Cooked my 7900GS graphics card back to life!

My cooked video card failed again after 11 days. Not too bad!

It failed while in Civ IV which is quite heavy on 3D, surprisingly... So I decided to try again, this time slightly hotter (415) for 15 minutes.
I put the card back inside the laptop, and like last time...it's working again!
Bizarrely, it reset the cpu internal clock, again. I don't get that. Anyway, it's working! I'll keep you posted to see how long the second repair is working.

It took me about 10 mns to get the card out. 15 mns to bake it. I think 35mns of my time is definitely worth $585.00 which is the price of a refurbished NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS.

 

Quick question for you guys -

Having removed the GPU; did you remove the Pipe/Heatsink before baking? If so; how? And even then..how do you reattach it after cooling?

My 9400 bit the dust the other night and I've been quoted shocking amounts of money to replace the card. Think this is worth a shot; even if I get a month out of it..!

 

How do you take the GPU off the board... the GPU is soldered to the mobo permanently is it not?

 

It's a removable GPU. Thank goodness.

 

REALLY? It's a 7 series and removable? Wow...so it's MXM then?

 

Yes, you have to remove the heatsink. With some cards, like mine, it is actually screwed on. On some others you can't remove it because it is glued. Baking it will make the heatsink fall off. In this case use that heat resistant glue, artic something... to glue it back on.

At the beginning of this thread, the OP put a few pictures of the whole process.

So basically the 2005-2007 XPS with NVDIA 7 and 8 series have pretty much all the same problem. It's ..a shame. The only good thing is they are so big of a laptop that the video card is removable...

 

Pfft, my T61p's GPU is 8600M GT based and it isn't removable, but the T61p is a business laptop, oh well, hasn't failed yet, i still play Dirt 2 on it with High settings, some Ultra High, and i get 24FPS in the built in game benchmarking. 1366x900 res, i think.

 

May I just say that I'm now posting from my recently baked 7900 GS.

Sure it may only last a day, a week, a month; but I'm thoroughly proud of myself..!

First thing I did was install Bios A10 - I was always wondering why Dell released a Bios update so recently (1st Dec 09) for such an old Laptop!

Thanks for the help, guys. 200C for 12 Mins was my solution. I removed the entire Heatsink prior to baking.

 

It would last a lot longer if people understood their gpu is no longer able to handle gaming after doing this.

 

Well, it doesn't seem to make a difference. It's on a USB cooling pad anyway. For some pple it failed while browsing
the web, for some, while in a 3-D game or application.

 

Although I miss my games of Command and Conquer I don't have any intention of going back to gaming - not as long as I know it may help the laptop.

Since installing BIOS A10 I've noticed that the gpu fan seems to be turning far more often than it used to. Even when sitting idle. The heat from the laptop has also reduced significantly as, more often than not, my lap would be on fire after 10 -15 minutes use.

I seriously think this is something Dell should have pressured Nvidia about after the original problems came about. The excessive heat emitted from this GPU alone was borderline dangerous - it's such a shame that it had to come this far but am I glad I could cook my card back to life.

I'm just wondering how much longer will I get out of it? I'm not intending on upgrading anything else on this machine - I'll be going right out for a replacement should it die a final death.

All the same..I'm glad I could breathe more life into her. It's not even a full three years old yet.

 

Worked for me as well.

390degrees, 10 minutes.

Particulars: Dell XPS M1710, GeforceGO 7950GTX

I removed the heat sync, and all the heat syne mounting hardware, and also all those little heat conductive foam pads on the memory chips too.

I cooked the card with the NVidia chip face up, with litle aluminum wadded up into balls to keep the card from sitting directly on the cookie sheet.

There was zero damage from the oven on any of the components.

Thanks for the help guys!

-Shawn

 

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen!

First I would like to thank EVERYBODY from here and other various forum for posting this.

I am happy owner of Rock CTX Extreme PRO laptop with quite a few upgraded components (seagate momentus 250gb / 7200 rpm, 2x2GB Kingston HyperX cl4 kit) and 2 weeks ago, the GPU broke down on me while browsing through google mail.... >.>

I though I was done for as this is quite an old laptop with MXM 2 connection.. and there were no more 7950 GTX 's on Ebay or other sites.. and if were, for ridiculous prices making a new laptop seem like a good option.

