Kind of a Guide: How to Bake Your GPU for Fun and for Profit!

Well, GPU baking has been brought up a few times, so I figure I might try to expand on it. I don't at all consider myself an expert on the topic, and as such, this isn't really a definitive guide, but more of a "let me share what little experience I have with y'all because it might help some people out".

Most NBR users probably know what GPU failure looks like. Maybe you've got some applications aren't quite working right, or that same BSoD that won't quite go away, but then you start seeing the artifacts that still show up on your external display, and you know you're screwed. These days a GPU failure generally means replacing a motherboard, often at a fairly steep cost if you're out of warranty.

But wait! Don't chuck that out of warranty motherboard just yet! Especially with graphics processing units of a certain company whose name begins with N and ends in vidia, GPU deaths (including the famed 360 RRoD) are often caused by the failure of the solder joints that connect the GPU package to your motherboard. If you could reconnect those bad joints, you could potentially save yourself a whole lot of trouble.

And that's where your grandma's oven just might come in handy.

I'm going to show you how you might use an oven to try and fix a motherboard with bad GPU solder joints. I'm going to describe a method that has fixed three motherboards for me, but the results are not guaranteed. Keep in mind that this isn't something you should try if you're under warranty. It isn't really a dangerous process, but you can completely fubar a motherboard if not done properly.

Again, try this at your own risk.

NOTE: Apparently this process will not work on really old motherboards (before the mid to late nineties). Again, I don't claim to be an expert here and don't really know much about this. Ask K-TRON for details.



So here is our victim today; this is a Dell Latitude D600 that was part of a lot I picked up on eBay. It's fairly old, but the concept is the same. You can tell it has a GPU problem because of the artifacts that show up on the external display. You should really try to make sure that your GPU is the root of your problem, because as I said, this can mess up your motherboard.

The first step here is to remove the board from the laptop. If you've got a Dell, they've got service manuals for your browsing pleasure online, and if you've got an HP or a ThinkPad, they're pretty good with service manuals as well. Everything else I don't really know about; consult your respective sub-forum for details.

NOTE: Please remember to remove the CMOS battery as well. It WILL explode if you try to put it through the oven.



Anyway, here's the D600 board completely exposed.

You may or may not want to peel off plastic shielding. I've never actually had any of it melt on me, but different manufacturers may use different materials, so your mileage may vary. Stickers don't need to be removed; as a certain famous novel as taught us, paper doesn't burn until 451F, and we aren't going that high.



Here's the GPU in question as well; it's a Mobility Radeon 9000.

Once you've got your motherboard removed, you want to preheat your oven to 385F. Why 385F? I don't actually know. I got this figure online, and it's been working for me, and it will probably work for you. If you go too low, the solder won't melt enough to fix itself, and if you go too high, it'll turn into a runny mess and fubar your motherboard and oven. Make sure the oven is actually at 385F before you load your motherboard.



While your oven is warming up, you want to prep your motherboard a little bit more. As you can see, I usually prop my motherboard up with a couple balls of aluminum foil. Why this is necessary is again beyond me; the Google said it works, and it works for me. I think this may help if you want to use a convection bake, but I've been using a regular bake, so I can't say much about that. You'll also want to make sure the board is as level as you can make it.

The tin foil underneath is to catch anything that might melt off if this whole process goes bad.



Now that your oven's preheated to 385F, you can put the motherboard in!

While the chatter online said to bake the board for five to ten minutes, five minutes did the trick for my first two boards. This one looked a lot worse than those, so I went for seven and a half, just to be safe. If you cook it too long, you can once again melt stuff off the board, and that's just not very pleasant. Once your five to ten minutes are up, turn off the oven, open the door, but leave the board where it is until it's nearly at room temperature.

Once it's cooled, you can reassemble your machine and see how it went!



As you can see, mine didn't actually quite get there the first time. This board actually went right back into the oven for another seven and a half minutes. If you aren't seeing any progress at all, you may want to try using a slightly higher temperature or a longer bake time. With only three boards under my belt (and all Dells to boot), I can't really give any definitive guidelines, but if you take the temperature and bake time up a little bit at a time, you should eventually get a good result... assuming your board was fixable in the first place.



Here you can see that my board was indeed fixable. After the second seven and a half minutes, it turned out alright.

To sum it up:

1) Remove motherboard completely
2) Preheat oven to 385F and prep your board for baking, making sure it's elevated and level
3) Bake five to ten minutes and let your motherboard cool in place
4) ???
5) Profit!

Again, try this at your own risk, but if you do, do post if it works or not!

 

Great guide

I would first make sure the motherboard is lead free.

Also, instead of sticking the motherboard in your oven, try using a heat gun (~$20 from your local hardware store).
300C for a min or so should do it.

For anyone who is going to try this, go to youtube and watch the many vids posted of this. You should also watch how the pro's do BGA reballing/reworking/reflow.

