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

Anyone have pictures of that guy about a maybe 2 years ago who set up a whole PC in a catering tray filled with cooking oil, then cooked french fries while playing Quake 3?

One of the best threads ever.
 
thanks for the reply and - well - i think it's got a surround to that card in the picture - but will check tomorrow and come back.
 
Anybody know if this method would work on a Xbox 360 motherboard? My brothers xbox keeps freezing up during gameplay, sometimes in 5 minutes and other times in 40 minutes. I tried cleaning the stock thermal stuff off of the cpu and gpu, replaced with AS5 with no go.

Anybody? :D
 
Link or instructions to that please?

Your best bet is to search youtube. There a lot of videos showing a lot of different techniques from beginning to end. I found none of the methods to be anywhere near as easy as the videos show. I suspect the actual units they showed had been worked on before. Popping the plastic tabs holding the case together took a little patience. For the X-Clamps I have a special pair of pliers that pops them right off. Cleaning off the original thermal compound was harder than I expected as well.
 
Oh wow, there's a possibility that I can save my old 8800GTX? By baking it??? Sorry, I haven't read through the entire thread; I just kinda randomly clicked on this thread and noticed that my 8800GTX was doing the same thing as the OP's 8800GTX. I'm going to try baking my card this weekend, hope it works.

EDIT: Didn't feel like double posting since this was still front page. I baked my 8800GTX this morning for 10 min at 400F at it works again! So far it's been stable with none of the red artifacts that it was doing before. I'm glad I checked this thread.
 
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Took out my Nividia 6800 Ultra from my Dell inspirion 9400 and baked it as it was showing artifacting and lcd flashing, i pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees C then put it in for 10mins, obv doing the foil stuff. Put it back into laptop and had success i was well happy i ran aqua Mark and got a score of 70,000 and ran warsow just to see if it was ok, then later in the day i turned it on did some browsing for about 1hr and tried to run AquaMark again and half way through it frozei restarted and tried again this time it froze i restart and the artifacting was back :/ guess ill try bake it again, is 200 degree's C for 10mins right? or should i be upping it to 220degree's C for 8mins or 10?
 
I have an old LRI 2820. Its doing this:

dsc00660t.jpg


Hopefully its a solder on the GPU problem.

Anyway, I tried putting it in a fan oven with a oven thermometer, set at 200oC for 8 minutes. Didnt work, same artifacting.

Tried again on 200oC for 10 minutes. Still same problem.

What shall I try next? Higher temp for shorter? Or same temp at longer times?

Thanks for any help.
 
I have done something like this using a Wagner paint stripping gun to do ram swaps on 3dfx cards.
 
I can now confirm that baking the video card can resurrect it more than once. My card 1st died sometime late spring to early summer... I baked it, and it worked fine all this time until currently. Now several months later it died again after I was playing the new Wolfenstein. (1st time it died after playing Prototype) :p

Sadly, our stove does not work anymore, so I baked the card in my Black&Decker toaster oven somewhere in between 350 and 400 degrees. Sure enough after letting it cool and assembling it again, it works like new, and I'm happily playing Wolfenstein with no freezes, crashes, driver errors, BSODS and horrible red/blue lines across the screen.

I must say that I am surprised because I didn't think this would work the 2nd time on the same card.. But it did! :eek:

Now I don't have to spend money on an ATI 4890/Nvidia 285, and I can happily wait until the war between the new DX11 cards boils over so I can buy something mid range this Xmas. :D

PS: Forgot to add that my card is a 8800 GTS 640mb that I bought when they just came out.. So this thing is like 3 or 4 years old... Lost count..
 
I can now confirm that baking the video card can resurrect it more than once. My card 1st died sometime late spring to early summer... I baked it, and it worked fine all this time until currently. Now several months later it died again after I was playing the new Wolfenstein. (1st time it died after playing Prototype) :p

Sadly, our stove does not work anymore, so I baked the card in my Black&Decker toaster oven somewhere in between 350 and 400 degrees. Sure enough after letting it cool and assembling it again, it works like new, and I'm happily playing Wolfenstein with no freezes, crashes, driver errors, BSODS and horrible red/blue lines across the screen.

I must say that I am surprised because I didn't think this would work the 2nd time on the same card.. But it did! :eek:

Now I don't have to spend money on an ATI 4890/Nvidia 285, and I can happily wait until the war between the new DX11 cards boils over so I can buy something mid range this Xmas. :D

PS: Forgot to add that my card is a 8800 GTS 640mb that I bought when they just came out.. So this thing is like 3 or 4 years old... Lost count..

nice! im glad the method worked out for you again.

you posted on 6/17 that your card had been resurrected. so thats a little over 3 months. not too shabby i guess.
 
My laptop also started coming back with pixel artifacts on the screen last week. I baked it once back in june with great success:

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1034247678&postcount=403
Pics: http://www.flickr.com/photos/peteranker/sets/72157619886796144

So I rebaked it - 10 minuttes @ 200 degrees celsius - and now it works again. I didn't even bother reapplying thermal paste as I didn't have any at hand, and I'm getting pretty lax about this ol' laptop. But if I can keep resurrecting it by just rebaking it, that's just great! :D
 
This isn't that uncommon, the jetdirect cards in HP 4200 series printers can be revived by baking or torching.

I also seem to recall a post about someone doing this back in the 9500/9700 days.
 
