Earlier this month, my graphics card decided to give up the ghost and would throw up various errors on-screen, rendering my PC unusable. Sadly, getting a new graphics card is an expensive endevour if you want to do any sort of gaming, and I wanted to avoid that. The local gaming centre had an idea, though: Bake it.

Full details after the jump…

Disclaimer: What follows will certainly void the warranty on your graphics card, only attempt this if a manufacturer’s repair is not possible, and even then we would suggest finding someone whom has done this before and knows what they are doing. No, Delia Smith does not count.

Crossfire has over 50 gaming machines, and in any given month one of the cards will suddenly develop issues. They too are in a similar position with regards to repairs, but after finding out about baking graphics cards and giving it a go, they seemingly have mastered the art. What they do sounds weird but it works.

Firstly, they strip down the card, namely removing any sort of heatsink and fan assembly along with anything else that can be removed which doesn’t need treatment or can melt easily.
Next, after cleaning the card of any thermal paste or other similar chemicals, they place it into a preheated oven set to 120C for about 5 minutes.
They then rebuild the card (screwing together, applying thermal paste etc) and test it to see if it works. If the errors continue to appear, they set the temperature slightly higher and try again. This staggered raising of temperature is done to make sure none of the solder on the card melts and breaks a connection or worse, completely disconnects a component from the card. They have experience of this.

As a side note, you may want to clean the oven after performing this procedure. I dread to think what roast chicken with sesame and solder seasoning would taste like, but it’s probably not healthy.