HOW TO: repair your dead graphics card in your alienware!

Here is my take on this.

Firstly, Motherboards, Graphics cards etc. are multilayered PCB's.

In other words, they have tracks running inside the two outer layers that you can see on a normal double sided PCB.

Thats why manufacturers have managed to squeeze so many devices into such a small area. Got it? OK

Now, Surface Mount IC's are soldered in place using a Solder bath or Wave Soldering machine which then basically is supposed automatically solder all unmasked copper pads to the devices they are supporting.

This works really well on conventional double sided PCB's.

But, computer cards, boards etc have many internal tracks too. Which the automatic soldering method does not necessary connect sucessfully (or reliably) whilst in the solder bath. (Not enough heat for long enough).

So, the oven baking method makes 100% sense to me. It heats the physical board being baked enough to allow the original solder to reach the internal places it was supposed to go in the first place.

So, I reckon the cure will be permanent.

And Caps being subjected to the heat for this short period of time will not be adversely affected. Electrolytic caps pop because of internal stresses (overvoltage, incorrect polarity, incorrect specification etc.)

So, this cure is brilliant. Hat's off to the folks that thought of it.

 

Lot's of information in that post TeeJay 44!

Thanks.

 

Rob, I am ready to test

However I am worried about the smell.
Does it make your oven smell bad?
And should I clean it afterwards. I have only one oven in the house, which makes dinner every night. I dont want to end up poisoning the family to potentially save a motherboard

K-TRON

 

Hey K-tron.

I actually "baked" my card at 385F for a full 10 minutes. As soon as I turned the oven off I kept the oven door carcked open so it would cool slowly. At no time was there even a slight trace of a smell.

I did put it on a cookie sheet with four aluminum foil balls, for the card to rest on.

I washed the cookie sheet, and then set the oven to 500F for 30 minutes, but that was most likely unnecessary.

It's really not very long for the card to be subjected to those temps.

BTW, are you doing those mobo's? I suppose with more going on there than a mobile GPU it wouldn't hut to open your window.

If it works rep me up. If it doesn't I'll rep you! Again. lol

I keep editing cause I'm anxious to see if this works for you too. Let me know what happens.

 

a recipe/technique like that would make macgyver proud

Nice thread very interesting

 

Yeah, accept he'd use a piece of broken glass and the sun!

 

No smell when I did it either. Unfortunately, it did not work for me, but provided some solid lulz.

Maybe it's time to clean your oven K-tron?

 

Oh man,

sorry to hear it didn't work for you. Maybe you could try it a second time?

 

Surface mount components cannot be soldered using wave soldering methods. They are soldered using a Solder Reflow technique which involves heating the surface up to the melting point of the solder while the component is in place and then quickly removing the heat after the solder reflows. This prevents the part from being exposed to these dangerously evelvated temperatures for any singnificant length of time. Even the storage temperature of most ICs is well below the 380 F described in the "oven" technique in this post. It's ok to expose the parts to that temperature for a brief period (maybe a few seconds) without worry of damage, but 20 minutes? All bets are off.

A second point. The connections to the middle layer interconnects of a multilayer PCB are not soldered-they are made using vias, vertical interconnects that travel between layers in a multilayer PCB.

 

Woah, slow down on that 20 minute part.

The recommendation in my how-to says 8 to 10 minutes. I happened to do mine for 10.

So far this has worked for several folks, myself included.

And remember, this procedure is to be done on an otherwise useless video card.

 

Koollllllllllll stuff

 

I know that. Multilayered is multilayered.

I work daily with double sided PCB's. They are fine. Only two surfaces exposed.

Multilayered has tracks connecting within the PCB.

My reasoning stands firm.

 

No, again wave soldering methods can't be applied to surface mount components.

Internal layers of a multilayered PCB are not soldered.

Double sided boards have both surfaces exposed so that they are accessible to either solder reflow(surface mount parts) or conventional wave solder methods of the bottom side where older through-lead DIP packages or other leaded components such as non-surface mount resistors and capacitors have leads extending through the PCB to the bottom layer. In these cases the plated vias or plated-through holes can actually allow the melted solder from the bottom side to flow up through the via hole to the top surface to make a topside solder connection even though the via plating itself makes the connection.