However I didnt give just up (was about to buy Alienware Mx15) and seen the tricks of baking all over the internet..

Which made me wonder.. what I got to loose?

Followed guide with tinfoil bed and stand, 200 C preheated oven with fan assist turned off.

First test - 6 mins - Not enough!
Second test - 9 mins - Suitably enough but still few artifacts prevailed..
Third test - 7 mins - 110% performance improved and 0 artifacts.

IMPORTANT !!! Let the graphics cool down for at least 5!! hours, apply new heatpads/thermal compounds, and run the laptop with some application for hour or so.. it will actually fix Itself over time of use.

Now, about 15 days after, I am happily playing Crisis, Dead Space, WoW and other delicates on my Laptop yet again and using dual extension screen setup.

Thank You Folks!!

 

Additional:

Just a couple of photos for share.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu1.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu2.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu2.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu2.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu2.jpg
http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii72/CommandoCZ/gpu2.jpg

 

So why do you think the third test, at only 7 minutes, did the trick when the 2nd test @ 9 minutes was not enough. Since you cool down between bakings, I wouldn't think the baking times would be cumulative.

I've tried baking mine (about 4 months ago) and while it worked for about a week, sure enough, the artifacts started coming back and now it's just as bad as before.

 

Mine still works after 3 months of usage. The XPS M170 in sig.

 

After every baking, I reapplied Thermal paste (Artic Cool Ceramique) and Akasa heatpads and the results were disappointing.

After first baking, 90% of problem persisted.. instead of green lines, i had distortion of dots.

2nd baking, fixed almost ALL the problems.. I was able to run WOW and some other games.. with just minor texture flickers such as water and specific shaders.. but it wasnt perfect. I let it in laptop for next day and tried again, with 99% of it working, however the texture flicker was still there :S

Third baking was the final showdown and it worked =)

Edit: Baking times are not cumulative but at 9 minutes, the majority fixed it and at the last 7 mins, the tiny bits which were left patched up me thinks.

However single 10.5 Min baking could have done job for the both..

 

Rightio!

I am now over a month of use of the baked Card.. so far No problem!

Well.. not exactly. Gears of war - this game, on high settings causes slow degradation of graphics, increase in random effects such a strange black lines coming up from characters heads up high into the sky.

However lowering the Graphics settings did help solve the issue.

It is not heat problem thou as the laptop got now brand new cooler, massive 22 cm diameter one which blows a well damn good cold air into it, as the laptop is lifted in 30 Degree angle. (its Energex cooler or something, really professional, despite the unknown brand name).

Otherwise, games like Dead space, Starcraft 2 (yey for beta), WoW and full HD movies are working all just fine!

-Melg

 

Just wanted to update my status.

Took apart my E1705 again, and cooked the card a second time. This time, 390 degrees F for 9 minutes. Let it cool to room temp and reapplied Arctic Silver and then reinstalled.

Currently is working great. Time will tell, I'm sure!

 

I still can't believe it but it worked for me too!

200°C for about 10min did the trick. but I'm still a bit skeptic if it's for good.
Also updated my bios from A09 to A10
Here is the direct download link: ftp://ftp.dell.com/bios/MP061A10.EXE

In Ubuntu I had to extract the hdr file because it's not yet listed here:

http://linux.dell.com/repo/software/bios-hdrs/

I used wine to extract the hdr:
$ wine MP061A10.EXE -writehdrfile
and
$ sudo dellBiosUpdate -u -f MP061A10.hdr
+ Reboot

did it.

Here some Pics (fresh backed gpu - yummy):

http://twitpic.com/1d7fx0
http://twitpic.com/1d7gfc
http://twitpic.com/1d7gio
http://twitpic.com/1d7gnf
http://twitpic.com/1d7gpj
http://twitpic.com/1d7gti
http://twitpic.com/1d7gyz
http://twitpic.com/1d7h1q
http://twitpic.com/1d7h37
http://twitpic.com/1d7h5j

 

Heyas!