 

Heh, the first time I tried doing this kind of thing, it was with a heat gun and a T43. Well, to say the least, it didn't work. Without some sort of fancy temperature sensor, there's just no way to tell just how hot the GPU/components are getting, and we ended up destroying pretty much all the surface mount components around the GPU.

So I just find the oven method easier to control, but yeah, if you know what you're doing, the heatgun is a totally viable alternative.

 

Locate and remove CMOS battery.

CMOS battery could be soldered to the motherboard sometimes and it must be desoldered and removed from the board before baking.

 

Nice guide, but I feel kinda weary of baking my mobo.

Exactly, what happened to your GPU?

 

Lol, I'm sure most people do. I'm just throwing it out there so I can reference it in the future

Wouldn't know. It was part of a lot of parts computers and came like that. I'm curious as to how it got so bad too...

 

I am surprised a "baked" mobo would come back to life...it is quite strange.

Still great thing to have around, +rep!

 

excellent,

Thanks a lot for this guide,I heard this "baking" thing before,but the difference is that you meantioned many important details and your great effort puts it all.I will always keep this thing in my mind.


My gpu is 5 years old,it will of course be dead one day and I will try this method.

 

See the problem was that every time the GPU heats up it causes the solder to expand, then as it cools the solder contracts. This caused the BGA solder to crack, means there is a bad connection from the board to the chip.

When you heat the motherboard in the oven, you reflow the solder and the connection is fixed.

This is called the "oven trick".

 

lollol, this just made my day, lollol

 

I would imagine from the constant cycles of the GPU heating up and cooling down throughout its lifetime. That kind of activity is sure to put a strain on sensitive solder points.

 

I'm curious what the other two Dells you tried were. Reason is, I have a Dell with a removable GPU - not permanently attached to the motherboard. Hence, I'm not sure whether doing this would help at all in the event that my GPU did go out. I've bookmarked the page just in case, as I do have an 8600M GT, but if there were 0% chance of it helping with a removable GPU, that would be good to know.

 

I know 4 people i have told to do this, worked

Removable GPU will work just as well

 

These were another D600 and a D610. Both of 'em have GPUs soldered to the motherboard.

Concerning removable GPUs, you should be able to bake 'em as well; even if it's removable, it's still a chip soldered to a PCB. Most of the figures I got for baking (ie temperature and duration) were from posts talking about baking desktop graphics cards.

 

the same temps have been applied to the 4 cards i told people to bake and it still worked ... PCB is almost identical in them

Sodering requires the same temp usually to melt as well

 

Commander Wolf,

Do you think I should try baking for this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=437686

I know it's not GPU related, but just about ready to throw this paperweight out. What do you think?

 

like i always tell people

" Well, What do you have to loose ?"

 

I know, I know... but I'm soooo, so bad in the kitchen.

 

i do not think it will fix it ..... but you have tried to fix every thing on it ( paste and cleaned it ) so really there is nothing left to do and laptops are very cheap at the moment and any laptop out would be a big step up for you

 

Actually, this is a few years and several generations too old for me, but I would still like it to work!

I use an 18.4" VAIO P8400 8GB RAM Scorpio Blue 500GB (soon Hitachi 7K500) for my on location work (photographer).

But, the M70 has a gorgeous 1920x1200 screen that begs for Excel work to be done on it.

 

This will work for the 8600m.

The G84 core has the same fault, the solder cracks and needs to have the reflow done to it. So if your 8600m goes bad, I would try the oven trick.

 

I don't think this has anything to do with the GPU, and hence I don't think baking is going to do anything for it... if anything it's just a chance that you might mess it up more. I don't want to go OT, but you should really make sure this isn't some sort of software issue before you try anything drastic.

 

Wouldnt baking a removable GPU defeat the purpose of it being removable? If it solders, it wont be removable again, right?

 

I think he means the mxm removable GPU's, correct me if I am wrong though

 

I have a 570M derived from the 8600M GT, so if mine does fail i'll give that a try, should work perfectly in theory but application is another story...

 

How many type or removable GPUs are there?
I thought MXM was the only

 

I have personally 'baked' two Nvidia cards out of Dell XPS M170, a 6800 Ultra and a 7800GTX. I used basically the method in this guide, except that I used 4 #8x1" screws instead of the tinfoil balls. I will post a picture of the setup later.
Both cards have been running, with no problems, for about 6 months.

 

Any discrete GPU can be designed to be removable. Actually, you could probably even make integrated GPUs removable, although that'd probably add some extra engineering complexity and wouldn't be worth the trouble. MXM is simply a standardized GPU socket format, like SATA is for hard drives. You could easily make a MXM GPU non-removable (although that really defeats the entire purpose of the MXM slot), just as you can make any GPU removable (all it takes is making the interface between card and motherboard a socket joint rather than a solder joint, whether or not the interface is MXM or some proprietary interface).

I think the point was to remove the removable GPU from the motherboard before you try to bake it. I think the solder points that are cracking are not actually the solder points between the card and the motherboard, but rather the solder points between the chips on the card and the card itself.