 

Tomorrow I am going to try two laptop motherboards and an older ATi mobility radeon 9800 pro. I didnt realize one of my dead laptops had a removable graphics card.

I just took both apart, what a hassel it was finding them. I forgot where I put the keys to unlock them.

I hope all works, I will attach some pics tomorrow

K-TRON

 

Well it seems like I really shouldnt trust anyone on this forum.

Between Gophn's advice costing me over $200 and this guide costing me a graphics card I may never get a replacement for.

Well I tried my mobile ATi 9800 Pro in the oven. 385F for 10 minutes tried that
Within three minutes, all of the stickers on my card turned brown, the white Plastic connectors turned brown and than I heard a popping noise. It sounded like popcorn. I found out what it was. Little electronics popping off the PCB.
I shut the oven after just shy of 4 minutes.
13 components flew off the PCB, and only 4 were salvageable inside the oven. Luckily I took pictures before and after so I could easily see which components broke.

Needless to say I soldered on the ones which popped off and the card didnt work at all.

If anything this will only damage your graphics card not fix it.

Anyone have a Compal CL-56 graphics card

Pictures will be added soon

K-TRON

 

Heck we tried . Worked for others too.

Maybe your oven is running a little "hot"??. Electronic parts don't fly off things and make popping "popcorn" noises unless they are maybe still connected to some form of power. AFAIK.

And also, very important, as the guide noted, don't cook food or place any potentially explosive things in the oven at the same time as you are "refurbishing" your card.

Hope this helps

Cheers

TeeJay 44

 

Wow, sorry to hear about that. Even if you oven has a slightly different temp than mine, your results are very different than mine.

I worked perfecty for me and several other people. I wonder what was different in your situation?

 

older card maybe ?

 

Don't know, I know of at least six other people besides myself that this has worked perfectly for. That's not counting other successes from other places on the web. Of the six I am aware of and mine, they were all laptop graphics cards. I did read at another site where they did the same thing with a desktop card though and it too worked.

The only thing I can think of is maybe his temp dial on his oven is way off. Who knows. It sucks for K-TRON regardless.

 

My card is dated 2004, here are some before and after images:
Its not like it is so old. Devices then still hit 80C on a good day

Before the oven:


After oven - flash on:


After oven - flash off (more accurate of what it looks like now)


The card is completely fried. I tried it in my laptop. Without the processor, memory and everything else installed. I just had the gpu and the motherboard. Smoke started pouring out of one of a few of the ATi chipset. The PCB actually bubbled up in a few spots.

I preheated my oven to 350F than put the card in on an aluminum pan with the aluminum balls and all. Turned it to 385F and was hoping it would work. Than noises started occurring and I pulled the card out of the oven.

K-TRON

 

I don't know what happened K-TRON, my graphics card looked exactly the same after as it did before. And I pre-heated my oven to 385 for about a half hour before I put the card in for 10 minutes.

Is that a mobo or the older graphics card in your photos?

Have you put a thermometer in the oven to compare it to your dial setting?

 

Your oven got WAY to hot, K-TRON.

I feel for ya

 

Those images are of the graphics card. I tested it first rather than potentially killing a motherboard.
My oven seems to be running the right temperature, it cooks all of the food we make fine.

It seems that maybe older cards cannot take the heat.

After some analysis, the physical two cable connectors for the ribbon cables are so fried, that one of them physically came off the PCB when connecting the ribbon cable for the keyboard. Tis sad. I really need to find a Compal CL-56 graphics card. Its the only thing holding that machine back

K-TRON

 

This seems like a great little trick. Will keep it in mind.

 

I just used this method to revive a broken Nvidia Go 7900GS. Thanks to the OP! BTW, here is another long thread with tons of other success stories: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792

 

Wow, and that was on a desktop card with all kinds of plastic bits.

Really glad to hear this worked for you too Iron Eagle!

 

Damn. it's so tempting... it's like a joke! i am almost to the point of hoping my gpu to fail, or buy a dead gpu off ebay just to try it...

