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Help reviving a 4870

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My 4870 is 20 months old and is starting to give me weird artifacts on screen, even during POST.





So my vga is dying. Seems like the vrams are giving up the ghost. Now I've seen people around the internet doing this, doing that to zombiefy their broken hardware and get some more use out of them. I'm really hoping that there would be a way to bring mine back to life aswell. Anyone have any ideas ?
 
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Contact the manufacturer for replacement.

*Visiontek has either a lifetime or 3 year warranty depending on the card.
 
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bake it in oven at 300*f for 30 min try that .

please dont give useless advice
he dont need to kill his card

rma if you can if you bake it the sticker might discolor
if you bake it
420 degrees 8 minutes
 
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The problem is that I live far away from the US and have no means of rma to newegg for a while. So i think i'll try the oven thing

Got nothing to lose :)
 

lyndonguitar

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time to bake a video card. google "video card oven fix"
 

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The problem is that I live far away from the US and have no means of rma to newegg for a while. So i think i'll try the oven thing

Got nothing to lose :)

Yeah, I've seen several articles on the web and in magazines about "baking" PC parts back to life, but I'm very skeptical.

Personally, I wouldn't bother, especially if you want to eventually RMA it, as the heat is likely to melt the plastic or at least discolour it. Even if it miraculously works and actually works better, don't expect it to be a permanent fix.

Do let us know how you got on with it, though.
 
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Yeah, I've seen several articles on the web and in magazines about "baking" PC parts back to life, but I'm very skeptical.

I'm sure there's no way to repair broken/worn silicon in that way.

What can be repaired though is a cracked BGA ball. (or other cracked solder joint)

However there's a better way to do it.
Instead of baking the whole card, you preheat an old CPU heatsink to 350 C and then press it against GPU core.
That way, only GPU is heated and the applied force will help BGA to resolder.

Many people fixed their mobile Geforces. A large batch had unusually high number of BGA defects.

Cheers,
 

trickson

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please dont give useless advice
he dont need to kill his card

rma if you can if you bake it the sticker might discolor
if you bake it
420 degrees 8 minutes
I think you should stop telling others that this information is useless as this baking thing has been around for a long time and it worked on my HD4870 and also the fact that you mentioned baking the card as well ! :slap: The only real useless information was your post BTW his card is already DEAD :banghead: . with this said RMA the card or bake it the choice is yours although I would not waste any time on the card and get a new one .
 
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Before you bake it, do what I did to revive an old 3870.

Take a picture of the card on both sides to take note of sticker placement. Remove all stickers and place on a piece of wax paper so you can put them on easily. Remove the cooler and all heatsinks/thermal paste/tape. Use a Qtip and basically give the entire card a sponge bath with the highest concentration of isopropyl alcohol you can get your hands on (at LEAST 70%). Then, let it dry for an hour, and reassemble.

If that doesn't work, time to pre-heat.
 

trickson

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I kinda use a baking method but no way in hell will I stick a card in a oven I have no control over. The method I use is to use a heatgun, the same method used to fix RROD on the Xbox 360.

1. Preheat your heatgun. I've used 500-700 degrees F without issues. Your heatgun should be ready to go after your done with the second step.

2. Remove the heatsink and clean the gpu and ram of any thermal paste. Be careful not to tear any thermal padding when removing the heatsink assembly.

3. Doesn't matter which side you start with. For 4 minutes take your heatgun and in a circle pattern go up and down the video card. Once the 4 minutes is up flip the card over and repeat. DO NOT HOLD HEATGUN IN ONE SPOT

4. Once done with the other side let the card sit for an hour and a half or 2hrs to cool down.

5. Once it is cooled down reassemble the heatsink and such and test her out.

I've done this on several nvidia cards either artifacting or just no display at all with 100% success so far.
 
