Video card baking, foil off?

To anyone who is familiar with the techniques of baking your video card in the oven, I have a quick question:

My (dead) Sager 8800GTX card is covered all over in a tin foil looking material. I understand this is a material to help distribute heat over the video card while it's running.

Should I remove all of this foil BEFORE baking the card? The entire card is wrapped pretty well in the foil, and it looks to be a major pain to remove it all, hence I was hoping to just leave it on during the bake (baked potato analogy is unavoidable). But, if it's advisable to remove it, then I will.

Thanks in advance.

 

Not sure at all about the foil thing but I have baked my 9800m gtx a number of times and it still works. It was never wrapped in foil and all I had to do was unscrew the heatsink and then remove the card from the copper housing. Plus its a good idea to use some rubbing alcohol and remove the old thermal paste on the chip. Then after baking reapply some new paste when putting back together. I used the arctic silver mx-3 which is good.

 

>_>

arctic silver doesn't make mx-3

Keep in mind there are reputable reball companies out there, that actually replace the solder with something that wont fail and then put the card back together for you. I think we should start a thread somewhere about these companies and which ones use the reflow method (no different from our method of sticking it in the oven) and which reball, removing the BGA core and mounting it again.

 

Yeah my bad its arctic-cooling mx-3.

 

Just tried peeling off some of that foil. Looks like it's stuck on pretty good with some sort of adhesive.

I'm worried that when I do end up baking the card with all the foil still on, that adhesive may burn? Anyone with experience baking a Sager supplied card with that foil?

@Niffcreature, what exactly are these reball companies you mentioned? Are they companies who essentially take a broken video card and fix it up again? Would you by any chance have any links to some of the reputable ones? Might be worth a shot for me if the baking doesn't work.

 

are you following the instructions from this thread. worked for him so far.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...ger-np8660-dead-video-card-2.html#post6978912

 

Yes, but neither that thread, nor the Alienware one mention anything about the thermal foil which Sager cards come wrapped in, and whether you should remove it prior to baking.

 

The failure in these cards is not caused by the balls under the GPU package> It is caused by the solder that connects the die itself to the package. It is a mismatch between the underfill and solder type that cause the problem. All that is required is heating up the die itself with a heat gun to try and reflow the solder directly under the die.

 

Maybe if you post a picture of what you are talking about people could give you more help.

 

Not sure I understand your post were you asking me a question?