Poli Bou

Seriously. Last October my 3 year old EVGA Geforce 8800GTS started producing artifacts in windows and then on POST. A few days shortly after it completely failed to boot into windows. For some reason, probably pure laziness, I never registered the card which disqualified me from taking advantage of its lifetime warranty. Ouch, lesson learned. So out of options and not wanting to drop some serious coin on a new card I turned to Google with skeptic hopes of a solution.

That’s when I stumbled on a comment that said baking your video card can resurrect it. OK, obviously the commenter must be joking. But wait, further searches reveal the same comment popping up again. Hmmm ok, this is curious…let’s see what happens when I type “baking video cards” into Google.

Right up at the top of the results page is a link to [H]ard|Forum where this whole nonsense originated. After going through the mega thread about baking your card, that’s when I realize this is not another internet pop culture joke, but the real deal with a lot of engineering sense behind it.

Basically, the most common cause of electronic device failure are micro fissure cracks in solder joints which results from stress through use and age. Baking a circuit board allows you to liquefy the solder contacts and eliminate these micro fissure. This is actually a commonly practiced technique called solder reflow. So baking a video card in your kitchen oven is just a crude way to use this method.

After a good amount of reading I was thoroughly prepped to do some cooking. I removed the heat sink and fan off the PCB and placed it in the oven with the door open. Then I set the oven to 395F. I left the door open and did not pre heat the oven because I wanted to gradually raise the temperature so as to not “shock” the board and to slowly get rid of any moisture. After about 15 minutes, I felt everything was warmed up enough to start the actual baking. I closed the door and set the timer for 9 minutes. I stayed near by the entire time in case of disaster.

After 9 minutes I shut the oven off and opened the door and let everything cool down for 30 minutes. Then I put everything back together and popped the card back in the case. And then, the moment of truth…I pushed the power button. No sparks. No shorts. Fans are spinning. That’s good. I hear a beep and see my monitor come out of sleep mode with a lovely memory check in progress. This is looking real good. Thirty seconds later I am logged into windows with no signs of artifacts throughout the whole boot process. This is amazing. I fire up Photoshop and a couple of 3D applications and they all run flawlessly. Now this is unbelievable.

It’s been about four months since my video card has been living on borrowed time. It’s been great, but today it started showing failings signs again. The artifacts are back and windows won’t properly load with the drivers. With some culinary experience under my belt now, I nonchalantly re-baked my video card. I am happy to report another success which not only inspired me to do this write up but it would have been impossible otherwise. I wonder how long I can keep this up .