Cooked my 7900GS graphics card back to life!

I didn't believe it myself until I tried it - but hey what did I have to loose?

My graphics card (GeForce Go 7900GS) went faulty after 2 years of running fine. It showed funny lines accross the screen, even in BIOS setup, so I knew it must be the card. It BSOD's while loading up windows. I could get it to boot in safe mode, just.

I read on the web that cooking the graphics card in the oven for a while can fix it. Soooo:

1) Remove graphics card from laptop (Dell Inspiron 9400/E1705)
2) Preheat oven to 200C
3) Pop in oven for 10 minutes
4) Heatsink solder melts, and heat sink falls off...
5) Wait for it to cool, take out of oven
6) Reattach heat sink with Arctic Silver Adhesive
7) Put laptop back together
8) Run 3D Mark, everything fine!!!

Card running stable at 80C for 2 hours.

I was absolutely amazed...

 

Not bad, now you can eat computer chips with your chips

 

Wouldn't some parts of the graphics card melt if not deform from high temperatures?

You should have included pastry to go with that baking.

 

Lets just hope the solder isnt lead based Eating outa that oven...well

 

Not if its the right temperature

 

Ahhh, the wonders of 200C

Nice one with the fix though

 

yeah exactly xD

 

Well done.
I think what happens is that you were getting the artifacts and the gpu wasn't working because it was overheating - reattaching the heatsink seems to be a logical solution.
I did this to my XBox 360 gpu and it was lasted me through a few Red Rings of Death scenarios.

 

I'd love to see pics or video of a 7900 in the oven lol

 

I'm quite sure that solder melts around 200+ so it should be no problem. But how the hell did it work?? This is most absurd thing i have ever heard off.

 

There: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792

I just cooked mine back to life too.

 

There are microscopic cracks in the solder that cause the video card to die. Baking it melts the solder and repairs the cracks.

 

Heh. Someone here tried that a short while ago. Seemed pretty much a wildly spectacular tale to me, too, 'til I Googled "bake oven graphics card".

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=385973

 

>.> Am I the only one that finds it odd that no one has ever posted any proof this actually works? Not saying it doesn't, but I have yet to see anyone post pictures of their systems actually working after they do this.

 

Another Nvidia Solder Pasta and Geforce Chipset Soup.
It seems you're really lucky! Anyway, if you fail then? What would you do?

 

I banked my gateway M520 in the oven 400F for 15 minutes let it cool for about a day to be safe hooked it up pluged it in. the idea came from a guy on [H] Forums. i tried it on a 6800GT and it worked as well

 

Why would they need to?

 

Can it also be done on the faulty 8400 GS? I wonder...

 

Why not? You have nothing to lose anyway.

 

Cause the only person who did show the after pictures had nothing but broken blackened computer parts.

 

I hear if yeast is added during baking the video card will become bigger and faster.

 

is it on the mobo or is it the video card it self? if its the motherboard pop it in for 400f and cook for 15 minutes. i will take my laptop apart again. and take a picture and show you the pieace that broke off. and its on there now. it gettho reflows the soldering.

 

here is your proof

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792

 

Hello again. Well on the proof side, I guess I can't give anything categorical.

I can screenshot the laptop running multiboxing three copies of WoW at the same time maybe..

I'm typing this on it? How's that? I dont really mind whether you believe me...

To the guy who asked if it was the graphics car or mobo, I have heard tales of capacitors popping when tried with a mobo. It was just the graphics card for me.

Reason it works - all the extreme heating and cooling causes cracks in the solder. When the cards are made they are baked in an oven like this anyway to flow the solder originally. It just reforms the cracks.

But someone beat me to that explaination...

 

Should read my post again....all you showed is proof of some guy getting ready to put his gpu in a oven. Thats hardly proof it worked. Where are the pics of people showing the card works in their computers?

If you would be so kind, it shouldn't be hard to show a picture of the actually card in the computer.

 

Hey, Rorchach if you want a picture i will take a picture of mine running and a picture of the motherboard for ya. just let me know. because in truth i did not people made it work until i did my laptop now i am a full beliver in it lol

Also why are you qestioning people on [H] Forum? now because you are 2nd guessing people i will take a picture of mine and the parts i took off my off mobo just to prove it works

on top of that i baked my gateway mobo i would not sit here and b/s about something like that if it did not work

 

For what it is worth, given my understanding of the problem and my background knowledge....it is entirely possible that these guys are telling the truth.

It is definitely non-conventional, but solder reflow can sometimes fix broken hardware. I've fixed quite a few prototypes just by touching up the solder a little bit.

I'm not saying that these guys are telling the truth, but I am saying it is certainly possible. Next time I have a dead video card I'll probably try it myself if I don't have access to a professional reflow machine.

 

I agree, but I just found it really odd that the only person who has shown what the components look like afterwards, had a very bad result with this method. I've heard of heat guns being used, but the temps people are doing this at seems a bit odd to me, I wouldn't think anymore than 250-300F would be needed.

