Trying Desperately To Salvage A Friend's RX 6800 After He Lost EVERYTHING In A Fire

[AAnderton]

First, a story: Some friends of mine who play in my D&D group were hanging out at home when smoke started to fill their apartment. In moments, fire burned through the walls. They made it out with only one phone, no shoes, and one friend only in his boxer shorts. The most heartbreaking detail is that they couldn't even get their cat out in time. The fire was started by a negligent neighbor who'd left their portable AC unit plugged into a power strip and left the apartment. I've been in a position where I lost everything before, and I know what a difference even a little bit of help would have made for me, so I racked my brain thinking of a way I could help. There's no replacing a furry friend, and while they had insurance, I know how long that process could take and most of their receipts would have been lost in the fire, too but I remembered my buddy had a gaming rig that was also destroyed by the fire, so I sprang into action.

 

I had a Ryzen 3400G, Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666Mhz RAM, and a Cooler Master Master Air CPU cooler on-hand after upgrading my system, so my roommate and I went halves on a motherboard, psu, and case to build our friend a little starter rig to upgrade on over time. We went with an Aorus x570-I and a Fractal Ion 650W SFX in a Cooler Master NR200P. When I broke the news to my friends, they were taken aback and very thankful. Then, they sent me a pic of the PC that was in the fire. It honestly didn't look as bad as I would have expected, so I told them to bring it when they come to pick up the new one and we'd see what we can salvage. We spent four hours yesterday cleaning and testing parts. My main hope was to salvage the AMD model Radeon RX 6800 that he had in there, as those cards are still almost double MSRP right now. 

 

First, we brushed his Ryzen 5800x with isopropyl alcohol and threw it into my own system to see if it would work. No post. It powered on for a split second, then right back off. My Asus x570-I doesn't have code readouts, so I have no idea what was wrong, but given that CPU is finally back to MSRP, my buddy wasn't too broken up about it. Next we cleaned his 32GB Trident Z Neo RAM and tried those. No post. His m.2 drives were corroded onto his motherboard from the fire hose water, so we just called those a wash. His AIO pump had begun to melt from the fire, so we chucked it, too. Now it was time for the big one, the sleek AMD direct Radeon RX 6800. We cleaned it as best we could without fully disassembling it, then threw it into his new little build. No post. Three of the four outputs were clearly damaged from the fire. The only good one was the DP port that he'd had plugged into his monitor. My friend left my home happy for his new little starter NR200P rig, but disheartened that we couldn't at least save the GPU.

 

Hours go by and I was feeling bored, disappointed, and more than a little stubborn. I had watched a video where Der8auer managed to salvage a burned GPU that looked way worse than my friend's 6800, so I went back to work on it. I removed the top plate, unscrewed the card itself, and brushed the entire thing clean with isopropyl. I took the brush to the outputs, too, focusing on the port that had been blocked by the cord to his monitor during the fire. I blew out the massive heatsink with compressed air to try and rid it of soot and carbon buildup, as well. I'm no expert and I only knew about half of what I was doing, so I didn't want to remove the thermal pads or paste and fully submerge the heatsink or fans in water. I figured maybe, just maybe the amount of cleaning I did was enough. I was half-right.

 

I pulled out my RX 5500xt from my own system and threw in the 6800. To my shock and utter excitement, it POSTED! I was able to boot into Windows with no problems. I immediately FaceTimed my friend to show him my bit of successful necromancy. We had a few laughs and it warmed my heart to hear the relief in his voice. He told me to enjoy the card for a bit before he came to get it, so when I ended the call I loaded Dragon Age Inquisition on Ultra, knowing that everything in my system accept my little 5500xt would handle that game. To my horror, the game ran fine until it reached the character creation screen and everything simply went black. I shut my system down and restarted, but the 6800 would not post an image again. With my spirit broken, I pulled it out and put my 5500xt back in. Sure enough, Radeon software picked up the black screen error, so I sent in the bug report and messaged a screenshot of the error to my friend with heartfelt apologies. By then, it was close to midnight and my resolve had run out, so I went to bed.

