Baked my fried Area 51 M17x 9800m gt

....and it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just ran diagnosis and installed the newest nividia driver that just came out!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still cant believe this worked. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Did you bake a pie with that haha.

 

GLad to see it worked, now I don't know about you, but the first time I baked I didn't do a great job with it meaning I didn't leave it long enough nor did I go to that high of a temp. I think around 320 or 280 I need to double check my temps I had on the oven. All I'm saying is be ready to make another bake, and don't get too down on yourself you'll get it goin.

 

Ive learned my lesson though, the pc will be in stealth mode if I am not playing a game or watching a Blu Ray. And it will never again be put on a carpeted floor while attached to a HDMI cable!!!!!!!

Played Mass effect 2 and Fallout 3 for a bit w/out any problems (except for the anoyed girl friend).

For anyone interested I will be selling this card for $150 once my new one arives. I will make sure that whoever buys this card knows that it was baked, and I will indicate it as such when I put it up for sale in the classifieds.

 

does it come with frosting?

 

You should send an oven mit in the box with the GPU to whoever buys it

 

I did that when I sold my m1730 GPU I included a simple heat mat or pad that you put under hot pans. He liked it, said the GPU still works though was surprise to get paid 200 for that DUAL GPU.

 

I'll be using a heat gun on my sister's dead 7950 go gtx later today. Hoping to get it going again so she can sell the notebook (xps 1710).

 

Good Call, I just sold mine for $740, who would have thought.... Sold mine yesterday.

 

Tell us how it works out for you. I am not convinced that this will actually work. In fact, you might acutally blow off the components or cause shorts because of the moving air.

I would actually advice you to use the oven instead (because thats really how they are baked in the first place). If you dont have an oven, you can buy an electrical one cheaply

 

You have to cover all the components except the gpu with foil when doing the heat gun method. I've done it before on someone else's system and it worked good. As for baking, I just put her 7950 in the oven to see if it works. If not then I'll go get the heat gun later today.

 

I was for sure that this wouldnt work. But it is so simple, that I do not think it is necessary to go to the extra work that is involved when using a heat gun.

I perforemd this with an electric oven that doesnt meter temps as well as a gas stove and it worked great. 8 Min in oven at 385, cool for 10 min in oven that is off with door open. Let cool further out of oven. I let the card cool while I was watching a movie.

As I am home from Iraq now, and have the joys of America here I dont use the m17x as much as I use to and dont expect the card would break any time soon.

 

Okay the M1710 is up and running great! Baked it at 395F for 10 minutes until I smelled solder. Took it out, let it cool for 20 minutes and then reassembled the system. So far so good though the GPU tends to still run a bit warm (55-59C idle) and the CPU is around 35-45C. I applied MX3 to both but I might open it back up and put a thicker coat. The bottom of this notebook is definitely hot, much more so than my M17x. Still, for an older notebook I was impressed by the build quality, it's no Alienware but very similar in a lot of ways.

 

Joker I don't think you can compare the 2 systems. Your m17x is sooooooooo different from the m1710 in just cooling alone. YOu have Fans right on top of your GPU's thus effetively redusing your heat but for whatever odd reason the m1710 and it's 7900/7950 GTX has no fans, the fan is dedicated to cooling the long arching copper heatsink end and just the end, thus I'm saying the core of the card doesn't have a fan on it so it's definitely going to be alot hotter. Every system I've ever seen had not gone this route, what do you think?

 

I was commenting on the build quality and similarities between the two systems. Both use a control cover and the mechanism of removing the palm rest/keyboard/control cover is nearly identical. The front speaker placement is also very similar though the M1710 has the benefit of a subwoofer on the bottom. I'd liken the M1710 fan cooling to the Asus G73, maybe a bit better since the M1710 has more vents. If I can clean this thing up and sell it for $700ish on Craigslist I'll grab a refurb Dell or possibly Clevo for my sister.

 

Yeah that sounds so eerily familiar lol....

 

Dudes,

I have my own company doing reflow rework and protos for other companies.
I would actually recommend the oven above the heatgun (unless real reflow equipment handy) but only if there are no plastic lowtemp components on the board(plastic spacers, plates, knobs etc which are not soldered components). If there are, chances are they melt messily.
As for temps I would not keep it as high as 380 for more than 4-5min max.

In oven I'd do a ramp up by putting in the board in a cool oven, then up to 240C 6-8min, and toast up to 340-380 for 4 min or so, then turn the oven off with the door closed, and then 10-15min later open the door gently. Then once the board is cooled to less than 100C you can take it out, but I would leave it in until entirely cool unless you're dinner pizza needs the spot absolutely.

This is basically replicating what is done to bake them in the factory, I don't know what profile they use there, but almost all follow the same logic.

I personally use a reflow station mostly since it allows to precisely heat one part only of the pcb quickly to flow temp.

Oh and also, dunno how it is in other countries but in the Netherlands we also have people with gas ovens, I would not try with that, only electric IR/convection ovens...

 

It's the route a lot of systems take. Most systems have an integrated GPU of course, so it just uses a heatpipe along the IGP, northbridge, and CPU, taking all the heat to the single heatsink. It's actually very adequate.

I mean, even my M17 uses a similar system. Each GPU has a copper heatpipe that goes on top of it which then transfers heat about 5-10cm away to the heatsink, where it's cooled by the fan. By no means as good as the M17x's cooling, but definetely adequate-I'm hitting 82C max in games and idling at 50/55C on the two GPUs, which is not bad at all. Of course the CPU and northbridge have a seperate fan and heatsink-cooling them and two GPUs on a single heatsink would be too much.

 

Heatpipes are a very effective means of moving heat away from a source as long as there is a sufficient heat gradient along the heatpipe and a heat removal system (fins and fan) that can keep up with the heat source(the gpu/cpu die)

there is a reason that heatpipes are about universally used

 

SOrry, guys I Wasn't saying that heat pipes wasn't a norm, I was saying that no direct fan ontop of GPU was something I had no seen. Almost all systems I've seen have some form of a fan right on top of the heatsink.

 

Actually the only systems that have the fan on top are the monster high end ones, it makes the laptop alot thicker and is therefore not a common option. Typically the fan is to the side blowing air through a set of fins at the end of a heatpipe array

 

the area-51 m15x has it and I don't think that system is much of a monster. Plus we're talking about a 17 inch laptop here, how is this not a monster?

 

I think others have used a heat gun (and even a hair-dryer) successfully.

 

Hair dryers are what people used on all the RROD 360's (similar problem there)

By monster I mean high end, expensive, top grade hardware. Any alienware falls under my classification of "monster" lol