Holy crap, it worked! Dead video card, resurrected!

Got video again on a 8800gt. Stressing it right now. I used a heat gun for about 3 minutes and let it cool.
 
After a week of testing and folding, I have determined that baking my 8800GT was successful. There hasn't been a single hiccup with the card. Before being baked the POST screen was fully garbled, Windows would not recognize the card, drivers could not be installed for the card and only one of the outputs would work.

 
My 9800 GT died yesterday and today I found this thread. I said what the hell and gave it a try. Worked like a charm, my profound thanks to the OP! :)
 
I baked a friend's dead DV9000 and it works like a charm now :D He is pretty happy as he does not have to buy a new laptop now.
 
Pappy said:
I baked a friend's dead DV9000 and it works like a charm now :D He is pretty happy as he does not have to buy a new laptop now.
Click to expand...

Did you take out the whole motherboard and just put that in the oven? Could you tell me your methods :)
 
updated first post with a link on reflowing a GPU on a laptop motherboard using a heat gun.

thanks trick_m0nkey!
 
Another success story to add to the list-
My 9800 GTX started artifacting like crazy and then refused to boot into windows anymore. Tossed it into the oven and now it's perfect.
 
I am still amazed that this method still continues to work for some people. Congrats to those that made it work!
 
Add another 4870 to the resurrected cards list.

It was sporadically artifacting and recently crashing after extended use. Died during a supreme commander 2 match and my comp would no longer post.

5 minutes in a preheated oven @ 350 and ta da! it works!
 
add a successful gtx 285 oven bake to the list.
couldn't believe my eyes seeing it powering up.
missus was well over the moon seeing as i don't have to shell out any more money.
ran 3d mark vantage on it and got 12k with ht off.
cheers guys
 
Add another successful story.

Was having problem with my wife. After 5 minutes in the oven and some yelling and screaming, she works great now!
 
Tried baking my sister's dead samsung sgh-a777 for 10 minutes at 370 F. It worked, but once I completely put it back together I managed to kill it again. Took it apart again and baked it at the same temp for the same amount of time, same thing happened again.

Finally, I raged and put it in the oven at 400 F and now it won't even power on anymore. Oh well, she's had a new phone for a while now, so no big loss. :D
 
I baked a BFG 8800gt this afternoon, works beautifully again. The core does read 83 degree's at idle though, so there are still a few issues to work out.
 
i baked last week an evga 8800gt, and wow it works again no problem... been gaming on it for hours at a time :)
 
Anyone bake a power supply? I want to try this with the power supply out of my tv since nothing on it seems blown or burnt out.
 
I forgot about this thread, my GTX260 that I baked has died again.
There isn't any bringing it back. I've tried installing it in the 2nd slot on the board. Windows recognizes it, but I'm not able to install a driver.

The comp won't post with it in the main slot.

Even so, its a pretty card. I'm going to keep it for it's sentimental value.
 
Thanks to Haste226 and this thread my iPhone 3G is now picking up WiFi signals like a champ. I pulled out the motherboard (PCB) and baked it 7 minutes @ 385F then let it cool 60 minutes. I wrote a short tutorial on what I did to Repair the iPhone 3G WiFi in the Oven if you want the details. That title still cracks me up, no micro-fissure pun intended. Bottom line: Success!!!

The interesting side effect was that the iPhone now operates at a cooler temperature. I suppose that's the result of decreased resistance from the reflowing of the circuit connectors. However, the main goal of stabilizing the WiFi connection was amazing. I love my 3G now.

I mentioned Haste266 at the bottom of the tutorial and placed a link to this site for credit. I hope that's alright. I was amazed this worked at first, but after reading through this thread and some other sites about reflowing it makes perfect sense now. Especially considering the phone ran so much hotter before I Betty Crocker'd it. Thanks, Haste226! You've made my 3G so much more useful now.
 
Last edited:
I've had success baking ram sticks.

I have 4 sticks of 1gb Crucial Ballistix DDR2 (BGA chips, gold heatsinks) which are notorious for being unstable/not booting. I first removed the heatsinks with an exacto knife and cleaned off all of the sticky stuff left on the chips. I think the design and installation of the heatsink largely contributed to the problems. The double sided tape was sometimes only making contact with about 1/3 of the chip surface and the heatsinks seemed like they pulled upward on the chips.

These sticks are double sided (ram chips on both sides) so I put some of those spring-type wooden clothespins on so that they made contact right in the center of the chips. This IMO kept the chips in place and helped squeeze the chips down some. There are ridges on the underside that the ram chips will sit on so that they don't squish all the way down and create shorts. The clothespins also held the ram sticks up off of the cookie tray (lined with foil).

