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

CPU, GPU, HDD, RAM everything plugged in, should work.

 

Can you bake a motherboard with integrated CPU soldered on?
I though heat hurts processors.

 

I've tried baking a board with a socket-ed Pentium M in it.

Didn't damage the processor, but as with pretty much everything here, your mileage may vary. Since we're trying to reflow stuff, you could very well damage the BGA contacts under a BGA processor if their material content and size make them melt faster than the BGA contacts under whatever else you're trying to reflow.

 

Well after working perfectly my m1330 oven backed MOBO died officially last nite!
the oven bake fix lasted for apprioox 1 week.

fun well it lasted!

I have intel vid MOBO coming in mail off ebay.

rest in pieces nvidia POS!!!

 

Why don't you bake it again?

 

It worked for me too! (So far that is.) My G2S had the Nvidea 8600M chip go as so very many have after 2.5 years. Since I you can't even buy the replacement Mobo atm, and that's $400 I thought I'd give this a try first. Took 5.5hrs overall to disassemble, bake, and reassemble but so far so good! I can once again play games and movies!

One problem I do have now though, is my screen is functioning at half-brightness, even though the settings are the same as before. I'm pretty sure it's something mechanical I did, since I tested another monitor hooked up to my laptop and it THAT monitor came out bright and clear as ever.

Anyone have any ideas? I cannot find a button/tab where closing the monitor shuts off the light. I'm thinking that whatever is on this system for that function might be involved, but I'll be damned if I can figure out where it is.

Regarless, I am very grateful for this thread and the help it gave me. Cheers and kudos!
hlid.

 

Why dont i bake it again...indeed!
and so i did this time instead of 6 min for 8 min @ 385f.

and so far so good..tested with blueray movie and still running..typing on it now.

thanks again for the posts guys!

 

Good work, I hope you get more than a week out of it this time

 

Taken and modified from my post here:
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1035040700&postcount=637

First off, I'm not trying to promote these guys and I have nothing to do with them, I'm not even sure if they would do work on any random PCB with BGA devices having solder ball or SOIC issues. For that matter, I am unsure if they even exist, so contact them first, their prices appear reasonable. At any rate the link:
http://www.firstphasetech.com/ibook-repair-g3-g4.html

Yes, I know it does refer only to the servicing iBook G3 and iBook G4. However, if one company does or did work like this others might do it. This service cannot necessarily solve the bad solder bumps on your nVidia G8x and G9x laptop GPU. That is a problem between the silicon die and the package. This service is most likely going to be useful for those individuals with parts that improperly mixed lead-free and leaded solder materials and processes. These parts were probably manufactured between 2004 until late-2007, but don't quote me on that. This service can only fix cracked solder balls and cracked solder joints on SOIC devices that are between the package and the PCB on a PCB. However, both reflowing and reballing an IC with a BGA package are both vaguely similar processes even when moving from device to device. A first generation Xbox 360 with cracked GPU solder balls is a problem that can be fixed using this service, hypothetically. At any rate, for any random part you will need contact this company before you send it in, obviously. Don't be surprised if this is only cost effective to do on valuable items. Don't be surprised if the board is unintentionally permanently damaged during rework. Also, expect the device to stop working again in time. This may occur perhaps somewhere on the order of two to three years, even if done professionally. If you have the BGA device removed and reballed professionally the fix should be more permanent, but expect it to cost a bit. It seems that GPUs with RAM modules mounted on the package have a low survival rate after reballing, but reflowing is less of an issue.

One last thing to add about the oven method, when BGA devices are soldered on to a board initially, the device is heated to ~400F and cooled. The parts should only experience temperatures that high for roughly 30 seconds to a minute. Otherwise one runs the risk of baking the chip and causing permanent damage or significantly reducing whatever was left of its lifespan.

Also, at ~400F in an kitchen oven, electrolytic capacitors will most likely rupture, which is bad (they do contain water after all). Electrolytic capacitors have cases made of Aluminum, nearly always cylindrical, have a rubber stopper in the base, and larger capacitors will be scored on top to allow the capacitor to vent due catastrophic failure. Electrolytic capacitors also usually have a dark colored PVC plastic sleeve with lighter ink and have a light colored stripe on one side indicating their polarity. At any rate, desolder the old capacitors and check the cost of replacement electrolytic capacitors at Digikey or Mouser before trying the oven method on something with electrolytic capacitors. I am assuming you know how to use a soldering iron to remove and replace, SMD and through hole capacitors, have a decent multimeter, know how to properly measure electrical properties with a multimeter, and know what the numbers on the various parts on the PCB mean.

 

nevermind. I see there are plenty on eBay.


thanks!

 

Hmm, you think something like this might work on an Apple 15" PowerBook G4? My old PB is getting graphics artifacts on the screen and with an external monitor, and replacement boards are out of my budget right now. Part of me wants to try this, the other part of me just wants to scrap the thing for parts.

