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Dead NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GTX scienced to undeath by oven, mad owner

November 11, 2009 in Mods comments 4

A sad, lonely man and his dead $550 video card. Instead of shaking his fists and cursing his fate, he did what any normal geek would do—he stripped his card down and baked it in an oven for 10 minutes.

The following morning was the moment of truth. I brought the GPU back into my computer room to frost the cake with Arctic Silver; once the icing was on, I re-mounted the cooling assembly and secured the screws. It was now time to install the baked 8800 GTX and see if the cake was a lie (I am so, so sorry).
primesuspect via icrontic.com »
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  • 0
    RaidenXS Nov 12, 09
    i don't get it. so heating it up doesn't melt it but jump starts it? would that work on an xbox?
  • 1
    primesuspect Nov 12, 09
    There have been many cases of this working on a carefully prepared RROD xbox.

    Heating it up melts the cracked solder joints, allows the solder to "reflow" to fill in the cracks, thus repairing the connection between the GPU and the board.

    Xbox 360s suffered from a problem in which temperature flux expansions/contractions caused microfractures to appear in the solder joints between the GPU and the mainboard. baking the mainboard has been known to fix the problem. I do not recommend you try this, for many reasons, toxic fumes being the least of them.
  • 0
    Onvacation Nov 12, 09
    I noticed he left the chip in on the card while he baked it, doesn't this destroy it? I never knew they were so resistant!
  • 0
    primesuspect Nov 12, 09
    You have to leave the chip on; that's the part that needs to melt back onto the board (for lack of a more complex explanation)

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