Holy crap, it worked! Dead video card resurrected!

If anyone still doubts this is safe, this is how the cards are made in the first place.

I work with making surface mount cards, not as complex as video cards or motherboards, but same principal. Soldering paste is applied over the PCB, put into assembly machine that places all the parts on the correct contacts, then it's put in a reflow oven that "bakes" the card so the solder melts and the parts stick.

I recommend gradually heating the card though because too much heat too soon can ruin the soldering. The reflow oven i use pre-heats the card for 180 seconds at 160°c then turns on intense heating lamps which heat it at 250°c for 90 seconds. Then the card has to cool before touched or moved, as the solder has to set a bit, otherwise all the parts just slide all over the board.

It's nice to see people doing this and great to hear it has worked as a fix.

Mega kudos to OP, thats so freaking cool.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but oven temps can vary considerably. For instance, my oven is 25 degrees F hotter than it says on the display. You can tell this with a cheap oven thermometer (don't use mercury ones).

This is the one I got from amazon a while back:
http://www.amazon.com/Polder-550-The.../dp/B00004S4U5
Its only $5 with free shipping from amazon (if you hit the super saver amount).

Put that in your oven and set your oven to the desired temperature, let it fully warm up and look at the dial.

Hi, my first post here on [H]

After reading this yesterday, I was skeptical ... thought maybe it was a hoax. Then replies started coming up from other people with success stories, so I thought it might be worth a try.

A year or two ago, my x1900xtx died ... green lines and blocks shown all over the screen even during post. Basically put it in a cupboard and forgot about it. Seeing this, I stuck it in the oven, took it out after 8 minutes and reassembled (once cool).

On first boot there were pixels changing to random colours on the screen throughout post ... but by the time windows was loaded they'd stopped appearing, and didn't show themselves during several reboots (driver uninstall and install stuff).

Has now completed many tests of 3DMark 05 and 06, and has currently been on the 3DMark06 demo on loop for about 3 hours ... not had a single dodgy pixel or artefact or texture the entire time.

So yeah ... this is awesome

about to do this with my 7900gt

Originally Posted by CoretTrobane

Hi, my first post here on [H]

After reading this yesterday, I was skeptical ... thought maybe it was a hoax. Then replies started coming up from other people with success stories, so I thought it might be worth a try.

A year or two ago, my x1900xtx died ... green lines and blocks shown all over the screen even during post. Basically put it in a cupboard and forgot about it. Seeing this, I stuck it in the oven, took it out after 8 minutes and reassembled (once cool).

On first boot there were pixels changing to random colours on the screen throughout post ... but by the time windows was loaded they'd stopped appearing, and didn't show themselves during several reboots (driver uninstall and install stuff).

Has now completed many tests of 3DMark 05 and 06, and has currently been on the 3DMark06 demo on loop for about 3 hours ... not had a single dodgy pixel or artefact or texture the entire time.

So yeah ... this is awesome

very nice!

Well, I'm 2 for 2. (I put my cards in the oven GPU up)

I first tried this with an ATI x300 video card that was totally dead. The computer would boot with it in but it was not detected at all and would not show video. Seems to be working fine now as a computer posts and boots into windows ok. HOWEVER, this card had older style thru-hole caps which bulged and partially melted in the oven. These will be replaced before doing any further testing.

Then I tried an nVidia 6800 that had massive artifacting and would lock up the computer when attempting to go to 3d mode. Seems to work fine. I played a little WoW with the card for about 15 minutes and it worked perfectly!

/edit: thanks to the OP for giving this a shot and sharing your experience!

Originally Posted by AMD_Gamer

Digg front page, better snatch up any dead video cards from ebay and elsewhere now!

Damn, I'm looking everywhere for dead cards to try this on X.x
Ebay isn't showing up anything for me. I've just been searching up "Dead video card" or "Dead 8800"...

What else should I try...

Try "faulty"

Hey I am trying to get this http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...lenotsupported sounds like putting it in the oven might work.

Somebody really wants it though, I started bidding when it was $15.00 and it is now $40+shipping making it like $52 shipped, I'm not sure if it is worth it for that price.

