Nintendo Wii U Motherboard Replacement

Both screws are not “7.1mm” in length, only the one to the right is (center of the console’s side). The left one (towards the front of the console) is 5.1mm.

There’s a third screw to remove bottom-left corner of this picture. On step 9 it’s already been removed, and you need it to be removed in order to remove the metal casing in step 13.

The front portion of the side of the cover with the vents was kind of stuck on mine. There’s a little rubber piece in there that was the cause of this. But that same rubber piece also makes up the little handle-shaped nub that sticks out of the side there. (There’s also one at the back of the same side, but that one didn’t stick for me.) Lifting also using the little handle made it easy to remove the cover.

My screw won't come out, and I feel as if my screw was screwed in too tight when they made the wii u, or the 3.5 #0 is too big. I have tried other screws and I think the screw might be done for because the metal is coming off of the top and deforming the shape. I am very lost and if anyone could help me, that would be amazing.

Those #0 screws might be tight and they’re easy to strip. Put some force on the screwdriver to make sure you start unscrewing them and not stripping them.

One of the screws started to deform instead of unscrewing. I used a bigger Philips screwdriver (size 1), added a rubberband between it and the screw and used more force to avoid stripping it more and make sure it would start unscrewing. It worked hopefully ! But I wasn’t sure it would.

There is a step to do before to "lift up on the blue tab in order to release the ribbon cable". We must lift up the connector who maintain the ribbon cable. By default, his position his locked and in order to unlock it, must put it in his top position.

This step is not entirely clear on how to remove the ribbon cable with the spudger. It seems you need to pry up the black part.

The Disc Drive Logic Board can but must not work with the Console, because there are different Drives. If you're lucky it'll work but sometimes it doesnt it happend to me often when i tried to change drives from 2013 and 2014 produced Consoles

It would be nice to add indications on the location of those screws.

I agree with Pascal. I figured it out by taking my own pictures as I tore my unit apart. as I took each screw out I laid it beside the hole and took a picture when I was done. I also noticed that on the top shield look for arrows (put a screw here) and X (don’t put a screw here). It gets a little weird around those 4 standoffs that hold the disc drive. And by the way that standoff in the wrong place in the lower left in that first picture.

If the black plastic shielding is not coming off once all the screws holding it down have been removed, try pushing it in the direction of the ports, and then try pulling up once the shielding has moved.

This omits the step of undoing the 4 screws around the heatsink. That has to be done or the bottom shielding won’t come off.

Yup, This step is pretty critical. If you don't have the solid base of it in the plastic makes it hard to keep control of the heat sink when you take it off outside. ended up slicing something off my mainboard. Not sure why this critical step is left out. Rip me I guess.

From step 13 to 14, you also need to unscrew the 2 screws in the hollow areas in the middle of the metalicboard and the 4 screws around the metallic square that was under the metal cap. Otherwise the motherboard will stay stuck with the metal layer underneath. You might also need to remove the black plastic pieces around the motherboard and the metal layer to separate them.