 

Go for it dude, what have you got to lose? You could still sell the parts off of motherboard, but what kind of GPU is it, integrated or discrete, and if discrete, is it attached via solder, or is it a socketted GPU?

 

thanks to the OP for this write up. I took apart my M1330, baked the mobo and voila! it works again. I'm going to wait for my copper shim before I use it regularly though. One error I am getting now though is when I open Firefox there is something about OpenGL mismatch.

 

OK this is the 3rd bake on my m1330 i am typing on now and going strong!
what i did differently this last time was to monitor the oven temp with a prob thermostat to confirm convection temp and made sure it was 385f.
what happened the 2 times before is that i didn't have oven hot enough...for some reason i have to set oven temp higher to reach 385f ultimately.
i know this last bake was different as some of the labels etc melted when in the previous 2 times they did not.

so far so good, including testing watching blueray movies!

Hope this was helpful.

 

Tried it to no effect... Probably too cool... Must find kitchen thermometer.

On the down side. I spoke to an engineer(a cousin) who was really worried that my parts would fall off...

 

If you get too hot and melt the solder on the other components, then yes, that would be possible. There's a reason we usually refer to doing this as a (relative) last resort.

 

Worked on my p-6860, still gaming on it a week after baking.

 

HI ALL PROFESIONALLS !!!


I today after 1/2 year take the notebook out from the cabinet and rehot with HOTAIR station GPU BGA Chipset, and the notebook BOOT and TURN UP!!!

Before this service access notebook only BLINK HDD DIOD and POWER DIOD in the same 2sec interval !

MY GOOOOOOOOODNESSSSSSSSSSSSSS HAPPY DAY IS TODAY !!!

My notebook is Aspire 5520 - nvidia chipset.
Please says to all this message that if notebook not turn on but only flash HDD & POWER DIOD in any time interval, then problem is GPU.

Woooooooooow

 

Nice work

 

thanks a lot dude, but something exploded just at the time i was going to turn the oven off. after some fire fighting (lol) I've found out that it was the CMOS battery. so everyone remove this part before baking. the system is still healthy but is there a way to replace the battery? thanks a lot my freind.

 

Yes, replace the battery. It's like 3V or something (most of the time).

 

so it's true you need to take off the cmos battery before you bake the mobo?
-- even if it's soldered one?? --

 

thanks a lot. i believe it was because of some overheating. i think the battery will explode in beyond the 191 C . so be careful if you're baking with the cmos battery still installed. by the way. thanks a lot everyone. great forum here.

 

WOW!!!!! you are a freeking genius lol, i just heated my xps1210 mobo that died of gfx card problems and now its running again!!!!!!, even though its a little late, i already ordered a m6500, my fan in xps1210 wont run, i feel the heat sink getting really hot but the fan wont kick in. any ideas why?

 

Yes you should take off the CMOS battery before you bake the machine. This is a really good point and I shouldn't have overlooked it. I have a friend who once tried to solder some leads directly onto some of these coin-cell batteries... and, well, it blew up.

It's possible you damaged something related to the fan... or just forgotten to plug it in? What're the actual temps that you're getting?

 

well just got done heating the mobo, it didnt really put eveything together, just kind took the mobo, connected the hard drive and the vedio card and the rest of the wire back how they would go without actually physicly screwing eveything in just to make sure it works. So the system booted fine into windows, let it run for 15 min, but the fan never kicked it, it is pluged in though.

before it the mobo fried originaly, it would kick the fan in as soon as i turned it on. ( i didnt heat the fan, took it out by the way )

this are the temps so far :

Temperatures:
CPU 58 °C (136 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #1 61 °C (142 °F)
CPU #1 / Core #2 62 °C (144 °F)
Chipset 25 °C (77 °F)
Aux 62 °C (144 °F)
DIMM 54 °C (129 °F)
GPU 68 °C (154 °F)
WDC WD5000BEVT-75ZAT0 39 °C (102 °F)

 

Nice thread, when I saw the title I thought it was some kind metaphor/joke, I've never heard of baking your motherboard before.

Knock on wood, if this problem ever happens to me, I might just try it.

 

This is indeed a little high. You might have damaged some sensor on the board or something whilst baking You can try using i8kfangui to spin your fan up and down; if that doesn't work, you may have damaged something worse than a sensor... Still, it could also be something simple that I'm overlooking...

 

There's nothing strange about this repair at all. I doubt the repair is as broad as this one made it to be.

Nvidia has made a bunch of bad gpu's in the material, literally, sense. The solder will move on all LENOVO t61p's, eventually crippling the computer. This is a fix for the soldering that will inevitably fail.
Renee

 

It may seem strange but it's a common method to repair the RRoD (Red Ring of Death) problem on XBOX 360.

My Asus G2S had the common GPU failure caused by bad heat managment(Send my Asus G2S in twice while warranty lasted, for this reason). It's GeForce 8600mGT failed. It booted but the Display and external Monitor had no signal.

