Bake your graphic card back to life!

A few days ago, my Dell XPS M1710 wouldn't wake up from its black screensaver. During a reboot, random pixels appeared, ending in a black screen. There my system hang and I had to shut it down by holding the power button.

I started surfing around and found out that the problem would most probably be the graphic card (Nvidia 7950 GTX). Some forums mentioned that the problem could be fixed by putting your graphic card in the oven!

I tried it and it worked!

Update 25/09/2010: The graphic card died again today, 9 months after this video. This time the symptoms were different: a white screen with black spots appearing.
So I dismantled my laptop, baked the card again... And it's fixed again.
Even though the fix might not be permanent, I don't have a problem doing it every 9 months if it spares me hundreds of bucks.

Update 23/01/2011: Just had to do it again, so the time between every run seems to shorten. Well, it's working again, so I'm fine with it.

For more information, read http://www.niek.be/2010/01/04/bake-your-graphic-card-back-to-life/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• dell
• xps
• m1710
• graphic card
• bake
• oven
• heat
• pixels
• Nvidia
• 7950
• GTX

[scythe224]

hey guys i did this and fixed my girlfriends grandmas laptop after replacing thermal paste and resetting everything. another thing to help this from happening again ( similar problem to those who have had the older xbox 360) download a app called speed fan google it and install it. send me a message and i will show you how to keep your fan speed on your graphics running at 100% im running 37 C when it was running 57 on low fan speed. And it is very quite.

[amdismat1]

silicon + heat = bad. scientific fact. it sounds like a thermal conduction problem technically not the actual chip. but if it works for you im glad.

[www77z]

I must tell you why will work and what you forget to add.

The contacts, in time goes loose, when you put to oven it get melt a little and renew those contacts, but.... if you don't want to have surprises you must add some paraffin or stearine for not get a shortcut between those tinny circuits. This procedure will be success 33% without stearine. For some will not work, If you add a small amount paraffin or stearine, then you get 79% work.

[timbo42YT]

Thanks - worked!

Video card broke (must have really overheated) while doing intensive video editing.

Baked the card @ 200C/10mins, and amazing, it works again.

Will not use the laptop anymore for video intensive stuff + turned down the colour depth to 16 bits (maybe that will help some) so that it will survive a while longer .... this is still a good laptop even though it is more than 5 years old (should be for the 2.5K Euro price tag!).

[anojkov]

Thanks a lot, it works!!!

[andrenegwer]

check mines out

[niekvlug]

@khernandeza1

It doesn't fix the problem forever.

[Metro4151]

i use a dell latitude d620 for my main system. i actually tried to perform some repairs on my friends dell latitiude d610. it had an intel chipset, and it is clearly different from nvidia. i tried the same procedure you did and i got this when trying to boot with it: 1. Random Pixels 2. weird binary before bios boot screen and finally 3. getting this message: INTEL GRAPHICS_945mobile.graphics - - Operating Syetem: Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition2005 Message: Unsupported Graphics!

[khernandeza1]

Thanks man, that's work perfect.... just cook your cake and that's it.... jajajajaja

[TheRand0mTh1nG]

It's always is a dell