 

Why would so many people lie about something so unimportant?

 

they dont wanna belive its there loss. because i am not going to sit here and say it works it works if it dont. i saved about $100 or more on my mobo for my gateway so they belive me and do it more power to them if they dont its there loss. i am not going to keep explaining it does work when some people think people on [H] forums are lieing and stuff. whe nin fact they are not. i get offend when people say i am lieing and i am not.

 

Well done their looks like u followed the baking instruction quite well im not good at following instructions so i wouldnt try this prob. burn my house down or something oh well happy to hear it was a success :yes:

 

Ok you naysayers lol...

I bought a Dell Inspiron e1705 off ebay for the express purpose of trying this out (and the fact the price was 200.00 plus shipping)..

I know to most of you 200.00 aint much loss if you can still use the other parts... well my wife woulda killed me if it didn't work cause we already have two working laptops lol...

So here is my story (pictures cannot be posted of the actual events, (but I can give you the sold ebay link and with the picture and description and a picture of it running 3dmark 03 lol)...

Ok for starters I tested it out to see what the problem was... Start up at bios major artifacts lines running everywhere could barely read the text (shock). No matter let's see what this baby can do! So I tried just loading into windows for kicks... Loaded up fine past the splash screen... Then Error BSD augh!!!!...

"So let's try safe mode" I said to myself.. It would load into safe mode, but it wouldn't display any better once there... Well I knew when I bought it there was gonna be problems.. So I decided to what any good american does when faced with problems (namely cook something and drink a beer )

So first attempt... I took apart the laptop with some help from the folks over at notebookcheck.. and got the gpu out... Nothing looked amiss about it, but we are talking internal stuff not external.. I placed it on 4 balls of tin foil (once it was removed from the heatsink). and placed it in the oven at 385 for 8 mins... (I must admit that during this time I kinda was freaking out and waiting to hear explosions)... I turned of the oven and let it cool... I gave it a long time to cool "naturally" keeping it in the oven while the oven cooled as well.. Installed it back in and... Urgh... Still artifacts... Well... let's see if it will boot into windows.. It's past the splash (holds breath) it's to the login (holds breath) it's letting me login (shock)... It's flashing something terrible (dissapointement)... I was close to calling this a dead done deal.. Though something in the back of my mind itched kept saying go for it... what do you have to lose? if it's dead it's dead...

Attempt 2

I took it back out... ( I hadn't hooked it all back up, but it still took some work getting it back off again). This time I was going for the gold or the garbage can... I placed it in the oven for 10 mins at 385... Scared as I was I knew I didn't have much to lose (cept some pride and bragging right).. So I took it out and let it cool on the counter instead... Plugged it back in as soon is it was remotely cool... Still some artifact (urgh), but overall a lot better no lines just little specs... and they seemed to be dissapating... hmm... Booted straight on into windows... Sucess!!! No flashing.. although there was still some definite artifacting and it seemed to stutter as a whole hmm.... I uninstalled the current drivers and reinstalled the latest drivers... Things actually got much better... Which made me wonder did the previous owner change some important settings? No matter it's working that's all that's important...

Now the cool part of this story is that I figured out why the card had failed in the first place... The fan controller wasn't doing a good job of controlling temps... So I downloaded a program called fangui... Within one hour of getting temps under control... All artifacts gone... no stuttering no obvious defects...

Conclusion

I spent 200.00$ shipped on a laptop that cost 1700.00 dollars 2 years ago... I took a chance and now I've got a desktop replacement that will serve my gaming needs well for at least 3-4 years (not much of a gamer)... Plus I had the experience of trying something new... So in the end... If you've got nothing to lose... Why doubt it? If you try and suceed maybe just maybe you'll accomplish something fun and exciting... or save a few bucks trying

A/J

 

Oh by the way...

Mine was a 7900gs from an inspiron e1705 9400 as well... wonder if there's a connection?

 

Sup all

I have an e1705 dell with a go7800. It would not do any thing so I cooked it about 2 months ago at 380 deg. Well it worked for a while and then started messing up after being on for a little while.

Decided to cook it again today. Forgot which way I but it in last time and thought it did not matter. Well it does. @ things fell off and I am not to sure which way they go back on. The are located near the connection for the lcd and are numbered L1 and L2 with writing on them R56 M131.

I put them back on and reheated them. I am going to add a little solder I just want to make sure they are on correctly.

If anyone has any pictures showing which way they go on I would appreciate it. PM me and I will give my email.

Always take a picture.

Appreciate it.

 

lol i did this with my 9500M GS, 250 degrees tho, and took it out after 4 minutes, the whole thing fell apart LOL, transistors everything was fallin off lmao

 

Should not put 250C I guess.
You should put around 200C, then, cook it for 5minutes.
Cool down, take out. Relax it for 1 hour.
Make sure everything fine. Insert back to the Laptop.
Install DRIVER FTW!!