Gratz on successes, my GPU is still running just fine in dual monitor extended screen setup (17" default ROCK screen(1920x1200) + 23" LG flatron (1920x1080).

Its been almost 3 months now.. all good!

Long live to baking technique!

 

Hey guys thanks for this thread,

I had an insipiron 1705 with a 7800 GO GS do similar artificating all over the place. This is the second card to go bad, first one Dell replaced, now it is out of warranty.

So i did what was said here bake in oven for 10 min at 200 degrees

Well it is working but not 100% there it still some artificating here and there but nowhere as bad as before.

My question should I try baking it again? if so how hot should I set it? I read some places were doing it at 385 degrees, but not sure if that is too hot for this card?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

I think your question has been answered by a couple of us in this post (those of us who have re-cooked and had success).

There is no promise that anything will 100% fix it, but what do you have to lose by baking it a second or third time??? Just try it and find out for yourself.

 

Thanks, i saw most people were cooking it at 200 so was not sure


But i did try 385 and it seemed to work much better,

When I first powered on the laptop, i saw all the artificating but as soon as it booted into windows it seems to be fine.

So far running several hours and seems to be working 100% now


I downloaded fangui to monitor the temps does anyone know what the temps should be when it is in 2d mode?

Right now it shows 50C

 

So i sent a long email to Dell complaining about what happened and second time my card failed, long story short they are sending me a replacement video card along with a new mobo, even though it is out of warranty 2 months.

I told them I just need a video card, they said it could be the motherboard too.

Do you think i should go ahead and install this video card? or just keep the one that I got working?

 

Wow! And you're not under any warranty? Lucky you! I'd put in the new parts...they'll probably outlast the computer!

 

Yep i sent an email to Michael Dell directly...I am sure he does not read it, but it went to a customer escalation team.

I basically complained to them that my video card went bad only 10 months ago, and this is the second time it died. I said I understand I am 2 months out of warranty, but I have been a longtime customer of Dell and recommend them to everyone I know, and I felt I should get another video card due to the second one should have at least a 1 year warranty, and that if you look on the internet tons of people are complaining about the this laptop and failing cards and there must be an engineering issue with ventilation and at this point I am extremely unhappy and my next laptop will be an HP.

The next day I got a call directly form their customer escalation team, and said we will send the parts right out, and even send a technician, even though my warranty does not cover in home service.

I said just send me the card I can do it myself, I told them I did not need a motherboard, but they said you never know.


I got the parts today, and replaced the card and I am glad I did, because even though I baked it, it started to fail again last night.

I did not replace motherboard, I am not sure if I should, since mine is working great right now, who knows I can jinx it and put this one in and something will happen. Both parts came refurb anyway

 

Anyone cooked 8800m GTX and got positive results?

 

Hey guys... add me to the list of folks successfully cooking a 7900 GS back to life.

A few days ago I came across a Dell E1705 with corrupted video selling dirt cheap. Read a few posts about the oven trick and decided to give it a go at 390 degrees for 10 minutes. Put some Arctic Silver Ceramique on the GPU... slapped it back together... and now the video is 100% perfect with absolutely no flaws.

If anyone is still a bit scared about doing this... just go ahead and do it. The card looks exactly the same as it did before going into the oven and nothing burnt or caught fire. Sure beats paying $200+ on Ebay for a used pull that has probably also seen the oven trick.

 

Had the same problem black screen once boot into windows vista.
Preheat the oven 200c for 10 minutes.
Place video card on foiled tray resting on 4 balls of foils as explained here.
Place video card into oven for 10 minutes, turn off oven allowing to cool for 10 minutes, remove and place outside to further cool for 15 minutes.
Return to video card after 15 minutes card cold enough to replace into the computer, repack Arctic Silver 5 on process, reassemble together.
Place in computer with temporary access, as not screwed together, fire the computer all work perfectly.
Thanks again to who thought of this method up, you are a legend.
Cheers Drew

 

Well I must say, that my 7950 GTX card in the Rock CTX Extreme Pro Modded laptop is still working just fine! Its been what.. almost 5 months now..

