FEATURED THE OVEN TRICK - WORKED

You would have to remove all the plastic heatsinks and whatever other parts you could safely remove before putting it in the oven.

Satsumomo said:

Hmmm would this work with a motherboard? Or do those have too much plastic on them?

I've got a pair of motherboards sitting in my room doing nothing.

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You'll ruin all the electrolytic capacitors on the board if you "oven trick" it.

i dont think this would work on motherboards.

GeForce Go 7950GTX 512MB Worked

hi,

I just wanted to say that my Parent 7950GTX card in mi Alienware M9750 died about 3 months ago (GPU detected, but BSOD when tryng to enable SLI no matter the OS used...actually when it failed in XP, Vista would not boot anymore) and the oven trick worked last night. (i added some seasoning just to laugh at it....hmmmm...yummy)I have SLI enabled once again. It has been 24 hours and the laptop is performing beautifully.


Though i'm not an electronics guru, i have a suggestion to make to the original poster of the thread.Preheating the oven, putting the card in and then taking it out to cool down is beyond the specification of the solder paste.(it's not paste anymore, but still it is beyond it's specs).I believe this is why most card fail after a couple of weeks.Fast heating, reflowing and fast cooling fixes the old solder crack, but makes room for new ones.

My procedure was using the same setup, but differently.I used a digital multimeter with thermocouple temperature probe to get an acurate temp sample.I put the board in the oven and then heat to 200 C (~392 F), ~ 12mins of heating.When my temp reading shows 200 C, i turn of the oven and make shure that the temp does not climb aymore.Open the door slightly to let the excess heat come out if necessary to keep the temp from rising. When the temps begin to drop i close the door and let it cool for about 30 mins.After that time i open the oven door and let the board cool till room temperature.Another 10-15 mins.It is not the ideal reflow process, but you prevent the solder joints from developing cracks again.IMAO, i think BGA solder joints are the culprits in these boards.

Your boards should live long and prosper in your favorite games.

polarys425 said:

You'll ruin all the electrolytic capacitors on the board if you "oven trick" it.

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No it wont. They stick it in an oven to solder all of those electrolytic capacitors and other components on in the first place.

madhatter256 said:

It's just sitting on the shelf here taking up space and we tried to RMA it through Sparkle, but they want a receipt of purchase, which we don't have.

:

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Firstly... Mad... By law a company does not have to give a receipt therefore they cannot demmand a receipt to cover their warranty obligations. However u still need to provide some kind of proof of purchace i.e credit card receipt, etc.

Back to topic OMG!! what a find! I have an Alienware lappy that's gone down with all the symptoms of a video card failure, so I'm gonna rip it out and try it. Will let u know. (Mainly as I've seen a few Alienware lappys goin cheap with dead video cards ) I've also got a dead(?) 8800 gtx which was in an sli setup (replaced via ebay... he (/she for the ultra pc out there) better not have stuck this in the oven ) will also get back on the outcome of that.. busy weekend!

Well done antipesto93 my GTX8800 died on the 25th of sept this year (Full of fluff) and I am posting from the rig that its in! Lets see if I can save some cash before it goes again.

That's a good fix I heard about long time ago, wala it works,,, very nice!

STOP COOKING YOUR CARDS AND STOP MAKING THIS THREAD IMMORTAL!!!

ghgh sorry for caps

Zantal said:

STOP COOKING YOUR CARDS AND STOP MAKING THIS THREAD IMMORTAL!!!

ghgh sorry for caps

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MMM baked pcb!

http://img194.imageshack.us/i/dsc01066xq.jpg/ http://img199.imageshack.us/i/dsc01064yq.jpg/
http://img194.imageshack.us/i/dsc01066xq.jpg/ http://img199.imageshack.us/i/dsc01064yq.jpg/

can i cook my card if this is whats happening on the monitor?

worked on my GT8600

OMG it works! i did this to my alienware laptop's geforce 5600 FX and it works now! i did it with the gpu up and a part came unsoldered an fell out so i let it cool, flipped it over, held the piece in place and blasted it with a heat gun until it slid back into place.
notes:
covered plastic connectors with tin foil, cooked @ 400 F until i heard a click which was the part falling out at 5min 7sec, turned off heat and let slow cool. then turned card over and held piece with tweezers while heating with heat gun until it went back in place.

I'd just like to report that my 8600M GT died again today. So it worked for about 5 weeks after I baked it. I still am tickled to think that it worked in the first place.

Any idea how can I measure my oven temp? It's a pretty old oven and it doesn't have a specific temperature setting.. only like low-mid-high or something ;/

worked on my 8800GTS 640

lenix said:

Any idea how can I measure my oven temp? It's a pretty old oven and it doesn't have a specific temperature setting.. only like low-mid-high or something ;/

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Oven thermometer?

My seemingly dead 8800GTS is going into the oven tomorrow, wish me luck!

I put a broken 8600GS card in the oven (after removing heatsink, detachable s-video plug) that works but artifacts the screen. After in the oven @ 400Farenheit for about 7 minutes. I installed it (after I let it cool down completely) and NO artifacts! However, a capacitor ended up swelling, which was probably faulty in the first place and was part of the source of artifacting, and so I replaced that thing).

I went further and ran Furmark on it for 1 hour. The card works 100%!!!

Gonna use it in an HTPC. Has HDMI and svideo out, plus dvi

Didn't work for my 8800GTS

No gain, no loss.