The Oven trick?

So, my 160m is pretty much borked at this point. I'm getting a new card, however I read up on this and it seems like a pretty good amount of people who tried it had positive results. I'd like to try this on my 160m to see if I can revive it for a backup or test card. Is it even possible with laptop cards? It seems like there are components made of plastic on it that will melt. Any components I should remove before doing it?

 

Strip the card down as much as you can (plastic and all) and put it on a baking tray on some balls of aluminum foil. Make sure the PCB is level and bake at about 385F for five to ten minutes. You should fully pre-heat the oven before baking or nothing will happen.

Depending on the accuracy of your oven and the duration for which you bake, you might need to put it through a couple times. Better to start too low/short than too high/long.

Generally plastic parts soldered to the PCB won't melt at 385F, but plastic "foil" and the like may deform.

 

Alright. Well, I've removed the plastic backplate. What I'm really concerned about is the memory modules on it - they look and feel plastic-y. Should I keep the card right side up or upside down when baking it?

 

The whole oven thing is funny... because (i think) BGAs are mounted in manufacturing with special ovens, either that or I've seen specific 'reflow' ovens around.
They actually press the BGA down on the board while its heating to make it mount better and more like an SMT machine.

 

If that's the case I suppose I shouldn't be too worried about it then, haha.

 

I usually just try to keep the actual GPU BGA facing up I dunno if it actually helps or not. I've never melted memory modules off a PCB, but I have taken some smaller SMCs off on accident.

EDIT: I suppose at this point I should add the "try at your own peril" disclaimer

 

By the way, Niffcreature, The 3700m I got from Atlantatech didn't work for me :[
Won't even boot to BIOS, looking to return it. I have a thread about it a few pages back.

 

Ahh thats a shame. You could try baking it too

I dunno they said they occasionally get bad ones, maybe a new one will work, otherwise some nameless bios issue

 

So, good news - It apparently worked! I'm able to play games without getting BSOD's! Hooray! Who'da thunk it?

 

Kind of sucks that nvidia can't make a GPU that wont have BGA problems, maybe thier new fermi stuff will be better.

I'm not too worried about my 3700m, even though it's hot, I will probably get a new notebook before it is dead.

 

Just a follow up -

The oven trick was a temporary fix in this case. It fixed my graphics card for about two weeks before the thing completely died.

 

How did the graphics card completely die? Did it just stop posting?

 

Yeah, I've found longevity to be a real crapshot as well. On some hardware I've had the fix last the lifetime of the machine, but on models more atrocious track records (*cough* XPS M1330 *cough*) I've had the fix fail after just a few weeks.

Yeah, I'd like to know as well. Oftentimes you can bake it again and again and again before you melt something off the motherboard and kill it for good...

 

And I'm assuming M1530 falls under the same category as the M1330? I thank my lucky stars I bought my Vostro 1500 instead cause I considered the M1330 when I was buying my laptop for college..

 

It worked fine for a couple of weeks, then I started having the same errors. I baked it again, but then the problems got worse (it started BSOD'ing while doign simple things like watching youtube videos). It only full functions with the graphics drivers uninstalled now.

I have a 3700m coming in the mail, so hopefully that'll be the end of my problems.

 

You could also send it to a repair shop, they might be able to re-ball it.

 

Important thing about the baking process:

You have to wait at least 6 hours after baking.

Then you have to Burn-in the GPU in laptop for at least 3 hours - your screen will be fuzzy/BSOD/what not but you have to leave it run for a long while so it settles.

After a reboot or two and this time, the card will work.

(did my 6th baking of Nvidia Geforce Go 7950GTX last week).

Also, if anybody occurs to have spare Clevo u560 (ROCK CTX EXTREME PRO) screen cable, would make love to you

-Mel

 

6 hours after baking? Doesn't the solder completely settle after 30 minutes?

And what does "burn in" mean?


I honestly don't think this is a permanent fix.

 

Think he means benchmarking it very heavily to ensure GPU stability.

As for the baking, I've been scouring the web for the past few days, seems like average span is like 2-6 months, though reports of much longer (1 year+) and much shorter (2 weeks) GPU life pop up on occasion. I guess it really depends on your chip.

 

Probably chip, oven, baking time, and general usage patterns. This isn't exactly a scientific process, so there are lots of variables to consider.