Amazing!

Allthrough 1.5 more months, and I will be embracing new Asus G73JH powerhouse.. Dual core and 7950GTX on 32 bit XP is not cutting it nowadays just right..

There are plenty and i mean REAL PLENTY of GPU's on Ebay right now.. and the store with MXM cards just got real and bigger.. they are selling some delicious ATI's 5870HD's and NX260's.. you cna find it via notebookcheck

Keep up the baking!

-Mel

 

Why is that the majority of people who cooked their card back to life are just newbie or enthusiasts???

 

Maybe because the rest of us never keep a laptop long enough for it to happen.

I always seem to be getting a new one every 1-2 years it seems.

 

I found this forum just when I was desperate and seeking help with my laptop when the GPU let go..
I do change laptop as well about every 1-2 years, and the ROCK is still just one year in my possession and already baked its GPU.

Previous laptop - ASUS F3jp which I still have is now unsuitable for gaming as I have expertly heat-burned the GPU.. 115 Celsia degrees for a hourly exposure for a week.

It was hot hot summer and room was even hotter with minimal air flow and air vent was stuck in by a dust.. the soul of that Asus was hanging just by its claws!

Allthou I am not planning on staying a newbie.. already working my way through a learning curve to paint a laptop and custom-modded my Laptop's cooling stand into a X-mas tree like lights heh.. was quite fun and easy to do !


To add on top of the Topic: Today (14.6. 2010) the GPU in my laptop is still working! I am noticing slight black screen flicker, once in a long long while but cant blame the laptop, it barely recognizes the GPU on BIOS...

If somebody happens to have Alienware Mx17 or Asus G73JH laptop on their hands for sale (i7, 4+GB ram, 1920x1200 screen, Ati 4870/5870) for price of 1450 $ incl. Int shipping (Czech republic, 500 02 post code, Paypal verified/business) then I am willing to discuss

-Mel

 

We can never know what happens at the extremes of life!
Someone should try taking advantage of absolute zero.

 

Hi all

Good to see my thread still going over a year later, with so many success stories!!

My laptop is still going strong 15 months later, and is perfectly capable of everything I throw at it (EVE, WoW, Dawn or War I/II).

One last thing, there seems to be a bit of confusion on cooking temperatures. Probably the whole UK/US thing. The temperature is 200 degrees CELSIUS. For those of you in the US, this is 392 degrees F.

Pondering getting an Asus G73JH now though.....

 

Update 11/19/10...Well, Dell finally called back today...while I was out for 15 minutes. They will call back 11/22 Monday which will give me more time to test the fix. Things are still working fine today so far. The only noticeable remaining issue is that I am still getting some artifacts (but fewer than before the video driver update) across the very top 1/4" of the screen on the black screen right after the opening Dell screen for about 1/2 the time the screen is black. I noticed my BIOS was the A08 version and the current is A10, so I updated that, with no noticeable difference. It would sure be nice if Dell would provide this & other critical updates much the way Windows has been doing for years. It would probably solve a lot of very basic problems that are hard to solve with the current Dell resources. My suggestion at this point, if you are sure (like I was & confirmed by a local technician) that you have one of the defective video cards, is to update the BIOS (simply downloading and running a file that updates the BIOS & restarts the computer) and go to Nvidia.com to update to the very latest driver for your card. The "bad" video card might just fix itself! Win 7 didn’t really seem to hurt or help this process. My temporary fix after the Win 7 update crashed when I tested with Google earth. Not a problem now.

