Help me bake my ATI card pls

[emtr]

I may try to bake ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870, 512MB that's currently doing these problems

That's how it looks like both sides, Master not Slave.

1stly, is there any poisonous gases or vapor that may be released and are they dangerous? 2ndly, is there any parts that need to be removed from what they currently have?

Any steps in details pls?

 

[emtr]

Anything I need to know? Is there a risk of burning it and making it unusable cause I still have files to take from, so I need entering Windows to be possible so I can t ake some files and stuff?"

 

[Kari]

well you'll need to clean that thermal paste off the gpu chip (if that grey stuff really is paste) and remove those stickers and rubber(?) washers around the mounting holes.
Why does the chip carrier substrate look so discoloured anyways? It should be all nice and green and yours has those brownish spots around the small components that look like it could be heat damage... what kind of temps were you getting under load? and what is that blue stuff?

Anyways you should make some sort of support for it so that none of the components are touching anything really, you dont want to have them moving around when the solder melts. Something like small balls of foil on the empty parts of the card, those mounting holes are good places and around the corners. And keep it the gpu chip side up, all the heavy stuff is on that side...

There won't be that much vapors or anything really to be overly conserned, just keep a window open and the range hood running. But there is a risk of completely ruining it of course, there are all sorts of things that can go wrong if you're not carefull enough or if the oven temperature is too high or if you keep it in for too long.

Baking is -or at least should be- the last thing you try to do before throwing it in the bin... umm recycling bin that is.

 

[emtr]

^ Good advice! I think I should not hurry to do it until I buy a new system and transfer all my files and am ready to call the current notebook useless. But then doing anything on that one would be meaningless, since the idea was to fix it before I have to buy a new laptop. The white lines, dots (like snow) and various other artifacts appearing on 3D games, sometimes even on 2D, browsers when the graphics get overloaded a little more is all the same issue that many mention - due to microscopic holes in the solders that do not allow the current to run so well.

The above pics are just from the web, to show jhow my card looks like both sides, yes it has the same grey paste on the chip. Yes I also have the same stickers, indeed remove them.

Why does the chip carrier substrate look so discoloured anyways? It should be all nice and green and yours has those brownish spots around the small components that look like it could be heat damage... what kind of temps were you getting under load? and what is that blue stuff?

Mine has the same, I think that's the foil that likley has to be removed too. On my card it is that brownish color too, I think it is always like that.

For support, I watched it would be good - some baking foil, balls of foil on which the chip to stand.

Thanks for the detailed post, now that answers my questions how to do it, I will indeed do it as a last resort thing, better use the system while I can than not being able to use it at all :>

 

[Kari]

oh, that wasnt your card in the pics, and there is even a waterstamp on the pic, how could i miss that.. lol

you could use externall HDD for backing up the files and then bake the card...

due to microscopic holes in the solders that do not allow the current to run so well.

umm You're mixing things up a bit here... for me microscopic holes sound like voids and those dont really matter unless the whole joint is full of them. Cracks in the solder joint however will mess up and break pretty much anything if given enough time, and thoroughly cracked joint won't conduct current at all...

(did my MSc on the subject )