I just succesfully baked DDR4

[RyzenMaster.sys]

Yup ive seenthis happen with helping a fellow student repair his project, he damaged a near by chip with indirect heat from a solder iron.

It can actually help chips as well but it's only temporary. Its a lot of why people bake GPUs etc is partially to reflow the solder joints, but also to superheat the memory and GPU.

If it was a bad joint, baking is a permanent fix. If it was a chip issue, it will reoccur.

I'm not sure how it works, exactly. But I suspect the ram might stop working properly and be a headache down the road.

 

[eidairaman1]

It can actually help chips as well but it's only temporary. Its a lot of why people bake GPUs etc is partially to reflow the solder joints, but also to superheat the memory and GPU.

I'm not sure how it works, exactly. But I suspect the ram might stop working properly and be a headache down the road.

Youre not the only 1 thinking this way.

Im out.

 

[joemama]

Baking should be fine, at least you can control the temperature.
The temperature surely isn't good for the chip, but if the chip was soldered to the board, it definitely can withstand a short bake at the solder's melting temperature.

 

[Jism]

Its not JUST reflowing the solder joints, it's also heating the chips themselves.

Yes and when they are packaged, wether it'll be CPU's or GPU's or so, they are soldered too and subjected to simular or even worse heat.

I mean it was just 4 minutes, where one minute was taken into account for heating it up properly, not 15 minutes.

Once it was done > lid open > let it cool off and reattach everything back together.

I was suprised it worked.

 

[delshay]

Nah. You just delayed the inevitable. Should have just RMA'ed them.

That depends on the ram you are sending back. Every set of ram peek overclock is different. If you had a golden set of memory & one went faulty but you knew it was a cracked solder joint, would you send it back knowing the next set is likely not to overclock to the same level as the older set?
Personally I would void the warranty because I would not want new set to clock lower than what I had before.

 

[maxfly]

I baked a couple gpus that suffered from good ol space invaders (bad memory). It actually worked great for a couple of days on the first. The second lasted a week or so. Sadly the artifacts came back ten times worse when they failed the second time. My faith in the longevity of the baking method is zilch obviously
Best of luck to you OP!

 

[lexluthermiester]

I use Kester 186 but I think there are fluxes that are specific to reflow.

There are but Kester works great.

 

[Jism]

That depends on the ram you are sending back. Every set of ram peek overclock is different. If you had a golden set of memory & one went faulty but you knew it was a cracked solder joint, would you send it back knowing the next set is likely not to overclock to the same level as the older set?
Personally I would void the warranty because I would not want new set to clock lower than what I had before.

Good point. But the last best set of overclockable ram was back in the DDR2 days, a 1000+Mhz 3/3/3/9 kit. These days i dont understand all these complicated and new / extra values being added to DDR4. And there's alot more variance to the game now with IF's and such.

Overclocking back then was quite simple compared to now, esp with the CPU's having their own AI that decides for you up to 100 times a second which boost or clock state is right for what your doing.

Mweh; I have'nt seen anything irregular yet; system perfectly running, waking out of sleep again. I might do a test the weekend with Memtest86 again and let it go extensively. I'm pretty sure all my issues are solved. I still have no idea how DDR4 in general could even have bad or broken solder joints.

I mean these sticks barely get hand-warm; where always running within spec (1.35V ~ 1.40V, higher would actually yield worse results) and usually left to a 24/7 operation.

 

[delshay]

Good point. But the last best set of overclockable ram was back in the DDR2 days, a 1000+Mhz 3/3/3/9 kit. These days i dont understand all these complicated and new / extra values being added to DDR4. And there's alot more variance to the game now with IF's and such.

Not sure if it's possible to do those timings at that speed. If I remember correctly it was 3-3-3-9 around 850Mhz & 1200MHz+ with 4-4-4-12.
I have a bunch of "Corsair Dominator 9136" & 8888, so I can test.

The whole point of me owning so many memory modules is things have changed. I can now take them apart, put them on a PCB like below (see photo) & convert those Corsair 1GB stick to 2GB stick so I can play modern games.


Convert 4GB stick back to 2GB stick using the Corsair Dominator 9136/8888 Memory chips on PCB below. SPD to be reprogrammed & upgraded to include thermal monitoring.

 

[Keullo-e]

The baking "trick" does work in some cases and is best when all else has failed, your hardware is out of warranty and you have nothing left to lose and it will be replaced, even if it meets all those criteria it still may not work, but you probably have nothing left to try at this point, I've "baked" 2 GPU's back to life, never thought of trying it on RAM or any other component TBH but why the heck not

Agree. I consider baking as the last result.

