Oven Bake Method

M

Matthew Kane

Supreme [H]ardness
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Dec 1, 2007
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I'm just about to Oven Bake a not posting/booting 8800gt I got cheap off ebay for 15 and the seller said it was working but artifacts not in my case atm.

Should I bake it face down or face up? I've seen the thread here at [H] with the guy baking his 8800gtx face down. Then on overclocker.net some guy (Ronny Coleman lookalike) baked his gtx295 face up. Which way should I do it? Last time I did it face down to a 9800pro all the capacitors fell off. The 8800gt only has about 6 capacitors....any ideas would be great.
 
sounds like you might be baking it too long or not letting it preheat if they fell off. I would do face up, the temp in the oven should be around the same all around if it's preheated.
 
I baked my 8800ultra for 9mins face down, making sure there were tinfoil balls keeping the card/components off the oven tray.

Tricky part is that if you take it straight out of the oven it will cool down too fast which isn't good for the components - but i did it like that anyway i mean its dead anyway.

Let it cool down put it back together and voila, worked good for me.
 
PS3 said:
I'd be pretty scared to bake a video card.
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Except baking the card has become an [H] tradition to repair damaged cards, the worst that can happen is that the card will die completely. I saved my old 7800GTX like this. ;)
 
The card is dead. Would not work. No post but fan spins at 100% throughout the whole way. And the seller had the card doing Folding and then kaboosh it started to fuck up. Any ways to flash the bios when windows doesn't recognise it and it doesn't show up on post.
 
Lol wow this is new.. and I thought the oven was for food.

What does this do.. baking it?
 
Baked my 8800GTX face up for 8 mins sitting on ceramic kiln stands. Worked for 2 months before resurfacing.
 
csnv said:
oh.. at that heat, won't it ruin all other things beside solder connections?
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It's going to be well outside the recommended solder profile for the parts, but won't necessarily damage them. Most components aside from wet electrolytic capacitors are fairly tolerant of high temperatures. They do after all have to withstand soldering at the manfuacturing plant, though this method isn't nearly as nice to them.
 
Try a little basting for added flavor before popping it in the oven. I would recommend letting it bake until the center turns golden brown. Should come out nice and moist.
 
As long as you have some windows opened, there wont be much smell and ohh btw, leave your oven door open for a bit if your planning to bake food in it next time.
 
Youtube, there are many bakers on there.

Usually face down with 4 tin foil balls at corners propping the card up. 350-400° F for 8-10 minutes.
 
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385F (not celsius) for 8 to 10 minutes. Or 400F. My oven controls are not so precise.
 
Well, I just finished ANOTHER baking. (30min ago) This time....380f for 7min. The card is a XFX 7600GT AGP. The stock fan gave up the ghost and guess it hurt the card a wee. Had some nasty color blocking and such. Tossed on a Zalman copper V700 after the baking and typing on it now. This is the 3rd video card I've done and the other two are STILL chuggin along with no issues. Also baked two laptop motherboards and one desktop mobo. Again, all STILL working. Very pleased with my results. Good luck.
 
Reflowing works! I "baked" a friend's PlayStation 3 motherboard and brought it back to life from the YLOD. Except a heat gun works better set to 425C so you don't overheat sensitive components. I took the extra step of applying rosin flux between the PCB and the chip package to get the solder balls nice and wet. This ensures a more permanent fix since the balls won't dry out during reflow and aren't as likely to break again. A month later his PS3 is still up and running nice and quietly.
 
I don't like the idea of baking the card 'face-down'. The whole goal of this is to bring the solder to it's melting point and do a 'mini-reflow' with all components still in place. Well, when you've got heavy SMD (surface mounted) components such as solid caps and inductors there is absolutely NOTHING preventing them from dropping right off the card if the solder gets hot enough and melts. With tiny SMD components like resistors and chips you have a sort of 'surface tension' helping to hold things in place, but not so much with caps.

My recommendation is:

1. Bake the card FACE UP, that is, with the side carrying all the caps and other beefy components facing upwards.

2. Make the card sit as LEVEL as possible. The more level the card is the less likely you are to have heavier components SLIDE if the solder reaches it's liquid or semi-liquid state.

3. ALLOW THE CARD TO COOL IN THE OVEN for at least 20-30 minutes before removing it. This is perhaps most important because if you expose hot solder to an inrush of room temperature air you're more likely to have microscopic cracking aka 'cold solder joints'. Also if you pull out a card from a hot oven you have the potential to jostle components loose while the solder is still in a semi-liquid state.



It's important that people realize that 98% of the hardware on a modern video card is SMD, that is to say it's surface mounted to contact pads using solder. There are hardly any components anymore that actually stick through the entire PCB save for the power and DVI/VGA connections. The potential for these SMD components to slide or fall off is somewhat high... so take it easy!
 
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