July 28, 2011 at 13:12Fry her! Or resuscitation of a video card in the oven
About six months ago, my GeForce 8800GTS 512 ordered a long life, starting to issue artifacts. After a while, the “windows” stopped loading. In Bios, there remained artifacts and strange characters instead of letters.
And so it happened, I dug up an old woman and decided to breathe a second life into her. Having read the experiments on similar resuscitation, I armed myself with my head, hands and a multimeter with a thermocouple.
So, briefly the theory - why do we need an oven. The fact is that such signs of a dying video card indicate that some of the chip’s contacts begin to “fall off” and give microcracks between the contact and the solder. Therefore, if you bring the solder to the melting state (200-230 degrees Celsius), it can “pick up” the contact and resume conductivity and therefore “revive” the video card. You can heat the required area, or the entire video card in different ways. I chose the most “classic” one - an ordinary gas oven, although people are also experimenting with building hair dryers and even microwave ovens with a grill.
Let's get started!
We will need:
The first thing we start with is to carefully remove the cooler and all the plastic parts. Next, we clear the video card from all kinds of stickers and other things. We erase the remains of the old thermal paste and thermal pads with alcohol.
Speaking of capacitors, in my case they are solid-state and are not afraid of a temperature increase. If you have liquid-based capacitors, then you need to drop them out during the procedure. Particularly desperate "fry" and "liquid", but they begin to flow, because boil from high temperature, so do it at your own peril and risk, and if you decide - wrap them with plenty of foil.
Liquid Capacitors.
Then it is necessary to cover with a foil all the parts that it is not advisable to fry, namely, monitor connection connectors, PCI and SLI connectors, as well as capacitors. The foil needs to be applied with the glossy side of the video card, so it better reflects heat, it is also necessary that the foil covers the places that will support the video card in the oven. For this, I chose a glass shallow tray.
That's what I did.
So let's get started!
We already know that we need to raise the temperature to 200-230 degrees. But there is one more parameter - time. Ideally, we should keep the temperature of 200-230 degrees in the region of 5 minutes, but! It is necessary to reach this temperature slowly - as swings are very harmful and not desirable for the crystal. In my case, my oven was not “super” and “accelerated” for a very long time. In total, I spent about half an hour, but in principle 15-20 minutes are enough.
How was it with me:
10th minute - about 100 degrees
20th minute - about 150 degrees
25th minute - about 200 degrees
30th minute - about 220 degrees
But you can also:
5th minute - 150 degrees
10th minute - 200 degrees;
15th minute - up to 230 degrees
That's all, our “pie” is ready, and it can smell pretty decent already - so ventilate the room. But do not try to immediately pull it out! First you need to let it stand inside and cool down, after 15-20 minutes you can open the oven door by 45 degrees, after another 20 minutes you can open it to the full well and remove it after 20 minutes!
“Dress” our card back and pray. As I already said, thermal pads can be bought new, you can use old ones, but this is not the best option, and you can make it yourself from a medical bandage and thermal paste.
So my card started up, no artifacts were observed, and for more than a month now it has been serving me faithfully. Cases of artifact repetitions are not uncommon, but do you already know what to do? True?
PS The author is not responsible for unsuccessful experiments, I just told the technology, and whether or not to take risks is up to you. Moreover, video cards die not only from “bad solder”.
PPS I used a multimeter with a thermocouple to measure, although there is a “meter” on my gas stove, but it turned out that the deviations from it with the multimeter were almost 50 degrees, so I highly recommend using a multimeter.
And so it happened, I dug up an old woman and decided to breathe a second life into her. Having read the experiments on similar resuscitation, I armed myself with my head, hands and a multimeter with a thermocouple.
So, briefly the theory - why do we need an oven. The fact is that such signs of a dying video card indicate that some of the chip’s contacts begin to “fall off” and give microcracks between the contact and the solder. Therefore, if you bring the solder to the melting state (200-230 degrees Celsius), it can “pick up” the contact and resume conductivity and therefore “revive” the video card. You can heat the required area, or the entire video card in different ways. I chose the most “classic” one - an ordinary gas oven, although people are also experimenting with building hair dryers and even microwave ovens with a grill.
Let's get started!
Stage 1 - preparation.
We will need:
- Thermal grease
- Thermometer Multimeter
- Gas stove with oven
- Thermal pads (optional, in order to replace the standard ones after warming up, but you can leave the old ones as well)
- Foil
The first thing we start with is to carefully remove the cooler and all the plastic parts. Next, we clear the video card from all kinds of stickers and other things. We erase the remains of the old thermal paste and thermal pads with alcohol.
Speaking of capacitors, in my case they are solid-state and are not afraid of a temperature increase. If you have liquid-based capacitors, then you need to drop them out during the procedure. Particularly desperate "fry" and "liquid", but they begin to flow, because boil from high temperature, so do it at your own peril and risk, and if you decide - wrap them with plenty of foil.
Liquid Capacitors.
Then it is necessary to cover with a foil all the parts that it is not advisable to fry, namely, monitor connection connectors, PCI and SLI connectors, as well as capacitors. The foil needs to be applied with the glossy side of the video card, so it better reflects heat, it is also necessary that the foil covers the places that will support the video card in the oven. For this, I chose a glass shallow tray.
That's what I did.
Stage 2 - “Frying!”
So let's get started!
We already know that we need to raise the temperature to 200-230 degrees. But there is one more parameter - time. Ideally, we should keep the temperature of 200-230 degrees in the region of 5 minutes, but! It is necessary to reach this temperature slowly - as swings are very harmful and not desirable for the crystal. In my case, my oven was not “super” and “accelerated” for a very long time. In total, I spent about half an hour, but in principle 15-20 minutes are enough.
How was it with me:
10th minute - about 100 degrees
20th minute - about 150 degrees
25th minute - about 200 degrees
30th minute - about 220 degrees
But you can also:
5th minute - 150 degrees
10th minute - 200 degrees;
15th minute - up to 230 degrees
Stage 3 - Extraction
That's all, our “pie” is ready, and it can smell pretty decent already - so ventilate the room. But do not try to immediately pull it out! First you need to let it stand inside and cool down, after 15-20 minutes you can open the oven door by 45 degrees, after another 20 minutes you can open it to the full well and remove it after 20 minutes!
Stage 4 - Assembly
“Dress” our card back and pray. As I already said, thermal pads can be bought new, you can use old ones, but this is not the best option, and you can make it yourself from a medical bandage and thermal paste.
So my card started up, no artifacts were observed, and for more than a month now it has been serving me faithfully. Cases of artifact repetitions are not uncommon, but do you already know what to do? True?
PS The author is not responsible for unsuccessful experiments, I just told the technology, and whether or not to take risks is up to you. Moreover, video cards die not only from “bad solder”.
PPS I used a multimeter with a thermocouple to measure, although there is a “meter” on my gas stove, but it turned out that the deviations from it with the multimeter were almost 50 degrees, so I highly recommend using a multimeter.