Burnt GPU

[LeeYoh]

Hey guys, so uhm, recently my pc starts but won't show any displays, I did all the repairs I could, but in the end it still won't work.  I had to bring it to a local pc repair shop near me and they said my gpu (Radeon HD 6870 1gb) is burnt.  Now, one thing that came to my mind is that, I overclocked it too much.  I don't really have that much money for any gpuand budget is really tight.  Are there any ways I can possibly fix it or bring my dead gpu back to life.  I have heard about the oven method, but I'm too scared to do it.  Any help is appreciated, thank you so much. 

[alexhelvetica]

I'd say your GPU is broken beyond repair if the PC repairer is correct. Even if it is not stuffed beyond repair, it could take hour if not days to find a broken component, then you have to find a replacement.

It isn't worth repairing. The oven method may work to make a zombie GPU that will last a couple of weeks or even months, but I cannot guarantee that will even temperately fix it.  

[MoonlightSylv]

If it's literally burnt (like a hole in the PCB or die) then there's no fixing it.

[failblox]

Any ideas as to what exactly might be "burnt"? That seems a little vague IMO. If the card really is dead, then you basically have nothing to lose by roasting it in your oven.

 

What model is your 6870? I have one made by ASUS which was giving me artifacts, so I used the oven method to reflow it and it worked fine afterwards.

[LeeYoh]

4 minutes ago, failblox said:

Any ideas as to what exactly might be "burnt"? That seems a little vague IMO. If the card really is dead, then you basically have nothing to lose by roasting it in your oven.

 

What model is your 6870? I have one made by ASUS which was giving me artifacts, so I used the oven method to reflow it and it worked fine afterwards.

https://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-DL-DVI-I-SL-DVI-D-PCI-Express-100314-2SR/dp/B004E0KV3I

 

I honestly don't know what he meant by burnt, I just assumed something inside is burned due to overclocking too much.  The link above is my gpu btw.

[LeeYoh]

9 minutes ago, ShadowTechXTS said:

If it's literally burnt (like a hole in the PCB or die) then there's no fixing it.

nope, it's not literally burnt, I don't see signs of burnt around the gpu.  I assume it's inside, but I haven't opened this gpu.

[MoonlightSylv]

1 minute ago, LeeYoh said:

nope, it's not literally burnt, I don't see signs of burnt around the gpu.  I assume it's inside, but I haven't opened this gpu.

If anything is burned then it's not fixable.

[SageOfSpice]

13 minutes ago, LeeYoh said:

Hey guys, so uhm, recently my pc starts but won't show any displays, I did all the repairs I could, but in the end it still won't work.  I had to bring it to a local pc repair shop near me and they said my gpu (Radeon HD 6870 1gb) is burnt.  Now, one thing that came to my mind is that, I overclocked it too much.  I don't really have that much money for any gpuand budget is really tight.  Are there any ways I can possibly fix it or bring my dead gpu back to life.  I have heard about the oven method, but I'm too scared to do it.  Any help is appreciated, thank you so much. 

As others have said, it really depends on what exactly is wrong with it. 

 

There's really no telling whether the technician had meant burnt in a literal or figurative sense. If in a literal sense, it cannot be repaired. When a GPU burns, it's because a component becomes overloaded and is irreversibly damaged. The damage is not always visible, but happens when a short occurs, or when a circuit is broken within a component on the GPU. The only way to repair the GPU if it is burnt is to replace the component in question, find and replace other components that have failed as a result of it, and potentially flash the GPU. None of which you are equipped to deal with.

 

There's really no point in getting into semantics though, as none of this is going to help you. If you want to try something, try baking your GPU. Nobody can guarantee this is going to work, but if the technician meant burnt in a figurative sense and we're just looking at loose solder connections, then baking the card can re-establish previously broken solder connections which may fix it.

[Energycore]

6 minutes ago, LeeYoh said:

nope, it's not literally burnt, I don't see signs of burnt around the gpu.  I assume it's inside, but I haven't opened this gpu.

It's pretty safe to take the cooler off it and see if the thermal paste on it has creeped down to the board and shorted something, or at least to look for burn marks on the GPU die / heatspreader. If the problem is with another component that isn't the GPU, you might be able to replace it with a good one (be it an inductor, capacitor, VRM chip etc) although that repair will be more expensive than he card is worth (6870s perform about on par with GTX 750 tis, so their theoretical worth right now is $100).

 

I'd just get an RX 480 which will double its performance for $200

[Energycore]

2 minutes ago, SageOfSpice said:

As others have said, it really depends on what exactly is wrong with it. 

 

There's really no telling whether the technician had meant burnt in a literal or figurative sense. If in a literal sense, it cannot be repaired. When a GPU burns, it's because a component becomes overloaded and is irreversibly damaged. The damage is not always visible, but happens when a short occurs, or when a circuit is broken within a component on the GPU. The only way to repair the GPU if it is burnt is to replace the component in question, find and replace other components that have failed as a result of it, and potentially flash the GPU. None of which you are equipped to deal with.

 

There's really no point in getting into semantics though, as none of this is going to help you. If you want to try something, try baking your GPU. Nobody can guarantee this is going to work, but if the technician meant burnt in a figurative sense and we're just looking at loose solder connections, then baking the card can re-establish previously broken solder connections which may fix it.

- For 30 days or so before the GPU dying since the heat of a home oven will actually kill the GPU. Don't forget to mention that. But since this card is dead anyway, might as well try and get 30 more days out of it.

[SageOfSpice]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

- For 30 days or so before the GPU dying since the heat of a home oven will actually kill the GPU. Don't forget to mention that. But since this card is dead anyway, might as well try and get 30 more days out of it.

Source?

 

30 days seems like a pretty arbitrary amount of time.