Unfortunately, it was quite a few months ago that I did this and don't remember exactly what temperature or time that I used. It was consistent with other people, about 375-400 for about 8-10 minutes. I do remember though, the wooden clothespins were starting to get dark colored and smokey when it was time to come out. This could also act as a safety feature in that the wood may smoke up before the electronics do.

In the end, this worked great. Using my finger temperature probe, the first pair that I cut and baked were cooler than the other pair that still had the heatsinks on. My naked ram chips have booted consistently and have not given any problems for the many months since I've done this.

Thanks OP!
 
Update on my baked 4850: after 70 hours of Just Cause 2 it began to artefact again and crash. Rebaking made it so that it doesn't even boot up any more.

I guess this is only a temporary fix!
 
Lovely, who knew you could just bake things back to life?

Well I guess that an easy way to re-solder boards.
 
5k077 said:
Anyone bake a power supply? I want to try this with the power supply out of my tv since nothing on it seems blown or burnt out.
Click to expand...

This method will NOT work on a power supply. PSU's do not need (reflowed) anyway. Reflowing is useful for surface mount components with many small connections like the ram and gpu chips have.

The most likely failure in a power supply is an electrolytic capacitor, maybe even more than one; The metal can things, usually wrapped in a plastic label/insulator. They wear out, heat accelerates this (hence why its and extremely bad idea to bake). If any look bulged, or appear to have leaked, they should be replaced. In fact you shouldn't even use the PSU if you see suspect caps, since when they finally short out, they take more components with them, at which point you would be better off buying a new power supply board.

You mention this is in a TV, I actually repaired a friends lcd tv that had 2 bad caps on it's power supply board. Try google searching for your tv model and additional search terms, you might find repair steps if it is a common failure for that model.
 
Gonna try baking an Abit KN8 Ultra motherboard. I want to see if I can rejuvenate the 2/4 RAM slots that died for no apparent reason. I'm not holding my breath; this is a socket 939 board and it could very well be the memory controller on the processor.
 
Well, it didn't work. I'm surprised that the mobo still functions as before.

I guess I've got a CPU with a bum memory controller (a damn shame because it was my first dual core, an Athlon 64 X2 4200). The system will boot with up to 2 gigs RAM, but only if the two sticks are not in a dual channel config. Sucks.


Oh well, anybody willing to spare a S939 processor? Don't care even if it's a Sempron.
 
GushpinBob said:
Well, it didn't work. I'm surprised that the mobo still functions as before.

I guess I've got a CPU with a bum memory controller (a damn shame because it was my first dual core, an Athlon 64 X2 4200). The system will boot with up to 2 gigs RAM, but only if the two sticks are not in a dual channel config. Sucks.


Oh well, anybody willing to spare a S939 processor? Don't care even if it's a Sempron.
Click to expand...

Are you sure it's the CPU and not the board? How about getting another S939 board? That S939 X2 4200 is worth a fair bit of money if it's working.
 
Spare-Flair said:
Are you sure it's the CPU and not the board? How about getting another S939 board? That S939 X2 4200 is worth a fair bit of money if it's working.
Click to expand...

Meh. Decent S939 boards are hard to find these days. I'm really reluctant to put any more money towards this PC. In fact, I would rather pay $12 for a used Sempron and get the same beep code over paying >$40 for a replacement S939 board and find out that I have a half-dead CPU.

I forgot to mention this in my last post, but I'm 100% certain that there is nothing wrong with the 4 sticks of RAM. In fact, I tested each stick in an older P4 machine using Memtest+ for ~24 hours and each pass came through with absolutely no problems.
 
Well its another poster here that has signed up to the site to say "Thank you!" for all the excellant advice and discussion.

As an owner of a Dell M1710 it looks like my GPU died after too much Dragon Age(!).

Bunged my Nvidia 7950 GTX in the oven with its heat sink on (inseperable it seems!) and my system is now working again. Will try some games and see how it goes but wow! From nothing to somehting is awesome!

Cheers!

Recipe:

Set Oven to 200 Degrees Celcius.

Place on Nvidia 7950 GTX on baking tray, mounted on balls of kitchen foil!

Leave for 8 - 10 minutes.
 
Got a sony laptop motherboard to go from completely dead to fully booting and running with a bake.

Unfortunately the fan doesn't work, so I'm not sure if it died because of the fan not working causing an overheat, or if the fan power connector died from baking....
 
6800gt from a dell xps, 15 minutes at 380 degrees....no more color salad. Incredible.
 
