Is it possible restore burnt pci contact pins?

[keshavcolonel]

In 2017, a rat entered my gaming pc and it pissed on the graphics card. When I turned on my pc, it fried my poor Asus Strix GTX 970 GPU. Today i decided to take a look it and saw burnt pci-e contact pins. There is no actual damage to the vram, capacitors or GPU die itself. But the contact pins are burnt and something probably decomposed on the card. So, these are my questions-

Q.1 Is there any possible way to restore my graphics card?

Q.2 Should I clean it up with isopropyl alcohol and try turning it on?

Q.3 Will it damage my pc?

 

Edited March 21, 2023 by keshavcolonel

[keshavcolonel]

[mariushm]

fiber glass pen will clean any residue on contacts. 

if you don't have one, a harder eraser should be able to clean it - isopropyl alcohol or acetone (nail polish remover) are solvents that can help soften residue for removal. 

 

"Something probably decomposed" is a problem.   You could have a shorted mosfet or something that can handle high temperature so would show no signs of failure, but as it got shorted other components along the input voltage path like filtering inductors or fuses may have burned as they could not handle the high short circuit current. 

 

Posting good quality pictures would help investigate this further.

 

 

EDIT:  that looks like copper corrosion from humidity, water ... not burn , over current effects 

clean the whole video card with isopropyl alcohol  or selectively with acetone (acetone can wash away the printed stuff off capacitors or some components, it's stronger than isopropyl alcohol)

 

If the traces are broken due to corrosion in theory you can use a sharp blade or glass fiber pen to scrape off the silkscreen and other insulation off traces and the pads and then solder small bridges or tiny wires between contacts and traces.

[thekingofmonks]

Likely, but you'd just be wasting time and money. But how are you sure that all the components are intact? Damage with semiconductors can very well be invisible from the outside.

And yes, you can always test it at your own risk. Whether or not it'll damage the motherboard depends entirely on the card's damage.

Edited March 21, 2023 by thekingofmonks

[keshavcolonel]

23 minutes ago, thekingofmonks said:

Likely, but you'd just be wasting time and money. But how are you sure that all the components are intact? Damage with semiconductors can very well be invisible from the outside.

And yes, you can always test it at your own risk. Whether or not it'll damage the motherboard depends entirely on the damage.

It doesn't have any warranty and it's already dead so I might just give it a try. Also I was hoping to get a display output from it. I don't game on it anymore.

[Needfuldoer]

Oof. I tinker with old computer stuff, and I fix camera equipment that's been out in heavy storms, so I've seen my share of board corrosion. That might be salvageable, but you'll have to clean it thoroughly. Here's the process I used before I bought an ultrasonic cleaner:

 

You'll need a container big enough to hold the board, an old toothbrush, a disposable bristle paintbrush, distilled water, detergent, and isopropyl alcohol. A "magic eraser" melamine cleaning sponge or fiberglass scratch brush will be helpful too.

 

First, remove all the heavy grime and old thermal paste. Dry brush the board and remove the bulk of the paste with alcohol. Also remove the foam square around the GPU die.

 

Then fill the container with a couple inches of distilled water, add some detergent, and scrub the board with the brushes until it gets as clean as possible.

 

Dump the dirty water, rinse the container and brushes, refill with more distilled water, and brush again. Use the melamine sponge or fiberglass scratch brush to clean the contacts. (They should be fairly resilient, and come clean since they're gold plated, but don't go too overboard in case their bond to the fiberglass board is weak.)

 

Dump that water, then rinse the board off by just pouring more distilled water onto it over the sink or outside. Shake most of the water off it, but don't worry about getting it perfectly dry yet.

 

Dry the container, fill it to about an inch deep with alcohol, then drop the board in and let it soak for a while. The alcohol will displace the water remaining on the board.

 

Remove the board from the alcohol and shake off as much as you can. Then leave it somewhere to dry for a day.

 

Once the board is completely dry, reassemble the GPU and try it in a PC you don't care about.

[mariushm]

11 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Once the board is completely dry, reassemble the GPU and try it in a PC you don't care about.

If you have a multimeter around, look at pci-e slot pinout and make sure there's no short circuit between 12v pins and ground, and same for 3.3v and ground - you do that using meter in resistance or diode mode... low resistance means something's gone bad and could damage or trip the protections of the power supply if you try to power pc with card in slot. 

 

[keshavcolonel]

I've thoroughly cleaned up the GPU and wiped off any obvious corrosion residue from the board. I'll put my GPU on an old discarded pc of mine which still works. I've checked my test pc, it boots into windows and works fine. It's an Intel i5 4440 and has a single 8gb ddr3 ram stick with 550w psu.

Let's just hope my pc boots up to windows with GPU intact.

[keshavcolonel]

If someone has access to Asus Strix GTX 970 pinout diagram then pls share it with me. I might be able to fix the issue.

[keshavcolonel]

13 hours ago, Datanerdje said:

So what happend?? Did the poster survive this? 

I did turn on the PC, The GPU fans spun a bit, then stopped. There is white LED above 8 pin connector which is working and the heatsink also gets hot BUT there is no video output on the monitor.

In conclusion, dead GPU.