[BuckGup]

Now the oven method is not a method at all. Linus got schooled and we all learned how it actually works. Take the cooler off look for warps or burn marks. Reapply thermal paste and break out the volt meter and start testing. You may need to flash the BIOS back to stock.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, SageOfSpice said:

Source?

 

30 days seems like a pretty arbitrary amount of time.

An actual professional board repairer (in response to Linus' showcase of the oven method. Strong language disclaimer).

[BuckGup]

6 minutes ago, Energycore said:

An actual professional board repairer (in response to Linus' showcase of the oven method. Strong language disclaimer).

I agree with him on some things but others not so much. There isn't little timers telling a macbook to kill itself. I know he is probably referring to a lifespan they have engineered into it but my Mac Pro and Macbook pro from 2008 still run perfectly.

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, SamStrecker said:

I agree with him on some things but others not so much. There isn't little timers telling a macbook to kill itself. I know he is probably referring to a lifespan they have engineered into it but my Mac Pro and Macbook pro from 2008 still run perfectly.

In general claims of "products are engineered to die at a certain life point" are pointless. There's just no way to tell a piece of electronics to die after a certain amount of time unless you put a chip in there that literally short circuits the entire motherboard, and if you do that, techies will find out and call you out.

 

So yeah, that said you can call companies out on using cheap capacitors, too thin wires, or stuff like that.

[BuckGup]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

In general claims of "products are engineered to die at a certain life point" are pointless. There's just no way to tell a piece of electronics to die after a certain amount of time unless you put a chip in there that literally short circuits the entire motherboard, and if you do that, techies will find out and call you out.

 

So yeah, that said you can call companies out on using cheap capacitors, too thin wires, or stuff like that.

Yeah I think he might be saying this in rage of things being abused and he having to fix them

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, SamStrecker said:

Yeah I think he might be saying this in rage of things being abused and he having to fix them

I think so. But Apple does have a fame of not adressing their hardware problems unless people bitch about them.

[SageOfSpice]

12 minutes ago, Energycore said:

An actual professional board repairer (in response to Linus' showcase of the oven method. Strong language disclaimer).

I can't believe I just sat there and listened to this idiot talk about his balls for 20 minutes straight. What a waste of time.

 

He's talking about one specific issue, and he's not even going into any depth about it. It's just, "little balls" everywhere apparently. Honestly. He thinks you can temporarily repair silicon transistors by putting them in an over @ 120c for 5 minutes? What a joke.

 

I don't really consider that to be valid empirical evidence.

[Energycore]

2 minutes ago, SageOfSpice said:

I can't believe I just sat there and listened to this idiot talk about his balls for 20 minutes straight. What a waste of time.

 

He's talking about one specific issue, and he's not even going into any depth about it. It's just, "little balls" everywhere apparently. Honestly. He thinks you can temporarily repair silicon transistors by putting them in an over @ 120c for 5 minutes? What a joke.

 

I don't really consider that to be valid empirical evidence.

The majority of LTT community would beg to differ.

[BuckGup]

12 minutes ago, Energycore said:

I think so. But Apple does have a fame of not adressing their hardware problems unless people bitch about them.

Well I want new mac pros and a 17inch mac book pro and a less buggy IOS and the death of Itunes and a bigger battery and bigger storage phones. Oh wait everyone complains about this and what do they do? Make the battery smaller and make useless thermal throttling mac books that have no power to use the internet.

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, SamStrecker said:

Well I want new mac pros and a 17inch mac book pro and a less buggy IOS and the death of Itunes and a bigger battery and bigger storage phones. Oh wait everyone complains about this and what do they do? Make the battery smaller and make useless thermal throttling mac books that have no power to use the internet.

By bitching I meant literally threaten lawsuit. That said I'm not very well informed in Apple products, I haven't had the pleasure of giving my money to them.

[SageOfSpice]

5 minutes ago, Energycore said:

The majority of LTT community would beg to differ.

Really? That's disappointing.

 

I would never simply take the word of an, "expert" over empirical evidence. 

 

You understand that his entire argument is no more or less believable than the origin of this, "myth" of which his video was about in the first place, right?

 

"Believe me, I'm an expert" isn't an excuse for ambiguity and a terrible arguments. 

[SageOfSpice]

25 minutes ago, Energycore said:

In general claims of "products are engineered to die at a certain life point" are pointless. There's just no way to tell a piece of electronics to die after a certain amount of time unless you put a chip in there that literally short circuits the entire motherboard, and if you do that, techies will find out and call you out.

 

So yeah, that said you can call companies out on using cheap capacitors, too thin wires, or stuff like that.

 

Crystal oscillators. Look them up, I assure you, they are very real.

[BuckGup]

6 minutes ago, Energycore said:

By bitching I meant literally threaten lawsuit. That said I'm not very well informed in Apple products, I haven't had the pleasure of giving my money to them.

Their old stuff was great, now it has turned to a big bowl of hipster grab bag bait fishing lure of slithery money grabbing. Steve passing was the worst thing that has happened to that company. They just make illogical "improvements" on things no one wants and because it has a bitten Apple on it, hoards flock to throw money at them. 

[Energycore]

1 minute ago, SamStrecker said:

Their old stuff was great, now it has turned to a big bowl of hipster grab bag bait fishing lure of slithery money grabbing. Steve passing was the worst thing that has happened to that company. They just make illogical "improvements" on things no one wants and because it has a bitten Apple on it, hoards flock to throw money at them. 

Yeah I'll agree to an extent. The aura of hipsterness was already pretty noticeable in the years prior to Jobs' death.

 

And the old Imacs with the colofrul monitors look pretty fucking cool. But I never was the target market for Apple. I want control. I want to be able to put my RAM at 1.8V even if it's not a wise decision.