OK
So I'm sittin around here Lurking the [H]
and reread this post.
Not havin a whole hevk of alot to do... I start thinkin
"Wowsers my HP 7000 laptop GPU crapped out and looks just like the pic on the other page!"
Well bein a true Hard Ass
I proceeded to tear the thing apart (yep cheated/downloaded the service manual):D
Had it in pieces took everything off the MB
and baked at 380f for 9 minutes
Put it back together ( have 3 screws left over) no worries always happened when I worked on my car:eek:
Fired it up.....
And it works:D
For how long .......
I'll let ya know!
Thanks H'ers
 
Very interesting thread this, I may very well be trying this oven bake method of resurrecting dead graphics cards on my 8800GTX this weekend.

But here's a poser. If it's 200C for 10 minutes in a normal oven, what about fan assisted ovens? Normally it's a shorter cooking time, so 8 minutes?
 
well i need to rebake my gateway motherboard. it lasted 4 months time to bake and it will work other 8 months lol
 
Just did this today on my brothers 8800gt that had yellow lines all over the screen. Worked like a charm! Going to do my 8800gts soon; will update with pics.

Also: can we get this stickied? This would help so many people
 
Yesterday I baked my Alienware's primary video card (7950GTX) and it worked! It fixed all artifacting!
 
Unreal!

Well, I got a dead 7900 in the garage ... off to warm-up de oven. Let you know how it goes.
 
Alright, so here is my friends situation. He has a XFX GTX 260 vid card that he got from newegg around Christmas time last year 2008. He was playing Prototype and the screen artifacted like crazy, then he cut off the computer immediately. Tried turning the system on again and nothing NO POST, NO BEEP Code. The card itself has been dead for several months now... and we just recently tried this idea of baking it in the oven at 385F for 10 mins. First time same thing happened no post no beep. We tried it a second time and the same thing happened. (same temps and times before)

Now there is some very interesting information that I have for the rest of you to look over. The system will somewhat boot if I have just 1 (one) six pin connector straight from the PSU in on the right side... If I placed the same six pin connector in the left slot it doesn't do anything... (The LED's flash for like less than a second and then shuts off again) No beep No post... I tried this with the other six pin connector from the PSU with the same results...

I'm thinking that it's time for a new vid card for him.

BTW he's running off of a PNY 9600 GT now.
 
Just killed a 7900gtx a few days ago. It was artifacting from boot. So, I tried the 385 @ 8 minutes, no change. Tried 385 @ 12 minutes, no change. Tried 400 @ 10 minutes, no change. So, for the heck of it, I went for broke & did 420 @ 10 minutes, no longer boots.
 
Honestly, this thread has changed video card troubleshooting techniques. Now it's something like:

1)Reboot
2)Clean install drivers
3)Check PSU/power
4)Check other components
5)Reinstall OS
6)Easy-Bake it :p

I'm amazed at how many successful attempts have been reported, job well done.
 
this is the most stupid thread ever almost.. why would this work ? its nonsense..
 
I really don't think that my GTX 260 is resurectable as Unknown had posted about my GTX 260, we've done tried almost everything imaginable. I seriously think that it's the cards left six pin power connector. Any time I apply power to that one it does the same thing... gives a flash of light from the LED's then does nothing... (and yes this is after baking it twice) perhaps it's just time for another vid card when I get the money. I'm thinking about going with another 260 but from EVGA this time...
 
this is the most stupid thread ever almost.. why would this work ? its nonsense..
have you actually seen how SMT boards are made? Because I have. They bake them... so the solder melts and makes the connection.

just like what these people are doing.
 
this is the most stupid thread ever almost.. why would this work ? its nonsense..

My instincts are telling me to not answer this since it reeks of troll, but I'll answer anyways.

The reason this works, as it has been described several times in the thread, is due to the resoldering effect putting the card in the oven has. Microfractures can occur in the solder in various places from everyday heat stress on the card or from excessive handling. Sometimes the solder itself is defective (called a cold solder or a cold joint) from the factory. By putting the card in the oven, the solder is allowed to melt and "reflow" in nearly all critical areas.

If you know anything about the fix for the xbox 360 RROD you'd be able to relate the techniques. The "towel" fix is simply allowing the 360's internal temp to reach the point where the solder becomes semi-liquid and rebonds severed joints.

The part about this process that surprises me is GPUs can't handle temps much higher than 100C (212F). I'd be very cautious about leaving the card in the oven for too long at any temp much higher than that as the chips can't handle the heat.
 
this is the most stupid thread ever almost.. why would this work ? its nonsense..

rofl. a little late to the party? and if you actually read the thread you would have seen why this does work if the problem is appropriate for this particular "fix".

if this thread was "stupid" i dont think it would have almost 300k views and more than 500+ replies...
 
this is the most stupid thread ever almost.. why would this work ? its nonsense..

Sorry you are not up on the Nvidia GPU infill issue with the mounting of its graphics dies onto the substrate and apparently unfamiliar with the re-flow solder process as well. With the increasing use of brittle lead free solder and the intense thermal cycling a gaming card goes through it makes perfect sense that this would work in many instances of card failure. Not all, but many.

Carefully notice I did not ever almost call you stupid.
 
The part about this process that surprises me is GPUs can't handle temps much higher than 100C (212F). I'd be very cautious about leaving the card in the oven for too long at any temp much higher than that as the chips can't handle the heat.

Just killed a 7900gtx a few days ago. It was artifacting from boot. So, I tried the 385 @ 8 minutes, no change. Tried 385 @ 12 minutes, no change. Tried 400 @ 10 minutes, no change. So, for the heck of it, I went for broke & did 420 @ 10 minutes, no longer boots.


confirmed. :D
 
I have a laptop HP DV6000. One day it doesn't start anymore. Power gets on and three beeps. I read this article and put motherboard to oven. I warmed oven to 200C and then put motherboard for 10 min. After that waiting half hour cool down. Then i build it back together and it works now. It's unbelieveble. I tought that this was some kind of joke, but it worked.

Thank you guys.
 
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