repairing a laptop graphics card

2 weeks ago i bought an XPS M1710 laptop off Ebay with a faulty gfx card quite cheaply with the intention of swapping out the card in my I9400 . The card is a GF 7900GTX with 512mb ram ,now the 7 series of laptop cards are notorious for failing due to heat , so after a little research on the matter it appearred there was a little trick you could perform to get these cards working
Well i thought i had got nothing to lose so why not give it ago, heres how

1: remove card from laptop
2: remove the heatsink and backing plate by undoing the retaining screws and gently prising apart
3: remove all traces of thermal paste from gfx and ram chips using 99% rubbing alcohol
4: Place in a pre heated (150 degrees C) oven , on a stiff piece of card for 3 mins only per side ( 6 mins total)
5: turn oven off and leave oven door half open (or half closed) for 30 mins
6: refit heatsink, backing plate and thermal paste, i used as5 and replace in laptop

7: the test , i used prime95 to stress the card + a few swear words thrown in to make it more stressed and it passed

So i was sceptical at first thinking what a stupid thing to do, but it works
The laptop has been running now for 78 hrs continuos with no probs, the temp is 43 degrees C using I8Kgui fan controller
so if anyone wants to try this method, i say give it ago you have nothing to lose :)

Heroxoot said:

Remove the card? Do both laptops have an mxm? I'm curious about this. Most laptops tend to have the darn thing soldered in or part of the mobo. Also, why are you sticking it in an oven >_>

Dell have a custom designed interface for the gfx card that will fit ATI and NVIDIA cards ,the purpose of placing it in the oven is to "reflow" the poor quality solder used on the board which over a period of time causes microfractures of the solder track ,so heating it up to the temp allows the solder to reflow and fill the fractures ,how long it lasts before failure again is something i dont really know :)

Heroxoot said:

ahhh the dell slot. I forgot about that. You said xps, but since I dislike dell that didnt register with me. I suggest testing with something like Fur mark instead. Prime95 is childs play lately.

yes it would be better to test with futuremark ,but i am not a gamer so the prime95 was adequate for my needs

archie123 said:

im not entirely sure how you stress tested a video card with prime 95??? Its a math app for stressing CPU's

if you really want to stress it..................

rthdribl - Real-Time High Dynamic Range Image-Based Lighting -

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thank you for the link archie123 , as i said im not a gamer so dont really know what benchmark software to test with ,so will use your link and retest :)