Posting the link here in case anyone from [H] wants to give it a try. I suppose you can always put it back on ebay just like this if resolder does not work.

ITEM DESCRIPTION
You are bidding on a used nVidia 8800 GTX 768MB PCI Express (PCIe) graphics card. This card is made by EVGA. This card was used in my personal home computer until it had to be replaced due to artifacting issues. It comes from a non-smoking home.

The card works to boot a machine with, but will show graphical artifacts during POST. The fan still works 100% fine. This would be a great item for someone who needs spare parts or someone who wants to use EVGA's Step-Up program.

This auction includes the following:

* nVidia 8800 GTX 768MB PCIe Card
* Original Packaging from EVGA

Originally Posted by LordTacodip

Damn, I'm looking everywhere for dead cards to try this on X.x
Ebay isn't showing up anything for me. I've just been searching up "Dead video card" or "Dead 8800"...

What else should I try...

took me a awhile to figure it out but putting in "as-is" come up with some, like "nvidia as-is" or geforce "as-is"

Nice job Haste.

I posted a story on GPUReview.com:

http://www.gpureview.com/how-to-fix-...ticle-798.html

This screams guts! But well done!

edit: BTW you are now on hackaday.
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/31/ghett...ronics-repair/

Hi..
I baked my recently dead 8800GTX
unfortunately I moved by accident one of the Ram chips while its hot, after a seconds it just stick to board, I tried the card but didn't work..
so tossed it again in the oven & tried to correctly palace the ram in its accordance (I don't think it's perfect) but didn't work either
(Just black screen but the fan work well)
any advice?

note: I placed the card on the oven not upside down (the GPU is facing up)

Originally Posted by ameer

Hi..
I baked my recently dead 8800GTX
unfortunately I moved by accident one of the Ram chips while its hot, after a seconds it just stick to board, I tried the card but didn't work..
so tossed it again in the oven & tried to correctly palace the ram in its accordance (I don't think it's perfect) but didn't work either
(Just black screen but the fan work well)
any advice?

note: I placed the card on the oven not upside down (the GPU is facing up)

if you moved one of those ram chips then you probably have all kinds of shorts from the solder smearing, will be hard to fix

Never mind the video card. Do you actually cook food on that cookie sheet? Gross.

Dude, here's a thought. You may want to clean the area up before you take pictures.

Yuck!

Originally Posted by mentok1982

Nice job Haste.

I posted a story on GPUReview.com:

http://www.gpureview.com/how-to-fix-...ticle-798.html

Originally Posted by bluehash

This screams guts! But well done!

edit: BTW you are now on hackaday.
http://hackaday.com/2009/05/31/ghett...ronics-repair/

awesome! this definitely seems to have had some success. im glad some people could get some dead hardware going again. im currently just going to keep my 8800gtx securely buried away in my closet in case i ever need it for backup.

Alright. Hoping I can score this X1950PRO for $15 shipped on Ebay. Details say it powers on but it just gets artifacts and what not.

If I can get it and get it to work with the oven technique, I'll post pictures.

Another success story!

Just brought an Verto Geforce 6800 GT back from the dead. It had been acting up while I was using it in a backup rig. Finally wouldn't boot so I yanked it a few weeks ago

Todya, I stripped it down, put it in the oven at 385F for 8 minutes just like the photo, let it cool off, dressed it back up and dropped it in an extra box I have in the basement. Booted into Windows fine. Ran a couple games for a few minutes and seems to be OK. Haven't torture tested it with anything yet but I am very very surprised. I really didn't think it would work and the look on my wife's face as I cooked the videa card was priceless. I am sure she thinks I am going around the bend.

Gonna try it with an artifacting Radeon 9700 Pro later on.

Thanks for the tip!

The cooking world has Eric Ripert, the [H]ard world has Haste266.

Dude, I'm not surprised at all that you were able to do this. Quite interesting indeed, though!

I've fixed a few 360s with my heat gun, but it doesn't always last (b/c of Microsoft's poor design). If I was you, I'd be so happy and I'd just slap on a good aftermarket cooler and be done w/it.