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

haste

haste

Supreme [H]ardness
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i want to give antipesto93 from ocforums.com the credit for this, he is the one that gave me the idea!

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=606658


my 8800gtx died a little over 3 months ago. went ahead and ordered a new video card because i figured the card is completely dead without having to pay to send it in and get it repaired because i didnt register it when i bought it initially(dumb, i know...). anyway, i am posting this message running off my 8800gtx!

i got the idea from another forum, because some guy in the UK bought a dead 8800gtx off of ebay that had red vertical lines through the screen...my card had the same symptoms...one day it locked up on me, rebooted, then locked up on me even quicker...rebooted, red lines all over the screen and windows wouldnt even boot. i tried the card in a friends computer with the same result...

sooooooo, i removed all bits from the card including the i/o shield and placed it gpu side down with the card raised up on 3 sides by tiny balls of aluminum foil and placed it on a very thin cookie sheet. i preheated the oven to 385f, put the card in and waited around 8-10 minutes. i carefully removed the cookie sheet and placed it on top of the oven to cool down naturally. waited about an hour and voila! =D

supposedly this is similar to a trick used to fix dead xbox 360s. some sort of electrical connection gets frail and it eventually fails because of some tiny micro-fractures in solder joints or something....anyway heating the components up helps melt the solder and form new joints.

im now torn as to whether i should sell this card for cheap to someone or keep it as a backup...


pics of said baking(re-enactment)


naked!
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side shot propped up on foil

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another angle

8800baked2.jpg


in the oven
8800baked.jpg












akashi_tm has been kind enough to provide a short, easy to follow video tutorial for the baking process. i would like to remind everyone please do this with utmost caution, care and patience.


Xtreme Bakeover - baking your video card to fix micro-fissures

link to akashi_tm's original post about the video




EDIT FOR LAPTOP BAKING!


it has been a good week for baking...

I bought a laptop with borked video because i was fairly positive it could be fixed by baking...

It is working now after 7m 45s @ 385f in a conventional oven. i noticed a heavy solder smell when pulling the board out of the oven.

PICS!

EVERYTHING WAS REMOVED FROM THE MOTHERBOARD! All protective covers/plastic.

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baking_done.jpg






gdonavan was able to get his broken 37" LCD tv to work by baking the mainboard. check out his post!


trick_m0nkey has shown us another method of fixing a dead gpu on a laptop motherboard using a heat gun. check it out here!
 
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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~!
 
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
 
I used a heat gun on my PS3 To fix it, but i knew which chips to apply heat to. Kudos for your fix!!!
 
Biskquik said:
Aluminum foil?
Oven?

Are you sure these directions aren't about cooking a baked potato?
Click to expand...

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?
 
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!
 
Trombe said:
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?
Click to expand...


nope. i only took off all the bits that had screws excluding the ones around the heatspreader itself.


went ahead and re-enacted the baking so i could get some pics up for anyone interested. i edited my first post
 
Wow, I'm really impressed and that makes total sense about fixing the tiny fractures in the soldiering. Great work! :cool:
 
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.
 
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.
 
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... :eek:
 
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.
 
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mtrupi said:
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.
Click to expand...

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

 
ALL4AMD said:
this was my thought too. IIRC solder takes about ~700F to flow

Click to expand...

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.
 
biztyke said:
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!
Click to expand...

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

 
W00t, nice fix dude, I will remember this if my 88 goes tits up in a similar fashion to yours since its now out of warranty, ty xfx.
 
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