Sure, give it a try. The card certainly can't get any worse 🤣 .

It's not an especially interesting card though, which you probably already know. The Xtreme Audio cards aren't really X-Fi cards, but Audigy SE cards.

I'll give it a go next week. I do know that they are not particularly interesting cards, but I think the fact that it's a licensed copy by MSI and the fact that it has much higher quality capacitors on than the Creative model makes it interesting.

Just be sure to protect the capacitors with aluminium foil. I'd favour a heat gun instead of an oven, if possible.

Evert wrote:

I bought an MSI-built X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express card from a local classifieds forum recently, but it doesn't want to work. I've fitted it into several PCI-Express slots on my current computer and it just won't get detected. I washed it and left it outside to dry for a day (we have a heat wave in South Africa so wet things tend to try faster) and it still wouldn't work. Can I try to bake it at 200 degrees celsius in the oven for 8 minutes in an attempt to re-flow the solder, or should I rather just bin it? It doesn't look like the card has bad capacitors, MSI fitted it with United Chemi-Con KMG-series capacitors, which is supposed to be good General Purpose capacitors.

Hi Evert, firstly its great to see another South African on here, its not a good idea to wash newer components, as most of the boards use BGA for all the main components, washing the board always leaves some moisture under the BGA parts, even if dried in the extreme heat, the other problem is that our tap water does have some minerals in it that will leave conductive deposits, when not dried quickly, if washing is a absolute last resort, don't dry the board and completely submerge it in Isopropanol Alcohol preferably 99% pure, Dischem does sell it, or some Methalated Spirits will also work, agitate the alcohol for about 2 minutes to ensure all of the water has mixed into it, the board can then be removed and dried.

But coming back to your problem, how did the board look when you got it, was there any watermarks around the capacitors?

Try finding some one to heat it up a little with an airflow gun, oven can melt the pcb.