Baking a graphics card - in what situations would it NOT work?

[cooper69]

there are a lot of instances where the baking/oven trick has seemingly revived a dead graphics card or artifacting graphics card.

i personally only had a 1/3 success rate with this; success with artifacting card, unsuccessful with two other cards. one of the unsuccessful cards had bulging caps, which i noticed afterwards. the other one powers on, but displays nothing and fan spins at full speed

so what problems ARE NOT fixed by baking and what problems are?

 

[psolord]

I recently started a thread regarding my dead GTX 570.

I baked it and nothing changed. I also noticed bulged capacitors after the baking. The capacitors where bulged before the baking though. I had taken some pictures when I dismantled it and noticed them later.

I have ordered new capacitors and I hope it will work again. As I said in my thread, it's the challenge of the repair and not the worth of the old hardware.

Coincidentally, one of my 5850s also broke down back in June, but I did not pay too much attention.

After I received my first baking experience with my 570 though, I grew braver and just a couple days ago, I threw my 5850 in the oven too, lol.

The good part is that the 5850 did work. It is now alive and kicking. I even made a crossfire video for my Youtube channel to celebrate. Overclocked to 950 too. (spicy wallpaper alert)

Mad Max 1920X1080 Maxed 5850 Crossfire @950Mhz Q9550 @4GHz

Anyhoo, the malfunction of the 5850 was different than the one on the 570. Both cards were making the system produce a vga beeping error, but the 5850 let the system proceed into booting, while the 570 was halting it.

So baking will obviously not fix all malfunctions. In my understanding it can only fix microfractures in the solder, but this seems to be quite common.

Problems in the VRM, capacitors, ram chips etc, will obviously not be fixed.

One point of interest is that I baked my 570 with the GF110 facing down, while I baked the 5850 with the Cypress facing up. Also I baked the 5850 for twice as long. I wanted to protect the GF110 from the excess heat, but maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Good thing it didn't fall off.

So the 570 is in for another baking session, lol. Without capacitors this time. I will solder the new ones after the baking.

 

[cooper69]

I recently started a thread regarding my dead GTX 570.

I baked it and nothing changed. I also noticed bulged capacitors after the baking. The capacitors where bulged before the baking though. I had taken some pictures when I dismantled it and noticed them later.

I have ordered new capacitors and I hope it will work again. As I said in my thread, it's the challenge of the repair and not the worth of the old hardware.

Coincidentally, one of my 5850s also broke down back in June, but I did not pay too much attention.

After I received my first baking experience with my 570 though, I grew braver and just a couple days ago, I threw my 5850 in the oven too, lol.

The good part is that the 5850 did work. It is now alive and kicking. I even made a crossfire video for my Youtube channel to celebrate. Overclocked to 950 too. (spicy wallpaper alert)

Mad Max 1920X1080 Maxed 5850 Crossfire @950Mhz Q9550 @4GHz

Anyhoo, the malfunction of the 5850 was different than the one on the 570. Both cards were making the system produce a vga beeping error, but the 5850 let the system proceed into booting, while the 570 was halting it.

So baking will obviously not fix all malfunctions. In my understanding it can only fix microfractures in the solder, but this seems to be quite common.

Problems in the VRM, capacitors, ram chips etc, will obviously not be fixed.

One point of interest is that I baked my 570 with the GF110 facing down, while I baked the 5850 with the Cypress facing up. Also I baked the 5850 for twice as long. I wanted to protect the GF110 from the excess heat, but maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Good thing it didn't fall off.

So the 570 is in for another baking session, lol. Without capacitors this time. I will solder the new ones after the baking.

out of curiousity, what problems were you having with the 570 to begin with? no display/post? artifacts?

also, how would problems in vrm, capacitors and ram chips manifest in everyday usage? like artifacts/no post?

and one last thing: how cheap/easy was it to find replacement caps and stuff to solder it with?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

there are a lot of instances where the baking/oven trick has seemingly revived a dead graphics card or artifacting graphics card.

i personally only had a 1/3 success rate with this; success with artifacting card, unsuccessful with two other cards. one of the unsuccessful cards had bulging caps, which i noticed afterwards. the other one powers on, but displays nothing and fan spins at full speed

so what problems ARE NOT fixed by baking and what problems are?

The only problem that is fixed by baking is cracked solder due to excessive thermal expansion/contraction - if you're a little lucky, baking will reflow the solder.

If you want to replace caps yourself or something like that, break out the soldering iron and more power to you.

