within a device and have led it to not working ? Although I didn’t have a TV to try and see if it would work initially but just a thought.