Bake/reflow gpu? Details inside

[benandjerry]

I may end up bidding on a defective gpu showing artifacts as well as a yellow question mark in device manager. See image below for severity.

There are at least 2 owners before, one that bought it defective thinking different drivers could work. There is no receipt, so no official warranty, though I've read zotac can be nice with helping out in warranty matters.

I presume these owners have given troubleshooting some time, and options not requiring hardware modifications have been tried extensively, though I'd still try various drivers, underclocking, cleaning cooler, reapplying thermal paste etc a try before pulling out the heat gun.

I haven't done this on a dedicated gpu before, but have restored a laptop (also sporting a nvidia gpu) from, by the looks of it, far worse condition artifacts wise. I'm aware homemade reflows often means borrowed time.

What are your thoughts on this? If going through zotac would not be an option, would my chances of reviving this card be reasonable? Have 100% success rate, but only done it a handful of times, and as said, only on mobile gpu (where I've known the issue was overheating). I find the yellow question mark a bit worrying. The artifacts appear right after boot. This is the image: http://imgur.com/w7GYFNk

 

[nurturedhate]

I had a 580 that looked just like that pic. I tried everything you described, downclocking core and mem, drivers, cleaning and new paste, nothing would work. I knew I would have to get another card anyway so I decided to bake it. Threw it in the oven based on a guide provided by a member on this site and it worked. That was oct/nov 2013. That exact card has been used for gaming basically every day since then without an issue, in the wife's computer atm.

I will state though that I assume that I was lucky and no way the norm with the reflow, that the card is truly living on borrowed time, and that it will stop working. I've had money put aside since after I bought my 780ti to replace it the day it goes out or a great deal comes along but it serves its purpose well atm.

However, I would not recommend buying a card with these symptoms. Maybe if we are talking $25 including shipping and you want it more for a fun project/experiment then I could see that. It is for all intents and purposes a dead/dying card. I see that is appears to be a titan (original) by the posted pic. If all you want it for is gaming that level of performance has been available in the $200-$250 range for a year now and I can't see throwing more than $25 at that level of performance for a dead card engineering project.

 

[nurturedhate]

Found the old thread and the guide I used. Look for Face2Face's link he posted.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2351630&highlight=

 

[benandjerry]

Thanks a lot for the reply. The bidding for out of hand so ended up pulling out, but interesting read and in the mood of finding some other cheap defective alternative.

 

[Headfoot]

I read a reflow thread once that said to put it upside down on a piece of tinfoil. Well the oven heated up and a corner of the GPU cleared off of the PCB altogether. Needless to say, that card never ran again. I think it was a 6600 GT

 

[Joepublic2]

I've done this on a couple dozen cards but I generally don't anymore. I would use a heat gun and heat up the GPU area specifically while using heavy foil to shield the rest of the card from the hot air (I have an IR thermometer, too; can't imagine attempting this without one). Initially it would almost always work but whatever problem that caused the bad solder joints to form in the first place is still there and usually rears its head again after several more months of use about 4/5ths of the time IME. This seemed to be a much bigger problem when manufacturers were first transition away from lead based solders to RoHS rolleyes compliant ones.