 

[Killrose]

I had a HD 4570 I think it was, and I baked it and it lasted a week or so, then I baked it again. That lasted a week or so, then I upped the oven temp and gave it an extra 6minutes or so and it lasted several weeks to month and I sold it cheap with the full details of what I had done to the card so as to not rip-off someone.

I wanna say 385deg F for bout 16-18min I think it was on the final bake-off, but that was years ago so i'm not sure. The card was artifacting and that was the reason for the bake.

 

[littleg]

We've had 'The Anarchists Cookbook', someone should write 'The Enthusiasts Cookbook'.

Recipes for frosted GTX970s and honey roast 290Xs.

 

[cooper69]

The only problem that is fixed by baking is cracked solder due to excessive thermal expansion/contraction - if you're a little lucky, baking will reflow the solder.

If you want to replace caps yourself or something like that, break out the soldering iron and more power to you.

how does cracked solder typically manifest in usage? I know there's the typical artifacting and lines, but what else?

 

[MongGrel]

I've only tried baking one once myself, I didn't get it to work.

Yeah, that is just for solder problems.

As a last resort, anything is worth a try I guess.

 

[psolord]

out of curiousity, what problems were you having with the 570 to begin with? no display/post? artifacts?

also, how would problems in vrm, capacitors and ram chips manifest in everyday usage? like artifacts/no post?

and one last thing: how cheap/easy was it to find replacement caps and stuff to solder it with?

Well the system with the faulty 5850 only presented some POST problems. Until it did not POST at all after June. Which is logical, considering it is a hot month where I live. I would expect microfractures to cause less trouble during Winter months, where the solder molecules are more contracted. No artifacts or rendering problems. Oh yeah, I did get a couple of driver crashes before the final breakdown.


The 570 on the other hand, was a whole different story. It was just fine until I had to move the whole system with my car. After that it did not work again. That is why I am still hopeful that the movement of the car may have enlarged some microfractures and they would be fixed with the baking.

What I do not get, is how on earth the card was working with the bulged capacitors. Maybe my last benchmarks were its swan songs.

Speaking of capacitors, I found some on ebay. My broken ones were 16V, 270μF and there are quite a few sellers that sell them. Cheap too. Like 3 USD for 5 capacitors.

Now as to how the problems manifest, VRM and capacitors are power supply components, so I guess you could get all sorts of problems, but mainly system freezes, driver crashes or POST failures.

RAM problems should manifest with rendering artifacts mostly, but driver crashes and maybe system freezes could be expected as well. Same with the gpu itself.

Ram chips do not heat up too much, so I would expect microfractures to be a less common problem for them, but I cannot be sure. Just guessing.

If you try baking on anything, do not forget to protect all plastic parts on the PCB (the display ports and the error speaker mostly) with aluminum foil.

Russian Sensation suggested in my thread to protect the capacitors as well, which sounds very reasonable. I did protect them for my 5850 baking.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

Baking is and will always be a temporary solution a permanent fix involves a BGA rework station if the solder has micro fractures. A lot of Fermi cards had what I would call less than reliable power delivery circuitry, I remember a lot of people overvolting cards and blowing/burning MOSFETs on the higher end cards.

 

[supaidaaman]

I had a GTX 580 that was artifacting, then went completely dead. No signal. After baking its been working flawlessly. Cooked it a little too much as it browned in a few places. One of the caps was a bit loose in the solder. Im amazed its working at all.

I've had success with all the baked cards. Only the 285 failed after a few months and wouldnt come back.

8800 GTX
280 GTX
285 GTX
470 GTX

 

[dave_the_nerd]

how does cracked solder typically manifest in usage? I know there's the typical artifacting and lines, but what else?

Artifacting, lines, or hard crashes under GPU load - same set of symptoms that could indicate anything from bad VRAM to buggy drivers to cheeto crumbs in the PCI-E slot.

If you've done enough troubleshooting that you're pretty sure it's a hardware problem with your graphics card, then you don't lose much by baking it - it's either that or throw it out.

 

[dank69]

I've only tried baking one once myself, I didn't get it to work.

Yeah, that is just for solder problems.

As a last resort, anything is worth a try I guess.

I got it to work a long time ago.

 

[moonbogg]

I had a friend bake my laptop's 8800 based quadro back to life. It worked for a while but failed eventually. Pre heat oven to 600f and bake for 2 hours for full effect. Just kidding don't do that. You'll burn your house down.