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That looks like a video card that is over heating! Check to be sure the video cards heatsync is clean of dust!
 

trickson

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That looks like a video card that is over heating! Check to be sure the video cards heatsync is clean of dust!
No I do not think that it is a heat issue most of the time when this starts to happen when in boot up mode it is due to a card that is dieing out . take it from me it is going out RMA or bake but that is just too much time consuming get a new card .
 
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Look in the CCC and report back the idle tempratures please;)
 
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I've got my hands full right now but I will try all your suggestions. Will post what happens.

Thanks everyone
 
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try and RMA 1st! IF they refuse, they might, then and only then try the other methods. personally if they refuse rma I would try flashing the bios of the card to a modified bios of your original bios i.e. lower clocks. if that doesnt work well idk take your pick
 
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I revived a my old 8800GTS a few hours ago by baking it in a heater 10m one side and then 10m the other, and its like new. It showed corrupted image during booting and BSOD while starting windows, now everything works OK even furmark.

If you cant RMA your card and its not working now, i guess you have nothing to lose.

Good luck!
 
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I think you should stop telling others that this information is useless as this baking thing has been around for a long time and it worked on my HD4870 and also the fact that you mentioned baking the card as well ! :slap: The only real useless information was your post BTW his card is already DEAD :banghead: . with this said RMA the card or bake it the choice is yours although I would not waste any time on the card and get a new one .

yes his advice is useless any plastic will deform
the solder will not melt @ 300f
solder of ati cards need 420f solder on nvidia cards needs @ 400
ive fixed a few cards
next time bake your card for 300c i'll bet my 980x rig against yours that it wont work
50% of the time 400c is not enough;)
now you can :banghead:
 
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So I baked it. Had no luck the first time as the card was still artifacting. Decided to bake it again. Baked for another 8 minutes and tested it on the rig.

The card was dead. The fans don't spin up, there's no POST.

Anyway thanks everyone for helping out. Guess I'll have to throw away some green to get me a new vga
 
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So I baked it. Had no luck the first time as the card was still artifacting. Decided to bake it again. Baked for another 8 minutes and tested it on the rig.

The card was dead. The fans don't spin up, there's no POST.

Anyway thanks everyone for helping out. Guess I'll have to throw away some green to get me a new vga

bake it again
425f-430f 8 min
oven sensors mess up sometimes and are off
 

qubit

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So I baked it. Had no luck the first time as the card was still artifacting. Decided to bake it again. Baked for another 8 minutes and tested it on the rig.

The card was dead. The fans don't spin up, there's no POST.

Anyway thanks everyone for helping out. Guess I'll have to throw away some green to get me a new vga

I'm not surprised it didn't work. I think this whole "baking" thing is a crock.

Electronic components can't tolerate high temperatures, especially prolonged ones like in an oven. Electrolytic capacitors especially, will be easily destroyed by the heat: they'll outgas the electrolyte due to the high temperature causing high internal pressure and you'll just be left with an empty shell. And anything remaining is likely to have its properties destroyed, anyway.

During manufacture, all the components are only subjected to high temps through their contacts and then only for a few seconds, ever.

Bake it again if you want, but you'll still have a dead card at the end of it. That thing was gone from the moment you saw those artifacts, so you haven't lost anything.
 

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and so it died...

Time to change the "4" to "5"!!!

if you know what i mean
 

trickson

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yes his advice is useless any plastic will deform
the solder will not melt @ 300f
solder of ati cards need 420f solder on nvidia cards needs @ 400
ive fixed a few cards
next time bake your card for 300c i'll bet my 980x rig against yours that it wont work
50% of the time 400c is not enough;)
now you can :banghead:
First off I said nothing about JUST how to BAKE a card . I did say however that I DID BAKE my 4870 . SO please do not act like I am wrong . AS far as BAKING a video card if done right it can work , mine did . Now for how long and even if it will work is any ones guess . I also stated it was a waste of time just get a new card . You need to be careful how you quote me my friend .
 
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