I didn't think it would work back when my GPU first died on me mainly because I wasnt having any of the symptoms of the people who did fix it this way. Low and behold my brother gave me some motivation after fixing his Geforce 8800 GT in which he WAS having the wierd lines and artifacts on his screen when it went bad. You can read my article on when my card first went bad HERE.
First, I want to explain a couple of things for those people/gamers that have never been in the electronics industry or dont know anything about it and might think this fix is a bit crazy or weird or are just plain afraid to attempt this fix. Soldering and reflowing using ovens is a very common way that electronics are manufactured with. Its quite normal to see a few different ovens in a electronic engineering lab as well for doing testing and rework on PCBs and components. Although the way I did this is not as precise or the way a tech would do it in a lab, its very similar since I have been there and done that.
I regret not being able to take pics as my camera is broken but there are a few articles or forums posts out there that do have them. I did refer to THIS post as a basic reference although i didn't follow it exactly. Its going to be slightly different depending on your card with different hardware attached but thats just a matter of finding a youtube video or a post somewhere of how to take apart your card type. In my case its an EVGA Geforce 9800 GX2.
Taking this card apart is not just a simple matter of unscrewing your heatsink assembly. This thing has two whole GPU PCBs sandwiched with the heatsink in between along with two flat ribbon type cables connecting the two. Im not really going to go into too much detail of how I took it apart or put it back together but if you do have questions let me know. The only thing I was concerned about in dis-assembling then re-assembling was the heat sink pad on the NF200 SLI chip. When I first took the heat sink off it the crumbling pad was not usable. I had more thermal paste but the problem was more of the distance between the top of the chip and the heat sink and if it would sit close enough to pull heat. I was not sure if just using thermal paste would be thick enough. So far its working fine.
What I ended up using instead of a standard large oven was a GE convection oven which is also a combination microwave. The smaller space helps keep the temperature more stable and accurate. I used the glass rotating plate as the main surface. I also did not use aluminum foil on the edges of the PCB to hold it up off the surface. I used a 9" Pyrex pie dish sitting right side up and set both cards next to each other. Aluminum foil will probably work fine for you but I just didn't feel like fiddling with clumps of it.
On my first attempt I set the temperature to 350F then boosted it up to 380F for the last 3 minutes of the total 8. After putting it all back together and testing it, there ended up being no display at all and the fan sat at full speed until I powered the system down. I then preheated it to 400F and left it in for 8 minutes. I put it all back together without the external shroud and it amazingly booted up and and loaded the latest drivers! Of course you want to make sure to let it sit and cool for bit after you take it out of the oven. I also decided to leave the external shroud off to help keep the cards cooler since my case has good air flow.
I just want to clarify and reiterate that you do not have to have screen artifacts for your card to go bad. My case was just that it would not allow windows to load any Nvidia drivers.
Game on!
