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

I understand this and made that clear to my niece as well. But if the temperature is low enough to just melt the solder (and not let it move to much) so that the cracks can fill, I think this is pretty safe. The problem is of course the right temperature, which I do not know

 

While we do not know the actual solder's compositions, Wikipedia says they typically melt at around 180-190C or 360-370F.

If we leave it at that temperature for too long, components that are less heat conductive may reach such high temperatures, not a pretty sight. The other thing is, because we cannot control it or leave it perfectly level, there is always a risk of the solder balls running out of their sockets.

 

I tried this on my hp dv9810 today and it worked. There was a sound issue at first, but after running the hdd test in the bios, all is well.

The laptop has the integrated Nvid chip on an amd board, and, prior to today, would no longer start, but would cycle on and off until I removed the battery.

I pretty much followed your procedure, but I removed all the black plastic shielding and anything else that I could remove. I set the oven to 385 and baked for 8 minutes.

Thanks

 

I read this thread (and several others) Friday night and on Saturday morning went about stripping down a couple of systems I had video issues with. I pre-heated to 385 deg, rested the mobo's on balls of foil on cookie sheets and baked for 8 minutes - sonovabich....it worked!! I have read about some people removing the boards from the oven to cool, but I just turned it off & left the oven door opened about 8" and went out for a few hours.

I have had my Compaq F700 running for about 24 hours now straight and it has not skipped a beat!! This machine would not even turn on before I roasted it...hazzah!

The one word of advice I will give is to make sure you check to make sure you have removed any cards from the board-mounted card readers. I totally overlooked the dell blank that was in my M1330 SD-card reader and it melted. I am lucky that it did not damage the board at all.

 

i dont know about anyone else, but this topic has been talked about to death. the graphics cards it works for are outdated as hell and pieces of crap anyways. who cares if you get a slow crappy nvidia or radeon card working again. the cards cant play modern games well anyways. I wish people would shut up about this.

 

I've done it to a 7900GS that had some artifacting on the screen. It would also BSOD. Did the same technique but used a toaster oven and a digital thermometer and got the card working again.

I had an HP DV6000 that came in. Would do the same technique but I would have to use my main oven, which I do cooking in.

 

Lol, some people just don't see/get the point of nostalgia, or of long product life either. I wish you'd shut up about telling us to shut up...

 

Heck, some of these laptops are only two years old and quite expensive to replace... € 500 vs 10 minutes in the oven: the choice is pretty easy I think!

 

HAHAHA, thx for changed my mind by yours pics!
as electronical ingeneer, i understood reflaw and so, but The method use....
about 385F
about 5 min-10min...

i bought over ebay a T61, 1-3-3-1 bips (150$), usualy bad ram, so buy it guy and just remove bad dimm, but nothing just 8 bips

and your forum here, i was to buy a new system board (200 $), and at 01:00 AM decided to cook my mobo (my wife looked at me like that )


little mod (i dunno if it add some thing but did it ), as every electronik geeks' i have flux, i put some flux under GPU in littles holes.

so with a russian gaz at 190-200C ???
it did stay 7min then i just open 2 cm for the heat to go out slowly
it took 1hour to mobo to be at human temperature.
(because this is solder cracked pb, it better to slow the time high to low temperature level, that solder fastly retract and again little cracks appear)

just put few screw to try, push power button at 04:00 AM and VOILA

thx you for you pics because without, i was about to use a hair dry,
but it is not ingenering do not know temperature when and where and how much and time...

If so, i want to add advice :
TAKE OFF OR NOT TAKE OFF, the black rubber over mobo, this is my paradox!

TAKE OFF : and you may take off component !!!
NOT TAKE OFF : and at hight temp. it grow then at low temp. it retract itself, and it 'twist' component

i decide not to take off, because when i begin, something did fall! i dunno what it was , little resistor, capacitor or dirt...

so it is for 6 months that i have a nw9440 with bad video issue, this is mxm, but right now i am so existing to redo

just registred here , to thx and up with some photos!!! but can not upld them ...

 

Hello!

Was asked to check on an IBM T42, screen flicker and freezing after ~5 mins. Possible loose GPU, was preparing my heatgun when I found this "Oven trick".....So I finished my Xmas bakery and baked the MoBo 8 mins at 385F=~200C - slow cooldown, has been running tests all night.... and....Tadahhh...Works so far One more happy customer, and as written in the original post....PROFIT ;-)

Regards
Wackerdk
Denmark

 

If there are components on both sides, doesn't the components on the down-side fall off when doing this??

It's a Asus G2S I'm about to bake.

 

If the temps get too high, that can happen. Pulling off plastic tape and the like protects a little bit against this.

 

Nothing fell off, but nothing else happened either.. The screen went from completely black to silver/black-strips. Going to try one more time, now a bit longer time, it's worth a shot..

 

Sounds like the Xbox 360 fix

 

Do I need to change the bake time if I add a tray of cookies?

 

If you didn't, the cookies would be underdone... and I'm not sure I want cookies with a coating of solder.

 

Top rack cookies.

 

Hi Commander Wolf,
I had a question for you. I baked my mobo and I now get power!! YAY but I have no display :/ I tried hooking it up to my desktop monitor and my tv via s-video cable...but I got nothin. Should I rebake?

 

I assume you tried to bake a motherboard that had a problem other than the BGA solder issue?

 

uhh yeah, i wouldn't count on any thing. just because you baked it doesn't mean it will or even can fix the BGA issue. god i hate hate how to bake guides.

 

Came across this forum yesterday, and then came across this thread. As usual I was only here because of problems with my laptop. That's the thing with the needy, never help, just leech other's ideas!

