[SOLVED] Can you reflow a GPU by using a solder iron?

[Ali Husain]

I have a dead R9 390 Nitro and want to see If I can revive it and start using it again. I am not really concerned about how long it lasts. I do not have a heat gun but I have a soldering iron. Is it possible to touch the places where the solder needs to be melted with the soldering iron or will that damage the card? I also have a toaster that has had heating limits removed so it can reach a fairly high ambient temperature in the toaster. Is this a feasible option as opposed to the oven method?

 

[USAFRet]

Can you reflow a GPU by using a solder iron?

No.

 

[AllanGH]

Actually, you can....as long as the GPU isn't ball-soldered in place (different techniques would apply).

Use loads of liquid solder flux, 62/36/2 - 0.015" solder, solder wick, and a grounded soldering iron (my preference is for a 45 Watt iron with a chisel tip) and work one side of the IC at a time by flooding the pins with flux, over-soldering the pins, re-fluxing, and removing the excess solder with the wick, and touching-up leg to leg shorts with an X-Acto knife and the application of heat with the iron.

Repeat with the other 3 sides of the IC.
Clean-up with anhydrous isopropanol.

If you are experienced, and judicious about doing it all, you'll have a properly soldered IC.

Whether or not it will work afterwards.....well, that's a different matter entirely. You may be working on a bum chip to start with.

 

[AllanGH]

Oh...by the way.....having good lighting, and a re-work microscope set-up helps.

 

[TJ Hooker]

FYI the GPU itself is BGA (ball soldered), as are all the GDDR5 packages. So you could painstakingly re-solder every other chip on the board one at a time as described above, but if it was the GPU or memory that needed to be reflowed it wouldn't do you any good. Don't know if what was described above would really be considered "reflow" either.

 

[Ali Husain]

Actually, you can....as long as the GPU isn't ball-soldered in place (different techniques would apply).

Use loads of liquid solder flux, 62/36/2 - 0.015" solder, solder wick, and a grounded soldering iron (my preference is for a 45 Watt iron with a chisel tip) and work one side of the IC at a time by flooding the pins with flux, over-soldering the pins, re-fluxing, and removing the excess solder with the wick, and touching-up leg to leg shorts with an X-Acto knife and the application of heat with the iron.

Repeat with the other 3 sides of the IC.
Clean-up with anhydrous isopropanol.

If you are experienced, and judicious about doing it all, you'll have a properly soldered IC.

Whether or not it will work afterwards.....well, that's a different matter entirely. You may be working on a bum chip to start with.

Sounds extremely complicated. Thanks for the answer!

 

[AllanGH]

It's actually not, however, it does get more involved when you have to re-ball and cook a BGA package....if it was on a graphics card, I really wouldn't bother unless it was some sort of bizarre sky-is-the-limit valued board that there is something like only one of them left in the world.