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

CKTurbo128 said:
After seeing the amount of successes in this thread, I decided to give it a try, as I had two graphic cards that were non-functional (6800 GT PCI-E and 8800 GTS 640).

After heating up both cards in the oven at 385 for 10 minutes, I tested them out to see if they worked. To my surprise, both cards booted into XP and both were able to run full tests of 3DMark 06, Furmark, and ATITool! :eek:

I never expected that these cards would ever run again. The OP really deserves props for sharing this video card revival technique!
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awesome.
 
dotted for future reference. If I have a card die I will definitely try it in the future.
 
Manaknight said:
gonna be doing a 360 this weekend ;)

nice to see it works on video cards as well
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I spent 2 hours dissassembling a friend's 360 yesterday and putting the board in the oven and reassembling, lol. It worked! He didn't have the RRoD, just no video output. He was pretty astonished when we pulled it out of the oven and just connected the circuit board and it worked. :)
 
Who would've thought... You need to cook your video card to medium well, not medium rare!
Honestly this is kinda funny
 
It makes sense, just funny it took this long for people to start trying it on video-cards...
 
Oh4Sh0 said:
I spent 2 hours dissassembling a friend's 360 yesterday and putting the board in the oven and reassembling, lol. It worked! He didn't have the RRoD, just no video output. He was pretty astonished when we pulled it out of the oven and just connected the circuit board and it worked. :)
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what temperature and for how long? i do use the standard technique for fixing the RRoD (letting it overheat - two ring - for 2 minutes and letting it cool), but i hadn't known this would work for the no video error as well. i could use more business. ;)
 
Wow this is outstanding, I will tell to my friend who got a death Radeon 9700 PRO which only boots whenever it feels like. This is very informative and fun!!! Betty Crocker and Pillsbury must feels jelous!!!
 
haffey said:
what temperature and for how long? i do use the standard technique for fixing the RRoD (letting it overheat - two ring - for 2 minutes and letting it cool), but i hadn't known this would work for the no video error as well. i could use more business. ;)
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I did 4-5 minutes at 385
 
ALL4AMD said:
this was my thought too. IIRC solder takes about ~700F to flow

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It all depends on the makeup of the solder.


There is nothing wrong with his method, probally a bad solder joint or 2 from thermal expansion that was reflowed using this method. But honestly this is nothing different from the manufacturing proccess these boards go to, I really don't get why everyone is so suprised.

I did SMT repairs while I was in the Navy, and underway I used a toaster oven to heat my boards. Also made great grilled chesse :p
 
That is awesome OP! :D

I will definitely try it in the future! But what about PS3's...hmm
 
Tried it on a 7900gt and all the caps and other components fell off.

Don't use an analogue dial oven, I think it heated too high or I left it in too long. 7 minutes or so.
 
CleanSlate said:
Tried it on a 7900gt and all the caps and other components fell off.

Don't use an analogue dial oven, I think it heated too high or I left it in too long. 7 minutes or so.
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doh! i used some pos dial oven here so i dunno. u can see the dial of my oven in the pics i took, but it was off at the time.

got any pics of the damage?
 
I had my doubts at first but I got my 7900GS agp card to work on 375 for 8min. I replaced my son's Ti4200 and let him play COD2 for about an hour while I watched and it worked perfectly. My son turned to me and asked if we were having baked chicken again lol. Thanks OP.
 
No loss really, the card was dead any ways. I have another dead 7900gt, I'll try it on that eventually.. Once I figure out how to not let that happen again.
 
CleanSlate said:
No loss really, the card was dead any ways. I have another dead 7900gt, I'll try it on that eventually.. Once I figure out how to not let that happen again.
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What about not turning the card upside down? Instead have it right side up and elevated. This way if the solder melts a little to much the components will not fall out.
 
CpuMan said:
What about not turning the card upside down? Instead have it right side up and elevated. This way if the solder melts a little to much the components will not fall out.
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There are components on both sides...
 
Mr. B said:
This reminds me of a similar issue. I have a half working IBM T40 with a video chip connection issue. It's very common and solder reflow fixed with a heat gun are documented online. I don't own a heat gun so I have never gotten around to it. I wonder if there is any possibility of success using an oven instead... of course a laptop motherboard has plastic bits on it like the cpu socket.
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I want to chime in and report another success story. After conducting a little more 'research,' I tried this technique on my laptop motherboard. I suspended it above a cookie sheet with little balls of foil seen in previous pictures and baked it at 425 for five minutes. After letting it cool and reassembling the Thinkpad I now have a working laptop. I'm still astonished that this actually worked.

Many thanks to all the posters in this thread.
 
Mr. B said:
I want to chime in and report another success story. After conducting a little more 'research,' I tried this technique on my laptop motherboard. I suspended it above a cookie sheet with little balls of foil seen in previous pictures and baked it at 425 for five minutes. After letting it cool and reassembling the Thinkpad I now have a working laptop. I'm still astonished that this actually worked.

Many thanks to all the posters in this thread.
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very nice! i guess it didnt melt any important plastic bits then? is that the reason u went with a higher temperature and shorter time?
 
Actually I just guessed that a laptop would have slightly more resilient solder in it... thinking back though, it was probably just as well it wasn't in the oven for 10 minutes. The board does indeed have quite a few plastic connectors on it including a CPU socket.
 
Haste266 said:
in the oven
8800baked.jpg
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OP, If I'm ever over for dinner, don't cook with that cookie sheet. I'm not scared of chemical vapors from the card. It's the fact that cookie sheet looks like it has feces smeared on it that bothers me. lol

edit: condensed quote to relevant pic at OP's polite request ;-)
 
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wtf man. why did u have to quote my post?

i hate scrolling through pictures i have already seen in a thread. especially when i am the one that took them!


edit: thanks! =D
 
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This is awesome! Grats to all those whose cards have been fixed by this method. And I thought I was lucky/adventurous for fixing a clicking hard drive (knocked it over when it was off and then would just click 3 times and repeat 2 more times then spin down) by hitting it on its side with a hammer just as the first click was about to happen.

Drive was sitting broken for over a year so I figured I had nothing to lose. It's now running Vista Ultimate without a hitch and passed SMART and WD's extended diagnostics multiple times.

It really is true, hammers, or in this case heat, really do fix everything, lmfao.
 
I may have to give this a try on a messed up 7900gt I've got.

All the success stories really beg the question of how many hardware failures are due to failed/damaged solder points.
 
I place partial blame on lead free solder paste for the increase in problems. Ever try to work with it compared to regular solder? Its hard, easily causes cold joints and its a major pain to do any kind of repair rework on electronics where rohs free paste was used.
 
Makes you wonder how many dead computer parts on ebay are about to be snagged up quick!
 
enlightenedby42 said:
I may have to give this a try on a messed up 7900gt I've got.

All the success stories really beg the question of how many hardware failures are due to failed/damaged solder points.
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I don't know, but since companies have gone to Pb free solder it has gotten worse.
 
The next time my card dies on me, I will have to attempt this hotfix(no pun intended) if I can't RMA it first or if the warranty is out of date. I'm glad to see that your card is successfully working again.
 
This isn't baking.

It's called reflowing and it's a common procedure. I have even reflowed a Blackberry that failed from being slept on.
 
So I tried this with a laptop, and all was going well till I put it all together and it wouldn't boot at all, then I noticed a single capacitor had fallen off. Do you guys think it's worth the trouble trying to solder the single capacitor back on? Think that'll actually fix it? It's an old lappie that died a while ago, just wanted to do this for fun really, any thoughts?
 
This is awesome. I think I'll have to try this with a dead shuttle mobo I've got kicking around.
 
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