Hot air, stencil, and flux are the minimum — but not the whole story.

Yes, for BGA RAM rework you need a hot air station, a matching stencil, and flux. Those are the three non-negotiables. A quality temperature-controlled hot air station (not a heat gun), a stencil with the correct ball pattern for your chip, and tacky flux that doesn’t burn off too fast.

But you probably also need solder balls or solder paste for reballing, and a preheater under the board helps a lot to prevent warping on multilayer PCBs. Magnification (microscope or good loupe) is basically required — you’re working with sub-millimeter pads. Tweezers, kapton tape, and isopropyl alcohol for cleanup also go on the shopping list.

If you’re just desoldering (not resoldering), you can skip the stencil and balls. But the moment you try to put