It's of course possible, but probably completely pointless. See my answer in your other thread.

If it is your last resort then sure, you can try. But chances are that it doesn't help.

But hey, it is dead anyway right?

meljor wrote:

If it is your last resort then sure, you can try. But chances are that it doesn't help.

But hey, it is dead anyway right?

Sadly it is dead, so I agree why not. But would a heat gun or an oven work better?

Kevin_CCR wrote:

meljor wrote:

If it is your last resort then sure, you can try. But chances are that it doesn't help.

But hey, it is dead anyway right?

Sadly it is dead, so I agree why not. But would a heat gun or an oven work better?

A heat gun would be the better option, since you can heat locally where you think it's needed. You could also make heat shields from old beer cans or something, that you tape down with kapton tape (ebay a roll for a few bucks), to protect heat sensitive stuff like electrolytic caps and plastic details.

But I'd still find it highly surprising if it was a case of cracked solder joints. The leaded solder of those days was far more ductile/elastic, it's not prone to physically break like the later lead free solder, even under severe mechanical stress. And even if they used lead free solder even then, reflowing is only a temporary fix, it's only a matter of time until it breaks again, since a reflowing doesn't replace the bad solder.

Sure, it's your card, and you do what you want with it, but you should at least keep in mind that there's a limited amount of those in the world. If I felt I couldn't troubleshoot and fix it in a methodical manner, I'd put some energy into finding someone that can, before trying this kind of desperate measures. Would be a shame to completely destroy one of those rare cards.

Well, if you didn't own it from new, you never know what the card has been trough. Maybe it was thrown in boxes with other cards several times etc. and that way there IS a crack in the solder somewhere.

A heatgun might be better BUT it is very hard to control and you don't know how hot the area is. Too hot and you simply can blow away components off the card (been there, done that!! 😎 😎 😎 ).
Same ofcourse with the oven: set an alarm and don't let the card sit for too long. But at least temperature wise it is controled.

But the oven is much easier: 200 degrees celcius, 8minutes in a pre-heated oven. After that you shut off the oven and leave the door open and let the card cool off for a while.

I don't think it will hurt anything.

I do agree that it probably will not fix it and this fix is usually for later cards.Fixed several 8800gtx cards and a x1900xt, they didn't last very long and the trick had to be repeated.
But if it helps on the voodoo5 it may be different because it is leaded solder and otherwise you at least know what the problem is.

If it doesn't work: do not do it longer/hotter as that can really kill the card and will not help!

meljor wrote:

Well, if you didn't own it from new, you never know what the card has been trough. Maybe it was thrown in boxes with other cards […]
Show full quote

Well, if you didn't own it from new, you never know what the card has been trough. Maybe it was thrown in boxes with other cards several times etc. and that way there IS a crack in the solder somewhere.

A heatgun might be better BUT it is very hard to control and you don't know how hot the area is. Too hot and you simply can blow away components off the card (been there, done that!! 😎 😎 😎 ).
Same ofcourse with the oven: set an alarm and don't let the card sit for too long. But at least temperature wise it is controled.

But the oven is much easier: 200 degrees celcius, 8minutes in a pre-heated oven. After that you shut off the oven and leave the door open and let the card cool off for a while.

I don't think it will hurt anything.

I do agree that it probably will not fix it and this fix is usually for later cards.Fixed several 8800gtx cards and a x1900xt, they didn't last very long and the trick had to be repeated.
But if it helps on the voodoo5 it may be different because it is leaded solder and otherwise you at least know what the problem is.

If it doesn't work: do not do it longer/hotter as that can really kill the card and will not help!

Any idea of a good gpu repair place?

meljor wrote:

Well, if you didn't own it from new, you never know what the card has been trough. Maybe it was thrown in boxes with other cards […]
Show full quote

Well, if you didn't own it from new, you never know what the card has been trough. Maybe it was thrown in boxes with other cards several times etc. and that way there IS a crack in the solder somewhere.

A heatgun might be better BUT it is very hard to control and you don't know how hot the area is. Too hot and you simply can blow away components off the card (been there, done that!! 😎 😎 😎 ).
Same ofcourse with the oven: set an alarm and don't let the card sit for too long. But at least temperature wise it is controled.

But the oven is much easier: 200 degrees celcius, 8minutes in a pre-heated oven. After that you shut off the oven and leave the door open and let the card cool off for a while.

I don't think it will hurt anything.

I do agree that it probably will not fix it and this fix is usually for later cards.Fixed several 8800gtx cards and a x1900xt, they didn't last very long and the trick had to be repeated.
But if it helps on the voodoo5 it may be different because it is leaded solder and otherwise you at least know what the problem is.

If it doesn't work: do not do it longer/hotter as that can really kill the card and will not help!

