Is it possible for a burned chip on the motherboard (PL902) to cause the GPU (GT 540M) not to be detected in Device Manager on a laptop (Asus K93SV)?
I disassembled my laptop after it shut down randomly while I was gaming with it, I found a burned chip with (PL902) written next to it, but after I reassembled it, it powered on, everything was working fine, except that now nVidia GPU disappeared from Device Manager, and was not being detected no matter what I tried, such as reinstalling drivers, reinstalling OS, updating BIOS.
Except for the GPU (nVidia GeForce GT 540m) not being detected or working. Everything works fine on this machine at this point, in spite of the burned component (PL902).
Can replacing the burned chip, fix the undetected GPU?
Maybe. It’s possible the “PL209” chip itself failed and if that’s the case replacing it could solve the problem. But it’s also possible another component failed first causing an over voltage or sending power to a data pin on the chip.
Guess your options are to replace the chip and hope the 2nd one doesn’t fry too. Or pull the bad chip off the board and verify you’re the getting the correct voltage on the correct lines first (you’ll need chip mfg spec sheet for pinout and input range).
Since you have those issues in a laptop, i find it likely that the PL209 has to do with the Powerdelivery of the Card.
Hence, YES, that can and likely causes the Card to not work anymore.
The issue is that there is a reason for why it died, and a simple replacement will likely not work and just blow up again.
A first step would be pictures of the Area and Part.