Video card + Oven = ...
Posted: Mon May 09, 2016 2:58 pm
So my graphics card started playing up last weekend. I'd been playing rocket league when the computer crashed in dramatic fashion (possibly it overheated).
I rebooted the machine and suddenly I had 2 thick red (occasionally yellow) vertical lines through both of my monitors. The computer also wouldn't finish booting into windows for good measure.
After a whole lot of searching I found a post from someone with similar symptoms where it was suggested that the issue might be some cracked solder on the circuit board.
And apparently one way to fix that is to bake your video card...
Fast forward a few days (I had to buy some thermal paste).
I took off the heat-sink (+ plastic covering), wiped the old thermal paste off the video card and removed anything from it that wasn't integrated into the circuit board (e.g. some cooling fins that were attached with some plastic snaps).
I pre-heated the oven to 375F, placed the card on 4 balls of tin-foil (to keep it raised off the baking sheet) and baked it for 7 1/2 minutes.
Once it was done, I let it cool down completely, attached everything back to the board...
And it works perfectly again!
As far as I can tell, that temperature + time combination (there's a lot of debate about what temperature to set and how long to bake for, I opted for the lower end of both scales) is just enough to melt the solder slightly and close any cracks, but not enough to do damage to the board itself. (I only started smelling the melted solder at around the 7 min mark)
I'm still amazed that it worked!
I rebooted the machine and suddenly I had 2 thick red (occasionally yellow) vertical lines through both of my monitors. The computer also wouldn't finish booting into windows for good measure.
After a whole lot of searching I found a post from someone with similar symptoms where it was suggested that the issue might be some cracked solder on the circuit board.
And apparently one way to fix that is to bake your video card...
Fast forward a few days (I had to buy some thermal paste).
I took off the heat-sink (+ plastic covering), wiped the old thermal paste off the video card and removed anything from it that wasn't integrated into the circuit board (e.g. some cooling fins that were attached with some plastic snaps).
I pre-heated the oven to 375F, placed the card on 4 balls of tin-foil (to keep it raised off the baking sheet) and baked it for 7 1/2 minutes.
Once it was done, I let it cool down completely, attached everything back to the board...
And it works perfectly again!
As far as I can tell, that temperature + time combination (there's a lot of debate about what temperature to set and how long to bake for, I opted for the lower end of both scales) is just enough to melt the solder slightly and close any cracks, but not enough to do damage to the board itself. (I only started smelling the melted solder at around the 7 min mark)
I'm still amazed that it worked!