XeroHouR said:
6800gt from a dell xps, 15 minutes at 380 degrees....no more color salad. Incredible.
Click to expand...

whoa. you are brave! i would think after 15 minutes it would catch on fire! glad it worked for ya.
 
Well, between baking and Frankenstein-ing, I have a working 9800GX2 once again.

Long story short, I was playing L4D2 and StarCraft II when my computer freezes up. I figure it's just my computer being dumb again (this is normal despite passing all manner of stability tests). So I restart and my graphics have reverted to Aero Basic!

I install new drivers from NVIDIA's website (not thinking to look in the Device Manager).

Still no dice. The Device Manager shows a Code 43 (stopped due to an error) on both 9800GX2 GPUs. I pulled up this page and a couple other searches about baking your GPU, fired up the oven to 385F and let it rip for 8 minutes.

Unfortunately, I ignored the latter half of the instructions (about letting the "baked" GPU cool) so as soon as the GPU was cool enough to pick up (much less than an hour after baking) I put everything back in. No go! So I fired up the oven again, this time for 10 minutes. I also followed the cooling recommendation, timer and all. Another test showed that one of the GPUs was sort of behaving but would randomly either work or not between reboots.

I read at Overclock.net that a card could be "self-baked" in a manner safer than using an oven. Unfortunately, the problematic GPU was not the primary (with the PCI-E strip). So I couldn't use the Overclock method of detaching the cooler and just leaving it in a secondary PCI-E slot as a bare card. And there was still the matter of the flaky half-working GPU anyway. I unplugged the fan from the card and put it in a secondary PCI-E slot. I let it "bake" for about 10 minutes, then shut it down, unloaded the dryer (~5 min) then fired it back up again. The Overclock.net poster said he self-cooked it twice. So I let this go for 20 minutes. I let it cool for an hour and turned my computer back on.

Still that annoying little yellow "!" and Code 43.

All was not lost, however. A friend had a 9800GX2 that had a chronic overheating problem (think 80C idle and 110C load despite AS5 and an open case) which he said I could use to see if my PSU was dying (the original suspect before I realized my GPU was gone). The indicator light on my 9800GX2 showed the half with the PCI-E connector was "green" so I decided to take one last, desperate step.

I took apart my friend's 9800GX2 (after calling him, telling him what I was doing, and him saying "Go ahead, good luck"), removing the non-PCI-E side of his card. I connected this to my card and put the Franken-card back into my computer. It booted up with the 9800GX2 as primary, which it refused to do before, and loaded Windows. Windows insisted on installing a driver and requiring a reboot (still showing the "!" and being stuck in Basic Mode). After the reboot, I got a little pop-up box in the system tray: "This system is multi-GPU capable..."

The 9800GX2 had risen again.

An hour and a half of StarCraft II and 1-minute stints with FurMark and ATITool showed no problems. Why only a minute, you ask? My original GPU (before the Frankenbuild) would artifact immediately but not actually fail beyond those super-stress tests. At a minimum, this GPU is in better shape right now than my original when it worked.

I'm aware this may be a temporary solution (seeing people report back that their "baked goods" have failed once again), but so long as it lasts until I am employed, I don't care.
 
Successfully baked & revived a 8800GT! But this is after buying a 8400GS for backup until my 460 arrives, now I regret not trying it first before going out buying the cheapest thing :D
 
be interesting if this can fix the Half dead 9800GX2 card i have back to life (one side of the card does not detect {the HDMI side})

i cooked 2 out of my 13 9800GX2 cards to Death (GPU2 folding@home) running the cards at constant 100c mite of not helped (why i am not to much bothered that my GTX480 runs at 85-90c as its Still runs more silant then the 9800GX2 did as they had to run at 100% fan speeds where as my 480 runs border line same noise level as my system)
 
interesting. i will have to try this on a 7900gt i have that doesnt work right. it would be excellent if i could get it working, then i just need a cheap cpu and maybe bake a set of g.skill ram(although i could RMA) and id have a complete spare computer.
 
I've had to rebake my 8800 GTS 640 a few times on my parents machine, but it has always come back to life for at least 6 months at a time. Not a permanent fix, but this will definitely get my money's worth! :)
 
This is one of those gems of knowledge that pop up once in a great while that should never be forgotten. The sheer amount of people that have benefited from this is insane. Where they would have otherwise just trashed the card and bought a new one, this little trick not only fixes their video card, but also stresses the importance and brings to the forefront a seemingly common problem - micro fractures, and offers a solution.

Good shit.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top