 

Most Excellent! With the appropo cautions (not too hot and not too much time, a user stands an equal chance of permanently frying their mobo as fixing it) this will save a lot of people a lot of money bringing machines back from the dead.

 

No, I agree its probably not the GPU, but its also not a software issue (installed Win 7 as a test - 120 minutes to install! lol).

Thanks for your opinion though. Much appreciated.

Hard to mess it up more though!

 

It's like reflow soldering with a hot plate, only bigger!

 

A really basic question, but is a video card the same as a GPU? Dell told me my motherboard was bad based on the BIOS beep, (and the grey screen.) I'm taking apart the computer to bake the mobo, and I just took out the video card. Reading the previous stuff here, and not being sure if GPU is different from a video card, I'm wondering if I should bake my video card or the motherboard?

Thanks

 

GPU= Graphics Processing Unit= video card.

If Dell support said the motherboard is bad, then try baking that. They would have know your unit had a discreet video card, and said that that was bad, if it was.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks, I'll keep disassembling, then!

 

If it's not a BGA solder-joint issue (and most non-GPU related motherboard issues aren't), baking is probably not going to fix it... I guess it can't hurt, though.

 

Is re-soldering it much more risky than baking it?

Seems counter intuitive... But i'm desperate enough to try. By the way, should i cover the whole thing with aluminium foil so it won't get direct heat or is direct heating necessary?
My oven is kinda small, so the heat is pretty intense... That's why i am considering soldering instead of baking, is it THAT much riskier though?

PS: A little tidbit from wikipedia
"Solder is a fusible metal alloy with a melting point or melting range of 90 to 450 °C (200 to 840 °F), used in a process called soldering where it is melted to join metallic surfaces. It is especially useful in electronics and plumbing. Alloys that melt between 180 and 190 °C are the most commonly used."

180-190 °C is between 356-374 °F

 

Well, the thing with BGA mounting is... how would you go about re-soldering it (at least in the conventional sense)?

If you're using a heatgun, I've heard that aluminum foil thing is supposed to help prevent you from messing up the rest of the board. In an oven, though, I don't think it'll do anything.

As I've mentioned, 385F is a ballpark figure that I've found to work with my oven. If you want to be safe, you can start from lower temperatures and work your way up. That should cover your oven concern and your temperature concern.

 

That's a good point. When i took it apart i remember seeing a lot of tiny electronic components and a fried bug in between. I kind of just assumed the solder points were exposed... I did not think to look at it in any detail after seeing the bug.

Amateur baking taught me that aluminium foil over an item stops it from caramelizing too quickly. But that may lower the temperature to an inefficient level... I take it, that you have never covered it before then?

I just quoted that to let everyone know why the temperature worked.

Once again thank you for the guide. Gives me hope

 

Commander Wolf, now you've got me curious. At what altitude are you baking at?

We know that water boils at different temperatures depending on the altitude we're at (which, makes a 3 minute egg different at sea level than on a mountain top), but does this affect solder to any significant degree?

For example, if you're at Sea Level and 385 degrees works for you, maybe somebody at 2,000 metres needs to be at 450 Fahrenheit (just guessing)?

 

Yeah, I have never tried it in the oven. Did try it with a heatgun, but my heatgun escapade was such a fail, I don't really know if it works

Hmm, I'm not sure about the physics behind this. I think you might just have to bake longer rather than at a higher temperature. I'd have to think about it. For what it's worth, I'm at 100ft above sea level.

 

I think you could be right about the 'longer' vs. higher temperature route.

 

High altitude has a lower air pressure, which means water boils at a lower temperature, (doesn't cook as fast) and the lower air pressure affects the airiness of baked goods. But not motherboards

 

zhoffritz,

thanks, lol I'm laughing at myself - sorry for the sidetrack!

 

Great guide, and holy crap it actually worked! I baked my well dead dell m1330 nvidia based system board in 385 degree oven for 6 minutes and reassembled after cooling and i am writing this post on that very same laptop.
I bought an intel based system board to replace this one from ebay, so as this was going in trash i thought might as well try it.
i am 1 day in and so far so good!

thanks again and god bless that darn internet!

G.

 

Please realize that this doesnt work on older circuitry. Boards pre 1995 will simply denature under that kind of heat. They simply were not designed to do it.
I wish i had known before baking my Compal CL-56 parts, the oven completely destroyed them.
Tis why I will never again trust anything i read on this website. Third time out of three NBR failed me

K-TRON

 

I agree, don't try this with old motherboards, they are not all lead free.

 

So I can't bake my whole laptop in the oven?

 

You bet! More than once, if you want.

 

You can't do that dude, it's so obvious, why would you? However, with ThinkPad keyboards, you can actually wash them in the dishwasher.

 

Do you have to put the whole thing back together in order to test it? Or are there just a few things I can stick together to see if it's working?