 

Now, I've awoken this morning with no more energy left to give this 6800, but hoping at least this online community knows of a place my friend can send his card to be restored. Since it was a fire, we highly doubt AMD would RMA the card, and I think he got it cash from a friend at Microsoft who had the hookup, so he wouldn't have a receipt for the purchase, anyway. If he even DID have a receipt, it would have burned with everything else. PLEASE do not give me any more tips on how I can clean or troubleshoot any of the parts I've mentioned myself, I'd prefer a service or business my friend can send it to possibly restore the card. I gave an entire day off to this effort while sore from the second COVID vaccine, and I have to go back to work. I simply don't have any more time or energy to devote to trying to clean or fix this thing. I'm just hoping for a more affordable option for my friend to salvage it than simply paying twice MSRP for a new one whenever his insurance money comes through. Any suggestions to that end would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and I hope everyone has a fantastic week!

[TheEpicDuck]

I don't really understand what help you want here. Just keep your eyes open for good deals on new or used cards since you dont want any ideas regarding the 6800.

[AAnderton]

Just now, TheEpicDuck said:

I don't really understand what help you want here. Just keep your eyes open for good deals on new or used cards since you dont want any ideas regarding the 6800.

I would love any suggestions on a business or service that might be able to repair/salvage the card, as I just don't have any more time or energy to do it myself.

[kelvinhall05]

If you were even able to find someone willing to work on the card (won't happen), the cost to try and repair it would likely be several times the value of the card.

[8tg]

You be best off sending this to any small electronics repair shop, PC shops or phone repair businesses to diagnose what all is wrong on the board and if it can be fixed.

This could be either really simple or extremely complicated. If power delivery components got damaged they’re an easy fix and if the card functioned but failed when under load then it’s likely something along those lines.

However the die or video memory failing is game over, you’d have to have new memory BGA soldered on which is extremely finicky and doesn’t always work or you’d be scrapping the card if the die was dead.

Any place that advertises console or phone repair can diagnose this for you. Pray that it’s power delivery because all those parts are simple repair even for home soldering, but anything further than that and you’re looking at hundreds of dollars for repair.

[Alvin853]

11 minutes ago, AAnderton said:

I would love any suggestions on a business or service that might be able to repair/salvage the card, as I just don't have any more time or energy to do it myself.

There's a channel on youtube called NorthridgeFix that does a lot of videos on GPU repairs, they have a shop in the LA area, you could probably ask them for an estimate. Or try to find any electronics microsoldering shop in your area, I'm guessing with the recent GPU shortage they have gotten many customers asking for GPU repairs. Not sure if AMD has any sort of repair/refurbishing service that you can pay for.

 

Was the PC running when the fire hit? From what I understand, the board and SMDs can take a lot of heat, but if there's current running through the electronics when they get hot, they're much more likely to be permanently damaged. But the fact that you got it running for a short time makes me believe the problem is not with the board, but with the GPU chip or the memory, both of which are hard and expensive to replace. 

[AAnderton]

11 minutes ago, Alvin853 said:

There's a channel on youtube called NorthridgeFix that does a lot of videos on GPU repairs, they have a shop in the LA area, you could probably ask them for an estimate. Or try to find any electronics microsoldering shop in your area, I'm guessing with the recent GPU shortage they have gotten many customers asking for GPU repairs. Not sure if AMD has any sort of repair/refurbishing service that you can pay for.

 

Was the PC running when the fire hit? From what I understand, the board and SMDs can take a lot of heat, but if there's current running through the electronics when they get hot, they're much more likely to be permanently damaged. But the fact that you got it running for a short time makes me believe the problem is not with the board, but with the GPU chip or the memory, both of which are hard and expensive to replace. 

Thank you! I'll reach out to NorthridgeFix as soon as they open. Even if it's a few hundred, it'd be more than worth it to save the cost of a new card.

[cacoe]

I could be totally wrong in saying this but if there's a lot of carbon in the soot, could it not be conductive? And if so, the tiniest amount left even with the most thoroughly cleaning could be shorting somewhere? Having said that, even if it is true, could be so many things wrong with it, I wouldn't know where to start.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, cacoe said:

I could be totally wrong in saying this but if there's a lot of carbon in the soot, could it not be conductive? And if so, the tiniest amount left even with the most thoroughly cleaning could be shorting somewhere? Having said that, even if it is true, could be so many things wrong with it, I wouldn't know where to start.

Yes totally, It's very likely that if the card was really completely disassembled and thoroughly cleaned it would have been fine. There was likely some leftover that ended up causing a short and killed it...