Well, if there really are cracked solder joints, they've used lead free solder, and then you'd want to go up to 230-240 celsius or something like that.

Get one of these. Ordered one myself a year or two ago, and was really surprised by its build quality and accuracy. Calibrated it against a ~$1000 professional IR thermometer at work, and it was only between 0.2 and 0.5 degrees off depending of temperature. Way better than I'd ever hoped for, would have been happy with a 10 degree measurement error too.

If you decide to use the oven, you'd want to double check the temperature with a thermometer before baking the card. Those oven thermostats are usually hopelessly inaccurate.

Leaded solder can absolutely crack, even if it's less likely. The problem with lead-free solder is that it can crack with very little convincing. You can still mishandle a board and crack leaded solder (without ruining anything else on the board), and I'm not surprised if a relatively large PCB like the Voodoo5 would over the years develop an issue... Especially if at any point one of the fans died, because 3dfx cards often did run hot, and the hotter a card runs, the higher the chance of this sort of issue. Maybe it ran for days, weeks, or months with a failed fan, the owner was unaware, and the extra heat damaged something - whether that something is solder or otherwise. And heat also kills capacitors so if you have missing caps, maybe they exploded from overheating as well and someone just took them off (either for later repair, or to restore the appearance of a card that looks like it should work).

I'm not saying I absolutely think this is the case. I'm just saying that I think it's more likely than some other replies said. This is of course my own opinion.

As for capacitors, yes I know people do this and capacitors often don't die. That's true, but they are 100% always damaged from it. If the capacitors are good to begin with, then they'll have their lifespan shortened. If they are almost dead and/or a low-quality part, baking it will encourage it to fail. That's why I said it's a roll of the dice. It's not going to kill your capacitors all the time. But it's sure not good for them and you should never bake a card except as a last resort.

kenrouholo wrote:

Leaded solder can absolutely crack, even if it's less likely. The problem with lead-free solder is that it can crack with very little convincing. You can still mishandle a board and crack leaded solder (without ruining anything else on the board), and I'm not surprised if a relatively large PCB like the Voodoo5 would over the years develop an issue... Especially if at any point one of the fans died, because 3dfx cards often did run hot, and the hotter a card runs, the higher the chance of this sort of issue. Maybe it ran for days, weeks, or months with a failed fan, the owner was unaware, and the extra heat damaged something - whether that something is solder or otherwise. And heat also kills capacitors so if you have missing caps, maybe they exploded from overheating as well and someone just took them off (either for later repair, or to restore the appearance of a card that looks like it should work).

I'm not saying I absolutely think this is the case. I'm just saying that I think it's more likely than some other replies said. This is of course my own opinion.

As for capacitors, yes I know people do this and capacitors often don't die. That's true, but they are 100% always damaged from it. If the capacitors are good to begin with, then they'll have their lifespan shortened. If they are almost dead and/or a low-quality part, baking it will encourage it to fail. That's why I said it's a roll of the dice. It's not going to kill your capacitors all the time. But it's sure not good for them and you should never bake a card except as a last resort.

Thanks, from what I gathered, lead solder can crack and baking it isn't always the best option. Now I know this is similar, but would a heat gun directly to the gpu to avoid baking the capacitors work?

Kevin_CCR wrote:

kenrouholo wrote:

Leaded solder can absolutely crack, even if it's less likely. The problem with lead-free solder is that it can crack with very little convincing. You can still mishandle a board and crack leaded solder (without ruining anything else on the board), and I'm not surprised if a relatively large PCB like the Voodoo5 would over the years develop an issue... Especially if at any point one of the fans died, because 3dfx cards often did run hot, and the hotter a card runs, the higher the chance of this sort of issue. Maybe it ran for days, weeks, or months with a failed fan, the owner was unaware, and the extra heat damaged something - whether that something is solder or otherwise. And heat also kills capacitors so if you have missing caps, maybe they exploded from overheating as well and someone just took them off (either for later repair, or to restore the appearance of a card that looks like it should work).

I'm not saying I absolutely think this is the case. I'm just saying that I think it's more likely than some other replies said. This is of course my own opinion.

As for capacitors, yes I know people do this and capacitors often don't die. That's true, but they are 100% always damaged from it. If the capacitors are good to begin with, then they'll have their lifespan shortened. If they are almost dead and/or a low-quality part, baking it will encourage it to fail. That's why I said it's a roll of the dice. It's not going to kill your capacitors all the time. But it's sure not good for them and you should never bake a card except as a last resort.

Thanks, from what I gathered, lead solder can crack and baking it isn't always the best option. Now I know this is similar, but would a heat gun directly to the gpu to avoid baking the capacitors work?