The reason it melted too fast(fell apart) is due to 9-series GPUs are smaller and lighter than 7-series GPUs.
For example:
Like you cook a BIG fish, you need 10minutes.
You cook a SMALL fish, you will need 5minutes.

 

ahh, i would definetily try it if my GF6200 wasn't soldered onto the mobo... But I kinda hesitate to put the whole mobo in there since it actually passes splash screen and even works in windows, albeit rejecting the driver. Hummm, what shall i do...

 

Suggest DIY ViDock, and use the notebook in VGA mode for when disconnected. Least is still functional that way. Cooking it has the risk of cooking it beyond function.

 

I think 250C is a bit much. I just suggested this fix to a fellow C90 user and he baked his 8600M GT 512 DDR2 card at 200C for 10 mins and it is working again.

 

there is no real point in spending £100 on a laptop that sits on a shelf for last two years. Also, it means i'll have to buy a monitor for it too. Too much hassle, especially when I already have another laptop that is sufficient for most of my needs. However, i do have a crazy idea, just need to find a bit of spare time to work on it. Thanx for the advice, anyway

 

That's insane..

but being the type of guy who tried to put his laptop keyboard in the dishwasher to fix it after a spill (which didn't work, btw) I would totally try this if I was desperate enough.

 

For me the laptop was sitting doing nothing. If I could buy a video card for 100 dollars I would. Look on ebay and its a joke how much they want for one. It may and may not work and if it does for how long.

Anyway any pics would be appreciated.

 

But does this method work if your GPU is soldered onto the motherboard?

 

Hi

Good to see my thread still going after all this time. Bit like my laptop, which is also still going fine after its little cooking session months ago.

I am noticing that it is running pretty hot, even after I cleaned all the fans out (about 80C under load). But so long as I insulate my legs, it's fine...

To the guy above asking about graphics chips that are build into motherboards: my graphics card was modular and removable. Personally, I think that it would be much less likely to work if you cooked the whole mobo.

My cooking experience was just with a Geforce Go 7900GS modular card. Once removed it looks pretty much like a lump of metal with a heat pipe attached.

Like this: http://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/1/2/5/6/1/4/9/webimg/280536945_tp.jpg

 

I'd just like to add my name to the list of people who this worked for.

My e1705 with 7900gs go started having the artifacts typical for this problem (random characters in the DOS menus before windows boots, strange arrangements of pixels everywhere, etc) Also the nvidia driver would always send to BSOD either when starting windows or when trying to install the driver. I was running windows 7 but that would only go into safe mode with VGA so I tried a reformat with XP, could get into normal windows without video drivers, but crashed as soon as I tried to install them.

About this time I wrote the e1705 off, dug out an old laptop to hold me over until the corei7 studio 17 come out, and figured I'd try the bake method out of boredom. Took the video card out, removed the heatsink/heatpipe, put it in the oven elevated on foil balls for 10 minutes at 390F.

Popped it back in and on the dell logo there were still artifacts, but only on half the screen.. windows boots normally with no drivers (800x600) but screen artifacts still present, although not to the extent as before. Leave it on for a bit, then I notice that I can bump up the resolution and do so. Even less artifacts. Try to install the video drivers again and no BSOD!! wow. Restart. No video! doh. try an external monitor. that works so now I make sure the laptop display is primary. As of now I have no artifacts and fully back to normal, except no display on bootup until windows loads. I just havent figured that out.

Can't believe this worked and just wanted to share since if anyone else is going to try this, don't be discouraged if it doesn't work immediately. Keeping the computer on for a while after I baked it seemed to help even more. I'm not expecting much longer out of it, but it's nice to be usable until I can order a new laptop.

 

wow, you were actually serious when u made this topic lol, i thought it was a joke

 

Ok as strange as it sounds...it also just worked for me. It seems that the "cooking duration/temperature" is perfect: not hot enough nor long enough to damage the card (and the rubber/plastic material covering a few components, but hot enough to melt the cracked soldering.
I am calling Dell parts to cancel my order of a refurbished (probably cooked too) $589.33 NVIDIA GeForce GO 7900 GS. I'll buy it if the baked one fails again soon.

SOOOO COOOOOL!

 

I actually did this to my iBook G3 logic board. Over time, with the internal heat of the motherboard and the weak frame of the notebook, the motherboard flexed and the ATI graphics did this exact thing... I could pinch it at a certain spot on the case (above the graphics card I guess) and I could get partial video response. So I took the thing apart (43 screws later) and baked my MB for about 15 minutes at 225F and just let the solder reflow and it worked like a charm. But since that worked, I decided I wasn't going to move the notebook anymore so I hooked it to an external monitor and used it like an iMac.

 

Today Friday December 18th: the cooked card is still working like new...

 

i'll try this for when my T61p's GPU fails if it's out of warranty (Expires 2011 December)