Re: T17/S17 malfunction: cases, solutions, remedies, RMA history
Your post is so good, I spent all my left merit on it. 
Make sure you measure the voltage/resistance of the potential bad chips before replacing them, I have a reference for the voltage/resistance range but only for S9, so you will have to ask ZeusBtc for the reference, you do need the reference so if they don't have it, then get them from another working board, keep in mind that different regions of chips have different normal range, hard to tell which is which unless you can compare it against something else.
Not sure about the wings, but the majority of the boards I had on these 17 series gears were clean as brand new, on the other hand, some boards were pretty dirty and were hashing without an issue, these miners are badly built and that's all about it, even if the heatsink was blocked from dirt, it should be able to handle the max-safety-temp and the miner would shut-down before temps are higher than what that paste/solder can handle, but that isn't the case (sadly).
Please keep us updated.
Started work on the 1st S17 from my host. 2 hashboards showing 0 chips. Turns out both of them have heatsinks that are misaligned enough to short to the adjacent row.
After moving this heatsink back into position, this board comes up and identifies all chips, but the test fixture is showing a couple of bad chips so it looks like I'll need to replace a few.
After moving this heatsink back into position, this board comes up and identifies all chips, but the test fixture is showing a couple of bad chips so it looks like I'll need to replace a few.
Make sure you measure the voltage/resistance of the potential bad chips before replacing them, I have a reference for the voltage/resistance range but only for S9, so you will have to ask ZeusBtc for the reference, you do need the reference so if they don't have it, then get them from another working board, keep in mind that different regions of chips have different normal range, hard to tell which is which unless you can compare it against something else.
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Also, just another thing I noticed with both these hashboards was that there were insect wings (looked like moth wings) blocking a few of the input side of the heatsinks. Could be what caused some chips to overheat enough for the heatsinks to slip.
Not sure about the wings, but the majority of the boards I had on these 17 series gears were clean as brand new, on the other hand, some boards were pretty dirty and were hashing without an issue, these miners are badly built and that's all about it, even if the heatsink was blocked from dirt, it should be able to handle the max-safety-temp and the miner would shut-down before temps are higher than what that paste/solder can handle, but that isn't the case (sadly).
Please keep us updated.