How To: Fix a dead graphics card

[Gen. Shepard]

Warning: this will not guarantee that your Graphics card will be fixed and it will void any warranty!

 

introduction:

 

Sadly  the day before yesterday my trusty old MSI GTX 560 died inside my old gaming rig, after a long LAN session it decided to die on me, saddend by this I almost sold it for scrap when somebody reached out to me and told me a really strange question: have you tried baking it? at first i was a bit confused to what he just told me but it apparently it is a thing, and a very old thing as well.

As someone who never has done any ''Ghetto fixing" I tried it and it actually worked! In this How to I will be going through how I did it.

 

Materials needed:

 

1. A small Phillips-head screwdriver

2. An Oven (please don't use the microwave, it will only fry your graphics card)

3. A bowl (to store all the screws in)

4. Rubbing alcohol

5. Some tissues and a piece of cloth

6. Thermal paste

 

 

 

 

(note the green blocks on the screen, that  are artifacts created by a faulty graphics card)

 

Lets get started!:

 

Start with taking off the heatsink by undoing all the screws from the back, with my it was only four screw but yours may differ. Tip: make photo's along the way so you know wich screws go in what hole.

 

(Source: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=157086.0)

 

 

When all the screws are out you start to wiggle the heatsink so it detatches from the PCB and disconnect the connector, be carefull though because you can break the connector very easely. when the two pieces are appart you have a clear look at what the PCB looks like 

 

(Source: http://www.ixbt.com/video3/msi-5.shtml)

 

It will look something like this, first you should check if all the capacitors are OK (the battery looking things) by looking if they bulge or if they are ruptured, that could also be your problem, to fix that you should check this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSWd1LlU9jU

 

If all the transistors are Ok you proceed with cleaning both the heastink and the GPU, just take a tissue and wet it a bit with rubbing alcohol. I recommend you start with slow, higher pressured wipes to remove the bulk of the thermal paste and later faster lower pressured whipes to do the rest, after all the old thermal paste is removed you should wipe it off with some clean cloth to remove any left over particles. 

 

After that is done, you can almost start cooking you some graphics card! you should start with preheating the oven, I set it to 190 degrees celsius (374 Fahrenheit, 463 Kelvin) at 10 minutes. When the oven is preheating you can use the time to prepare the baking tray by laying a sheet of aluminium foil at the bottom, and make 4 golfball sized aluminium balls and place them so your grpahics card can rest on them, then you put the graphics card (NOT the heatsink) on the foil balls and wait till the oven is preheated, when that is done you go ahead and place the tray in the oven and wait!

 

When the the 10 minutes are up you take out the tray and let the card cool down for about 30 minutes.

 

Alright, you're almost done, now you need to apply new thermal paste on the GPU, if you don't know how to do that you should watch this video: https://youtu.be/qDLQ7FjPMf8?t=5m32.

when you got that sorted it is time to assemble the whole thing again. start with putting the connector back in its place and put the graphics card back on the heatsink, then start with putting the screws around the GPU back in. i suggest tightening them in a cross- pattern, then put in the rest of the screws. 

 

And then it's done! put the grpahics card back into the computer and pray to The Flying Spaghettimonster it works! 

 

And in my case: yes it did!

 

 

 

Jeej! this method saved me a lot of money and it took me only 30 minutes to do! hope this tutorial worked for all you guys!

 

 

PS: as this is my first tutorial comments and suggestions are always appreciated. and sorry for the lack of photo's because I decided to make a tutorial about it AFTER I fixed my card.

[Interfectorem]

Not to sound like a dick, but the "battery looking things" are actually capacitors. Cool tutorial nonetheless, I'm glad to hear that you were able to save some money

[Comessy]

2. An Oven (please don't use the microwave, it will only fry your graphics card)

I lol'd because likely there is someone out there who has tried putting their card in microwave

[SkilledRebuilds]

I have done this before, and it works.

These three examples had ZERO display output at all. A few Flying bricks as you would say...

8800GTS Oven modded to work again for another 6 months.

HD4870 Oven modded to work again for a few months.

HD6850 Oven modded to work again for a month.

[lukky211111]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR7a2BCvaLs

[JPW]

I can confirm this works. Tried with 2 notebooks before (yes notebook motherboard baking)

 

But it is just a temporary fix, most of the time the broken component will fail again after a few weeks or months.

Anyways before throwing a card away, you can always try to bake it

[Majestic]

Don't do this in an oven you're going to use for meals, because the stuff that releases is toxic as fuck. Also don't do this indoors.

 

Generally a bad idea though, even with those caveats.

[SuntannedBeast]

Throw it into a pool. Trust me it works.  Revived my dead gtx 970 in a matter of 30 seconds. 

[Gen. Shepard]

Not to sound like a dick, but the "battery looking things" are actually capacitors. Cool tutorial nonetheless, I'm glad to hear that you were able to save some money

i'm sorry ;0 i'll fix it right away

[othertomperson]

Liking this simply because you gave an oven temperature in Kelvin.

[DildorTheDecent]

huh, never knew Fermi could get hotter

[Aircooled Brain]

huh, never knew Fermi could get hotter

That Baller line lol.  

[LukaP]

Don't do this in an oven you're going to use for meals, because the stuff that releases is toxic as fuck. Also don't do this indoors.

 

Generally a bad idea though, even with those caveats.

IDK about your oven, but most modern ones have fans that blow that air out anyway. Also the amount of fumes released from baking a small GPU is about zero, so not dangerous.

[georgespamme]

snip

We should get @LinusTech to make a video about this and do it like a cooking show.

[Gen. Shepard]

We should get @LinusTech to make a video about this and do it like a cooking show.

I can recall Linus making a video about this

 

 

Edit: yep, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK7RZjAC-qE

[georgespamme]

I can recall Linus making a video about this

 

 

Edit: yep, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK7RZjAC-qE

Nice, thx.

[JElijah]

If you use the motherboard visual input while having a dead mobo on pci-e, could it prevent a short potentially killing your board? (or will it fry it as you switch it on, still?)