AND IT NOW WORKS! Over the last few weeks my girlfriends PC has been BSODing and getting artifcats on screen, and finally a few days ago the 8800GTX gave up the ghost and died. After doing a google and coming across http://forums.ninjalane.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1316&start=15#p10728 I decided to give it ago and see if baking the 8800GTX in an oven would indeed fix the issue. I have attached a few pics to show you what i did. As well as a easy 10 step guide to help those out who may also have a dead graphics card lying about. Removed heatsink from GPU Cleaned all thermal compound from GPU Placed foil on baking tray to make sure its a clean surface Rolled up 4 foil balls to roughly 10mm diameter Place card on top of the foil balls making sure each ball is at the corner of the card with the GPU facing up Pre-heat oven to 180c Placed GPU in oven for 10 minutes (timed on timer) Remove GPU from Oven (using oven gloves as the tray will be hot) and leave to cool over night The following morning re-seat the heatsink on the card making sure you apply thermal where you removed it, yesterday. Assemble into pc and boot and test. The reason baking a GPU works is over a GPUS lifetime it is subjected to a lot of temperature change and high temperatures while gaming, this may over the years cause the soldered joints to move causing loose connections etc, by baking the GPU at around 180c your moving the solder just enough for it to flow back into place fixing those loose connections. I for one am very shocked that it worked but i'm also relieved that it worked, the card has now been running heaven benchmark and 3dmark 06 for almost a day without issues..... Hg
At least youre not the noob a few weeks back on *chan that baked theres to the point of the die falling off.
From what I have read you managed to bake it the wrong way up. I'm still wanting to try this but unfortunately the artifacting cards are not much cheaper than a working one. Some bloke did it on a 4870x2 and a bit fell off (resistor). The card still worked fine though! Gratz!
Thanks to this I just bid on an auction for faulty 8800gt, 8600gt, 8500gt and a 7900gt. At my max bid i could sell off the coolers and make most of my money back if the baking fails! Here's hoping
Hay confusis, did you have much luck with this? A friend of mine got his old 8800 to work again using this trick
To be honest, if you had a faulty out of warranty card, the best start would be to remove the cooler and strip off all the old TIM, add new TIM, then remount the cooler. Then if that doesn't work, try the oven trick.
Firstly it would take like hours to reqork every joint by hand and secondly it's probably the BGA that's at fault and that's hidden underneath the GPU die, so you can't even get to it. Or it's the pins on the RAM or something, in which case you'd want to use a hot air rework tool instead of an iron instead. In fact, for SMT/SMD soldering, an iron is the last tool you want to use.
Home made reflow machines, I like it, lol. Funnily enough, a few guys have tried this trick on their r/c speed controllers with similar success ( though physical shocks tend to be the culprit rather than repeated heating & cooling in this instance- nothing like a 30ft jump to shake a few smts lose ).
Tell that to a noob and he won't believe you. Even though I was the knowledgeable guy in high school no one ever believed me when I said it was possible to fix a motherboard or a videocard by cleaning it with demineralized water to remove residues after a watercooling leak They also would never believe the freeze trick to temporarily revive hard drives
Wow you are quite lucky my friend Some interesting things can be done if we DONT STICK TO MAINSTREAM WAYS!! I hope it continues working for you!!
Have you seen how many solder joints there are on a modern graphics card, and how impossibly small most of them are? You'd need God-like soldering skills and a soldering station to match...