It's theoretically possible to fix such a problem with a heat gun, but it's extremely easy to overheat it and kill it. Again, it's theoretically possible, but I also don't recommend that. In fact I'd sooner recommend rolling the dice on the oven than on the heat gun. But be extremely careful if you go for it.

kenrouholo wrote:

Kevin_CCR wrote:

kenrouholo wrote:

Leaded solder can absolutely crack, even if it's less likely. The problem with lead-free solder is that it can crack with very little convincing. You can still mishandle a board and crack leaded solder (without ruining anything else on the board), and I'm not surprised if a relatively large PCB like the Voodoo5 would over the years develop an issue... Especially if at any point one of the fans died, because 3dfx cards often did run hot, and the hotter a card runs, the higher the chance of this sort of issue. Maybe it ran for days, weeks, or months with a failed fan, the owner was unaware, and the extra heat damaged something - whether that something is solder or otherwise. And heat also kills capacitors so if you have missing caps, maybe they exploded from overheating as well and someone just took them off (either for later repair, or to restore the appearance of a card that looks like it should work).

I'm not saying I absolutely think this is the case. I'm just saying that I think it's more likely than some other replies said. This is of course my own opinion.

As for capacitors, yes I know people do this and capacitors often don't die. That's true, but they are 100% always damaged from it. If the capacitors are good to begin with, then they'll have their lifespan shortened. If they are almost dead and/or a low-quality part, baking it will encourage it to fail. That's why I said it's a roll of the dice. It's not going to kill your capacitors all the time. But it's sure not good for them and you should never bake a card except as a last resort.

Thanks, from what I gathered, lead solder can crack and baking it isn't always the best option. Now I know this is similar, but would a heat gun directly to the gpu to avoid baking the capacitors work?

It's theoretically possible to fix such a problem with a heat gun, but it's extremely easy to overheat it and kill it. Again, it's theoretically possible, but I also don't recommend that. In fact I'd sooner recommend rolling the dice on the oven than on the heat gun. But be extremely careful if you go for it.

So I have an oven, and a heat gun with a digital display and adjustable temps from 120 to 750 Fahrenheit, which would be better to go for?

Kevin_CCR wrote:

So I have an oven, and a heat gun with a digital display and adjustable temps from 120 to 750 Fahrenheit, which would be better to go for?

Between the two, I'd say oven. At least it will uniformly heat the board. Non-uniform heat is a problem in itself. Do I think the oven will likely fix your card? No, but it beats throwing a junk card in the trash.

kenrouholo wrote:

Kevin_CCR wrote:

So I have an oven, and a heat gun with a digital display and adjustable temps from 120 to 750 Fahrenheit, which would be better to go for?

Between the two, I'd say oven. At least it will uniformly heat the board. Non-uniform heat is a problem in itself. Do I think the oven will likely fix your card? No, but it beats throwing a junk card in the trash.

Wouldn't the fact it is concentrated on the effected spot be better instead of heating the whole card?

A bake will highly unlikely fix a voodoo5500 being it's pre rohs. The problem is likely elsewhere. and givin you problem I'd say a reflow is not the fix.

Kevin_CCR wrote:

kenrouholo wrote:

Kevin_CCR wrote:

So I have an oven, and a heat gun with a digital display and adjustable temps from 120 to 750 Fahrenheit, which would be better to go for?

Between the two, I'd say oven. At least it will uniformly heat the board. Non-uniform heat is a problem in itself. Do I think the oven will likely fix your card? No, but it beats throwing a junk card in the trash.

Wouldn't the fact it is concentrated on the effected spot be better instead of heating the whole card?

Not really - it can be done if you are super careful but it's easier to overheat the chip or even warp the PCB itself with a heat gun when you don't do it correctly. You'll have to start off at a very low temp, get the entire board fairly warm, and concentrate heat on the specific area you wanted to work on, but also turning down the heat once in a while to re-heat the entire board so it doesn't cool off and warp. This is more difficult than it sounds. I actually went to a trade school for electronics and while I ended up going into computers instead ultimately, I still repair electronics, and I still wouldn't trust myself with a heat gun on a PCB.

Like i said, you can simply blow off components with a heatgun. You can be too late very easy.

Keep asking these questions is not going to make it anything different. Make up your mind and put the card in the oven, or not.

Chances are slim that you fix it that way, chances are also slim that you hurt it more.

meljor wrote:

Like i said, you can simply blow off components with a heatgun. You can be too late very easy.

Keep asking these questions is not going to make it anything different. Make up your mind and put the card in the oven, or not.

Chances are slim that you fix it that way, chances are also slim that you hurt it more.

Asking questions is better than throwing it in the oven and hoping for the best, I have never attempted anything like this.