Holy crap, it worked! Dead video card, resurrected!

Oven? Jesus christ. Use a heat gun next time and do specific parts.

 

Aluminum foil?
Oven?

Are you sure these directions aren't about cooking a baked potato?

 

your story is hilarious and awesome. congratulations, seems like some solder did indeed get separated from a critical joint.. what a crazy fix~!

 

Totally laughed.... I believe you that this worked but man!

 

Boyakasha !!!!

 

Those of you freaking out about sticking it in an oven have evidently never been in a manufacturing plant that builds automobile electronics.

The machines apply solder paste, place all the parts on the board, and then the whole board goes through an oven to melt the solder and form the electrical connections.

IF the oven isn't quite hot enough it can lead to premature failure. Stress or flexing of the boards can mess up solder joints as well.

Sometimes boards that are inspected and have poor solder joints are stuck through the "reflow" oven to remelt the solder in order to make the connections better.

 

I recently had an 8800GTS do the same thing to me. I guess instead of using it as a paper weight I'll give this a shot. lol

 

interesting way to fix it. glad this worked out for ya.

 

I used a heat gun on my PS3 To fix it, but i knew which chips to apply heat to. Kudos for your fix!!!

 

The oven makes a lot of sense, how do you think they solder on those BGA( Ball grid array) integrated circuits such as the north bridge and south bridge and video card ram? they put it into an oven just like this guy did.

 

This is strangely awesome and I might resort to it soon enough. Did you also have to remove the headspreader off the core to pull this off?

 

Modder of the year award for the OP.

 

Hmmm,
I may have to try this w/ my 7800gt when I get back to school, it was having similar problems to this.
Awesome story Haste, congratulations on the success!

 

I will be baking a fresh batch of 1950xtx this evening because of this thread.

 

Wow.
What an insane repair method.
Good job!

 

haha grats on the fix!! you should post a worklog next time with some pix

 

lmao

 

may wanna clean that oven

 

Wow, I'm really impressed and that makes total sense about fixing the tiny fractures in the soldiering. Great work!

 

Does a resurrected video card eat brains?

 

lol attempt to reflow solder

 

Only comment I can think to add is 385F is on too low to make solder reflow. However the oven may spike higher. Also 8-10 minutes is a long time so keep a close eye on the board. Preheating the board 120C then careful use of a heatgun might be safer. Glad it worked and just wanted to add some thoughts on this may, or may not, be done more reliably.

 

This method might wok better. A heat gun could blow the solder over to areas where it doesn't belong, whereas the over just reflows the solder.

Congrats on the fix.

 

Ok... That is just awesome!

 

Nice trick!

I would be careful about this though. Heating up, melting down or burning electronics can release toxins into the air that could cause brain damage and/or death.

 

I bought 2 8800GTX cards back in 2007 and 3 months back one of them died on me. Computer froze and crashed, but since I had them running in SLI some times it would work for a few mins. Anyways I figured it out by taking the cards out and putting them in one at a time. Found the one that casued red lines and glitches all over the screen and RMAed it to BFG (got to love 100% life time warrenty).
So I get it back and what happens... 1 month later the other card has the same death! I sware to god I think they build these things to fail on purpose. Any ways sent the other card RMA and now I am happy to say both are back to running at 100% SLI happiness.

I would have never thought to try to do this to fix a card, but now I know what to do when these cards die on my again and if it doesnt work, RMA again I guess. Awesome Post!

 

awesome work. that's pretty much the same way i, along with other fixers, fix 360s. you're right about that.

btw, do you have the link to the original suggestion?

 

Sell it to a folder for cheap. They will use everything that card has left.

 

Yum, can I get some?

 

Another success story and I'll toss in my old X850XT that recently took a big dump. WTF, it's useless as it is now.

Sorry, there will not be any pics of my oven...

 

I might just have to call horse chunks on this one.


Edit: The most common forms of solder flow at 370F. I recant my "horse chunks". I think this worked.

 

do you think this method will repair my GeForce Go 7800 GTX? take a look at this particular damage:

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?p=1335896806#post1335896806


[Tomorrow I will be oven baking my card]

 

this was my thought too. IIRC solder takes about ~700F to flow

 

wiki says under 400F.

i could definitely see this working, and seems like a fantastic way to reseat all the connections. i know the same method(more or less) is used successfully on rrod 360s.

good job OP!

 

one has to wonder how many cards could have been saved with this method.

 

ok so i was thinking something else which is why i said IIRC