 

Just fyi, i baked my 8800m gtx over the weekend and it worked!

i had an 'earlier model' m15x (got it last january, when it was 1st released) so I probably had a gpu w/ cheap nvidia solder.

needless to say, 385 for 9 min, and cooled down slowly... it worked.

 

Good to hear mr fro2000!

This method has repaired many graphics cards since I first posted this how-to.

Just keep in mind this should only be done on a graphics card you know to be bad. If this procedure doesn't work then you've lost nothing. If it does work then it's an easy fix for a dead card.

 

Seems like you had broil on and not bake.. wow that is a cooked card.. and in 4 min.. that is insane... How close was the shelf to the heating coils?

 

Yeah, something was really wrong there.

When I did mine, I preheated the oven to 385 before I put the card in and then left it in for a full 10 minutes.

I had zero discoloration and even my little plastic washers I forgot to remove only got very slightly warped.

My graphics card has worked perfectly ever since.

 

Rob, do you have a convection oven or a regular oven? As the required temp would be around 60F less for a convection oven. That could be why K-Tron fried his card.

 

How long has this 'fix' lasted for everyone? Has anyone's fixed card stopped working again?

 

rob41's is still workin

 

I used a regular electric oven and Moo is correct. It's still working perfectly since I baked it more than a month and a half ago.

I don't know what kind of oven K-tron used but if it's convection that could explain things. His is the only "mishap" I've ever heard of. I posted this technique here as well as a couple other sites where others have had success. In all, I've posts of this working for at least 15-20 people and for 2 people it didn't work, K-tron is the only one who had a meltdown.

 

on the low end, that is approx 87% success rate....

 

How many people have fixed 8800Ms this way? And how 'dead' were your cards?

 

All of the successful cards that I'm aware of, including mine, we're completely dead. As in, a bad primary card so the laptop is nothing but a brick.

 

Man, so glad I found this thread. My 8700m died a couple months ago, was mad beyond belief, out of warranty. 8 minutes at 385 and I am typing this message on my 9750! Thanks so much, what a wacky buy interesting fix.

Mine was all but dead, wouldn't boot up except in safe mode, and had nasty colored lines and dots all over the screen. After it cooled off, popped it back in, and booted up normally, ran some 3d games, and everything is working flawlessly. I am so happy!

 

Another satisfied customer. Glad it worked out for you Yavin! Rob u da man on this one!

 

Did you try repairing the 8700M?

 

mine was an 8800m gtx and it was in semi-bad shape. when i played games, the minute i booted up, the whole screen would freeze, go black and I'd have to restart my computer.

When not running games, it would work for like 20 min and then start artifacting and stuff... then the screen would go black and i'd have to restart.

Luckily for me, i have integrated gfx as well, so i was still able to use the laptop while i was 'fixing' things...

 

Yes, he did. In the oven.

 

I came across this the other day and wish I had found it sooner, I had a 7900GTX that was dead, ended up selling it on ebay as is.

I wonder if this would work with a dead network switch if I pulled the board out?

Linksys EG008W v1

It lasted me 6 years before it died. Might try it just for the hell of it.

 

Bassically, it repairs microfractures in solder.

If you're certain you've got a dead board then there is nothing to loose.

 

I've tried a different power supply and that wasn't the problem. As you've said I've got nothing to lose. If it doesn't work I spend $50 lol

I'll let you know!

 

Just another success story post: My 8800m gtx in my M15x was crashing withing minutes of turning on the computer no matter what I was doing. After over a month of trying different things and unsuccessfuly haggling with Alienware (my warranty was out but I had some leverage) I decided to go ahead and try baking the card. Voila! I haven't had a single crash since doing it several weeks ago.

 

Off topic: I actually wonder if this would work with a board from an Xbox 360 that's got the red ring of death. Could be worth a try.

On topic: I wouldn't cook an entire board off something, that could cause damage to other working components (although, if it's dead it's probably worth a shot)

 

Hey EviL, people were trying "similar" fixes like the Hairdryer and towel wrap fix which is basically heating up the components to create the same type of fix....

 

My card is still alive and kicking... that would be about two months now.