Anyway. My problem was a 'dead' XPS M1730. When powered on it would flash and whir, but the screen stayed resolutely black, not a flicker. I tried power+D and the screen showed something so I guessed it wasn't a screen issue. I stripped it down, cleaned out a carpet's worth of fluff, reseated everything, and tried again. Nothing.

So I went off looking for a new laptop, fearing huge expense, looking at a myriad of threads of poor souls who had tried every laptop ever made, and found them wanting. Then I found this.

Nothing to lose. I took out the video card and popped it in the oven at 200C for 5 minutes, expecting nothing. Let it cool, reassembled the laptop and powered on. There it was, back to its former glory!

Spent the whole night on WoW with my guildmates loling at me and making cooking/baking gags whilst we one hot heroic Yor'shaj as my temperatures remained remarkably stable.

So thanks to all here for the advice. It's saved me a load of cash, even if only temporarily.

 

Great to hear! Just note that this is frequently a temporary solution. If it had micro fissures or other reasons the solder cracked then it may happen again, or worse. It's really a stop gap until you buy another machine.

That being said, good luck, glad stuff like this works and the people who share this info make this site (and others) very valuable.

 

Where does the profit come in?

 

It's a figure of speech.

 

I would say this is generally true, especially true for bigger GPUs. I've tried a couple 7900s and FX1500s from M1710/M90, and those have lasted at most a few months.

Furthermore, 8xxx series last a lot shorter than their 7xxx series counterparts. I've seen the 8400M/8600M in M1330/M1530 last for only a few days. 7xxx series, even "big" ones, can sometimes last for months.

I've had some "small" 7xxx series last a really long time, so I'd venture it can be close to a long term fix in some units with the right cooling setup... likewise, don't bet on it.

 

I'm sad now, I thought there was an actual potential for profit... like buying rrod Xboxes on eBay, fixing them, and reselling them.

--
Sent from my SGS2 Skyrocket using Tapatalk

 

Alot of low/mid range Geforce 8 chips (8400/8600) were put in laptops with very poor cooling (HP Pavilions, XPS line, etc) so yes they are prone to fail more. High end chips with good cooling systems lasted a bit longer, but less than Geforce 7.

 

Today I managed to bake a 9500M GS DDR2 (G84) graphics card from my friend's laptop back to life! 7min@200C. The laptop is Asus X55SV. Thanks everyone for Your input in this thread. BTW, my friend could not believe his eyes that it has all worked .

 

Just wanted to add my experience on reflowing a gpu. I have a gateway p-7805u fx with the 9800m gts. I was experiencing frequent black screens while gaming and even underclocked it would still fail after awhile. I took my laptop completely apart and found that the gpu is made into the board so I used a heat gun. first I heated the whole board on low heat to get a good even temp then I blasted the gpu with high heat dancing around the top of the gpu for 30+ seconds, I then would go back around the top of the board with low heat then blast the gpu with high heat for another 30+ secs. I did this two or three times and am able to overclock my card again and enjoy my games. So far no crashes and im a little over a day in. I reapplied AS5 to the gpu but not the memory chips as im not sure if it would help or not. Card has not reached over 70c and have been testing it with Bioshock infinite Burial at sea. Tried the Rivatuner fix before this forcing it to 3d peformance to no avail. For the moment I am happy but that MSI notebook I have had my eye on for awhile might be making its way to my house if this does not last long. Anyone who has this laptop and has not had it apart should immediately consider taking it apart and checking your fans. I bought my notebook used and during the first disassemble I found a brick( yes a solid brick perfect length of the heatsink) of dust clogging the gpu exhaust as well as clods in the fans preventing proper cooling. I have had my notebook now going on 5 years and the best thing you can do to it is new thermal paste and keep it cleaned out. A air compressor with a blower attachment works well for keeping dust from building up after a thorough disassemble and cleaning.

Good luck out there, There is always a fix if your determined and patient enough. :hi2:

 

Very cool thread. I ended up baking my D830 with the Quadro 140M, and it came back to life! Except that unfortunately I didn't cover up the PCI express expansion card holder very well, and the push thing melted. Oh well, for a 7-year-old laptop, I'm not complaining too much!

 

I hate to be the only person here where it didn't help, but it's true. My Dad's HP laptop croaked. No video on screen, and the video going out of the VGA connector was way screwed up.
So I stripped it down to the motherboard and baked it around ~~ 300 degrees over half an hour.
Oh, joy, the LCD panel lit up!
But, that's all it would do. Alas.
My parents now joke about me baking the computer. But perhaps I get the last laugh; I stripped the HP carcass of every one of those annoying ultra-micro-super-mini screws.
Those come in handy!
Now my parents have a new laptop and it took them an entire day to thoroughly dislike Windows 8, and guess who got to install Win7 on their laptop?

Ahhhhh, its the curse of my generation to be Family Tech Support...

Thanks,

Dave

 

300F or 300C?
Half an hour was way too long. 7-8mins @ 200C does the trick. I guess you should have read the thread more thoroughly before baking.

 

Kudos for the guide! Just baked my GTX 485M that didn't post any picture at all in 195 C for 8 min - works like a charm now! Thanx again for this!

Edit: Yeees, I'm necroing it all the way

 

I have 3 Lenovo T61 for my kids & 2 have suffered the GPU failure. Just finished re-assembly of the second after baking each motherboard in preheated oven @ 385F for exactly 10 min. Both work perfectly and saved me from having to purchase new/used laptops. I figured they no longer worked so I had nothing to lose and savings if it worked. This technique is way easier than the heat-gun/shielding technique directly on the GPU. So glad I stumbled upon this thread.