Well, I've been lucky over the years and until a couple of days ago had never had a dead GPU. However, on Thursday sadly my Clevo laptop refused to get past the Windows boot screen. One OS reinstall later and everything seemed OK, until I installed the drivers for the 7970m and restarted- then I was back to square one. Sure enough, booting into safe mode and disabling the 7970 let me boot back into Window normally, using the IGPU. Did a few checks of the memory and HD and everything checked out- at this point I was sure that the 7970m was dead. Looking around on the internet they're still going for around £200... major bummer! Anyway, with nothing left to lose I thought I'd bake the GPU- 8 minutes at 200 degrees after taking advice from various forums. I wasn't expecting a result (this was pretty much a last resort as we're moving house and need all the money we can get atm) but I got one! Card is also running much cooler now after applying some new thermal paste. Mainly worth it to see the look on my partner's face as I fired up Battlefield 3 afterwards- she did nothing but tease me about it the whole time I was stripping the lappy!
What a good result! Replacing the TIM on laptops is key in my mind, especially for us techy folk. The temperature drops are insane.
Thanks! It was surprisingly simple- the Clevo's are really easy to strip and it's nothing like my old Acer when I had to remove about 50 screws to replace the screen. Still didn't expect it to work, but I guess after the laptop dying, our router going screwy and having some travellers nick a load of stuff from work I was due some good luck! Anyway, when we move I hope to find some room for a desktop again but this will keep me going for now. But next time your GPU goes kaput out of warranty give it a try- you may be pleasantly surprised! To be honest if I'd had a desktop I would have used it as an 'excuse' to buy a new GPU... insane how they're still so expensive 3 years on but it's not like you can just drop any old card in this thing. Supply and demand I guess. DutchDude- you're absolutely right- I'll be opening her again tomorrow and re-applying thermal paste to the CPU as well. The GPU was covered in the stuff- I realise from a manufacturing point of view the patches they use are to save time, but they literally use 4 x the amount that's really needed.
They use far too much and it's terrible stuff as well. Get yourself some CLU and you'll be laughing. My temps dropped by over 15c on my old laptop. Well worth a tenner for the tube in my mind. I doubt I'll be replacing the stuff in my new Ultrabook, purely because it's passive and I don't think it would make too much of a difference. I could be wrong though.
Professionally it costs about £80 to Reball a GPU... The baking trick is a stop gap measure but certainly cost effective on a budget and with nothing to lose!
8 Times? Wow, I hope it doesn't come to that! To be honest, my gaming is pretty much limited to 2D indie titles at the minute so no panic I guess. But it's just the principle of the thing!
