Subj : Bake your graphics card?
To   : All
From : Otto Reverse
Date : Thu Feb 10 2022 05:37:31

So I've been building a (not quite yet) retro computer for circa 2004-2007 PC games. Trying to get ahead of prices before this era becomes nostalgic lol.  Anyway, the Nvidia 8800 GTX (a high end card for the time) arrived yesterday but had vertical lines on the display and crashed Windows (XP 32-bit) after 10 or 15 minutes.

Being an older card (2006 I believe) but well into the Internet age there were many search results for that card and lines on the display.  I started seeing people claiming you could fix it by baking it in the oven. The cards get very hot and the solder joints crack. But this is mostly surface mount components, making it hard for someone with just a regular soldering iron to fix. 

I was a bit skeptical that it would solve the problem but I had nothing to lose (wasn't going to get a refund with shipping on this old card). So I removed the giant heatsink/fan combo and cleaned the board (lint, thermal paste etc). Then I pre-heated the oven to 385F, place the card (GPU side up) on a baking sheet. I put four small tinfoil balls (about 3/4" in height) between the baking sheet and the card. 

In the oven it went. 8 minutes later I took it out. Let it cool for about 45 minutes and then re-assembled the cooling part/brackets etc. Placed it in my computer and viola! It worked and the display was clear of any artifacts!

I wouldn't do this with older retro circuits as they tend to be rarer and without surface mounts you can re-flow the solder by hand. But I can see more people baking circuits in the future!

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