After using exactly this method (baked 7 minutes) my Laptop is up and running. This is a great guide and I really appreciate the effort.

 

Hello, i baked my 7600 go for 5 minutes and it's working fine for 4 hours now and counting.

Do you think it will work with X700 too (i would try it already but it's not mine)?

 

Must I heat oven exactly on 385F (=196.1C)? I don't have thermometer to check it, only oven with temp adjust (but I don't know if I can trust it).
Will be there something wrong if I heat oven not exactly to 385F (+/- few degrees)?

 

No there wont be any problems if the temp is a bit off, just don't put it too high or you will burn it.

 

IT WORKED! I did not let the oven go up to a high enough temperature the first time, but now it is working. No more artifacts. I wonder how long it will stay this way. Ah. So nice.

 

Hey, I just wanted to chime in and say this saved me about $400 yesterday. My GPU stopped working so I baked it for 7 minutes at 385, keeping it as level as possible. After letting it cool and 2 hours of Laptop re-assembly I saw my OS boot up. Thanks for the pictures and thread.
HP Pavilion DV9750us

 

One of the craziest things I ever read. ... and I have two MBs I should try this on. Great guide. Thanx for sharing.

p.s. too bad this doesn't work on HD sector failures.

 

you know I had a bad sector on an old HDD, even after reformating it was still bad.

But then I reformatted from a linux live distro and somehow it was fixed.

Maybe linux does a better job of formating. give it a go

 

Alright. The inevitable has happened. It broke again. So, that's two months for me. To be fair, i stress it quite a bit with gaming and watching multiple videos simultaneously, also i never turn it off. This time though, there are fewer artifacts, but it refuses to go to any resolution higher than 640x480.

 

Right. OP should note that this is a temporary fix and shouldn't be considered a peromanent fix. Just buy some time until owner can change mobo or buy a new notebook.

 

Absolutly, the reason most people have to to this in the first place.. but it's still bad solder.

Be very carefull on which GPU you get from EBay..particarly if the laptop looks like a Dali clock

 

Well, i baked it again, and it is working again, but it is idling at around 50C. Lowest temp i've seen so far is roughly 46C. Is this a cause for concern? I'm worried i may not have applied the thermal paste correctly. That, and i am technically using a pretty bad thermal paste.

I do live in a tropical country, with temperatures ranging in the mid 30s, room temperature, with ~100% humidity though.

I might just run out to buy a cooling fan and AS5 if it would help prolong it's life.

 

IF ambient temps are in the mid 30's I wouldn't expect anything less than 45c as a lowest temp. AS5 would be a good idea. However, either way you are living on borrowed time. I would definitely start shopping for a new laptop.

 

I now operate it in an air conditioned room(ambient temperature at roughly 25), and the temperature are still operating at the mid to high 40s.

But yes, already have a post in "What Notebook Should I Buy"

 

About 8 months ago, I purchased a T862++ BGA rework station on ebay, was around 400 or so. Best purchase I have ever made. Easily paid itself off in the first week. I have reflowed a bit over 100 DV series HPs, and about 30 macbook pros, and I have about a 90% success rate. If you want to fix the unit permanatly, you will want to look into a BGA reballing kit, which will reball the bottom of the GPU, then you can reflow it back into place with the rework station.

 

That's good advice... Where did get all those broken computers to fix? Ebay as well or are you "in the biz" as it were?

 

Well, if your into repair and the time, a reball kit may be for you.

Don't forget to give your vendor a shot. My 7900GS was toast so Dell repaired GPU, baked in oven? , repaired hinges and added 1 year warranty for $175. The laptop was sold with the 1 year warranty.

 

I'd like to add my positive experience to this thread. My niece had my old Dell XPS m1330, which has those crappy 8400M GS cards that tend to break often. The laptop is out of warranty for more than a year, so here's what I did:
- open the back cover and remove the heatsink-fan assembly.
- make sure all wires and loose plastic (including the coin cell battery) is away from the GPU.
- cover the surrounding electronics with aluminium foil (don't know if this is absolutely necessary, I was trying not to torch the motherboard).
- apply a heat gun (kind of industrial hair dryer) at 200°C for about 10 miutes.
- let it cool down and pu everything back where it was.
- boot the thing.
- smile big as you just saved 600 $ on a new motherboard

It's just awesome that it works. I wonder how long it's going to last this time... Good thing is, that this can be repeated if necessary

 

I did pick up a bunch of ebay, and some locally, although alot were just repairs locally for customers.

 

Remember though, that this is a very crude form of reflow soldering, without any control of where the solder would end up. Do this enough times and the solder balls may move away significantly from where they were meant to be, causing greater, possible permanent damage.

I am interested in how you managed to pick them up locally. Do you have a shop? Do you call people? I enjoy tinkering with things, and if it would bring me supplemental income, all the better.

 

I do have a small shop, but the majority of the ones I got locally, I picked up from Craigslist.