Update 11/18/10...I'm still not sure where things are at BUT...Dell didn't call me back in the 48 hours promised, so I called them. I started at the bottom of the support ladder again. When I reached the supervisor of the supervisor, he had me go into device manager with windows in safe mode. There we removed (not disabled) the driver for the Go 7900 GS. We shut windows (7 Ultimate) down for a few seconds and then started up again. This time windows booted fine with screen resolution way better than VGA. Apparently Win 7 in that situation will find & install the driver. Then the Dell tech suggested I go to the Nvidia.com website and look up & install the very latest driver for my 7900. There was one more recent than what Win 7 installed...actually the same driver I had previously installed under Vista, I think dated Feb '09. The Nvidia site listed it as Win 7 compatible. To make a long story short, I am back in business again. I hope it lasts! If it does, I owe Dell a bit of an apology. On the other hand, the Dell support website did nothing to help figure out anything about the problem. Nvidia either...they suggested this same driver last April that didn't resolve the issue. I'll update again if the problem comes back.

Update 11/16/10...I am making some headway with Dell. I called them today to tell them that no thanks to them, I now know what the exact problem with my computer has been since last January at least. They now kept wanting to charge me for something to fix my E 1705 with the Go 7900 GS. One of the many people I talked to said Dell would make an exception in my case and fix it for free. He forwarded my call to the proper department to get it taken care of. Seems the no charge got lost in the transfer. The way I left it, is that someone from the "highest level customers can talk with" will call me back within 48 hours. When pushed, Dell supervisors do know about the litigation, but can't say anything about it before things are settled. He did say Dell plans to notify all customers affected after the settlement. I will update when I hear back. The below I posted somewhere else on this site last night, but I couldn't find it again...

I just found this link on another forum...
http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/index.html
By my way of looking at it, I got screwed by Dell & Nvidia. Both for not taking care of the problem when I called each of them for support on what they both had to have known was way more than some "normal" out of warranty problem. I have a Dell Inspiron E1705 with the Nvidia GeForce Go 7900 GS that is about 3 1/2 years old. When it worked, it still did all I needed a laptop to do. Since, I believe early this year, it has been crashing with the blue screen of death, more and more often. I always thought it was some corrupt file or some program conflict. Error messages always seemed to somehow be video related. Nvidia suggested only their latest beta driver for the 7900 and that lots of problems unrelated to the video card will show up as a video problem. When I asked about purchasing a new video card to replace the 7900 that I was finally quite sure was faulty, Dell said nothing about the true source of the problem, but suggested I call a local technician for a more economical fix. I was almost ready to purchase a new computer!

Nvidia closed the discussion on their website on this very issue! See...
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=82863
Now, I find they are almost at a settlement for my problem! Well, nobody ever bothered to notify me! Dell...I still live at the same address you shipped the computer too, and the same e-mail address. Tomorrow, I call them both to ask why I should ever by one of their products again. Sony screwed me quite a while ago & I have never bought another Sony product & never will.

 

almost 90% of MXM gpus on ebay are extremely overpriced.

Although the stock of ~60 fx 3700m about equal to gtx 280m at under 200$ are offsetting that ratio

 

Worked for me with a e1705 and 7900GS!!!

Baked 10 mins at 395F.
Turned oven off and let card cool inside for 10 mins.
Removed card and let it cool for 15 mins on stove top.
Reassembled with AS and it worked!

 

I baked mine upside down today at 200c for 10 min and guess what falled off


Anyway, do anyone know if i can solder it on again with a solder iron? I tried to bake the card again and see if it would stick but no go.

 

It's just a four pin part? Small soldering iron should work fine. No soldering GUN, though...too much power.

 

I guess your card went into upsidedown shock We in Norway should do this @ 150C or something like that

 

heh, the solder were actually abit brown after i took it out ^^, anyway i bought a new 7900gs from guy on ebay for around 60$.

But the new 7900gs i bough got some wierd artifacts if i can call it that, its multicolored rectangel squares at bootup and in windows its red squares
Tried safe mode to see if it made a difference, and what do you know all the "artifacts" disapeared. So im gonna do reinstall of windows and go from there.

 

Sorry to dig up an old thread, just wanted to say that my e1705 just died due to video card failure. It lasted 5 years before dying. I just ordered a new computer though. I wish I would've seen this first!

 

the baking method is only a temp fix so the card will die again sooner than later. all it does is slightly melts the solder so the broken contacts re connect.

now a days its cheaper to buy a new computer.
what graphics card died on you?