How much have you spent trying to fix it? "Upgrade" or as you say what was the cost of all the "attempts to get stable operation"?
off the top of my head
copper pipe 1"diameter 2"length, less than a buck at Lowes I think, that was cut lengthwise, flattened, cut, nibbled and shape'd to have pads down on the CP2102 and ASIC then soldered to standoffs.
standoffs from Radio Shack, maybe a buck and a half
screws from Lowes to hold the new heatsink less than a buck per package at Lowes
small fan from a triple fan insert that would snap into a drive slot to exhaust heat, free from scrap
wall wart to drive fan free from scrap (actually fan is 12v so I'm using a 10watt step-up switching converter I bought years ago for under $10 between a lower voltage wall wart and the fan)
crystal from digikey, a buck or two plus shipping from Digikey
capacitors for crystal start up network free from scrap motherboard
replacement CP2102 as the original had a deep burn spot after mistakenly plugging a strong 12v wall wart supply into a new D-Link HUD7 hub, a buck or two from Digikey plus shipping (in the interim while the BE was down I used the D-Link on my main machine and was so impressed with the improved communication between my main machine and other gear, I'm likely leaving it there)
10uf tantalum capacitor across the USB Vbus (after reading USB3.0 and USB2.0 control chip datasheets, these are needed and perhaps the non-approved early USB2.0 CyberPower hub didn't have these on outputs) a buck or two from Radio Shack
Wish I had changed the CP2102 first off. The BE has been running well for almost 3 days now on the CyberPower hub and Raspberry Pi.
soy
I have a hot air desoldering station tweaked for the extra heat which I used to remove the CP2102 but you can't count that in the cost as I bought it anticipating I may have to change some FETs on a Jalapeno I may one day finally get after their pisspoor slow production. I also bought a nice L/C meter for measuring components when I built a switching converter to bring a good sized Zenith laptop switching supply voltage down to 12v for my zTex 1.15x and used that meter to vet capacitors for the crystal start-up network.
I should note changing the CP2102 is a very delicate operation and I venture to say of those amateurs who attempt the change more than not will lose the BE completely.