 

[AlwaysHope]

Good point. But the last best set of overclockable ram was back in the DDR2 days, a 1000+Mhz 3/3/3/9 kit. These days i dont understand all these complicated and new / extra values being added to DDR4. And there's alot more variance to the game now with IF's and such.

But how much vdimm? I

 

[Jism]

But how much vdimm? I

Was'nt that hard, it was a Adata kit up to 4GB of 4 sticks. They all did 3/3/3/9 at 1000Mhz (500Mhz+) speeds. Amazing kit and it rocked on a Athlon setup.

But ehm; tech is getting so complex to this very day. Very difficult to really tweak the max out of it.

 

[delshay]

Was'nt that hard, it was a Adata kit up to 4GB of 4 sticks. They all did 3/3/3/9 at 1000Mhz (500Mhz+) speeds. Amazing kit and it rocked on a Athlon setup.

But ehm; tech is getting so complex to this very day. Very difficult to really tweak the max out of it.

Can you show link/evidence as this is all I can find Review: High-speed DDR2 memory roundup - RAM - HEXUS.net - Page 10

 

[Jism]

Geez, thats quite some years ago dude.

But paired with a X2 5000+ it was pretty "fast" really. CL3/3/3/9 was top notch stuff. And was'nt irregular as later revisions only got better.

 

[delshay]

Geez, thats quite some years ago dude.

But paired with a X2 5000+ it was pretty "fast" really. CL3/3/3/9 was top notch stuff. And was'nt irregular as later revisions only got better.

Try this.. lots of dead links but some still work. -DDR2 Reviews | TechPowerUp Review Database

 

[Jism]

A-Data Vitesta Extreme Edition DDR2 4 GB 800+ MHz CL4 Review

A-DATA's 4 GB Vitesta Extreme Edition DDR2 memory kit offers great performance at a low price of only $75. The memory can even run CL3 at the specified 800 MHz, with a small voltage increase and scales up to DDR2-1066 at CL5.

www.techpowerup.com

I think it where these, a kit of 4 sticks in total.

 

[Jism]

One month passed by, system pretty much up 24/7, did a memtest, clean as a mofo. Still no idea what flowing or re-heating exactly fixed here. It was odd to know as well that, some errors coud'nt be "fixed" by increasing voltage or so before this. Now it's all gone. Maybe i did had faulty hardware at the start already. No idea.

The system never hanged either; it is rock steady and being used daily as a workstation.

 

[Shrek]

Keep us posted.

 

[Jism]

After, i don't know, almost 3 to 4 years, the errors start to come back, i noted it while games would chrash.

It was one of the two sticks - after pulling one of 'm out i found the guilty one. I have to say it lasted, long. Most of the time system was up with barely any reboot. I'm not going to repeat the oven trick here, even tho i'm sure it would solve something.

Ive ordered a better / faster kit that's QVL certified on the motherboard i'm using. Problem was with these they simply would not run beyond 3166Mhz while on a different board they could be easily OC'ed to 3600Mhz. Obviously it's a motherboard incompatibility and not thing like mismatch of kit, slots or whatever. CPU did work on a different board with the same kit at or beyond rates speeds as well.

So: can you rebake RAM? Yes. Does it work? In my case, yes. And it lasted for at least 3 years.

 

[Space Lynx]

After, i don't know, almost 3 to 4 years, the errors start to come back, i noted it while games would chrash.

View attachment 344373

It was one of the two sticks - after pulling one of 'm out i found the guilty one. I have to say it lasted, long. Most of the time system was up with barely any reboot. I'm not going to repeat the oven trick here, even tho i'm sure it would solve something.

Ive ordered a better / faster kit that's QVL certified on the motherboard i'm using. Problem was with these they simply would not run beyond 3166Mhz while on a different board they could be easily OC'ed to 3600Mhz. Obviously it's a motherboard incompatibility and not thing like mismatch of kit, slots or whatever. CPU did work on a different board with the same kit at or beyond rates speeds as well.

So: can you rebake RAM? Yes. Does it work? In my case, yes. And it lasted for at least 3 years.

awesome follow up on this, thanks for sharing! enjoy your new ram

 

[Shrek]

Using flux is probably more permanent; but not to be done in an oven, but rather with a heat gun.

 

[A&P211]

rebake it again, last another 3yrs, profit

 

[Jism]

rebake it again, last another 3yrs, profit

Well, i actually did it.

same tools applied (lol), preheat the oven at 200 degrees celcius, place the thing GENTLE inside, close lid, put timer at approx 8 minutes, one minute for preheat since it lost heat once you open the lid.

At this point it was 200 degrees lol... let it cool off, dont touch it as components might be lose or fall apart at that temperature.

First test was a 10 minute one at 3000Mhz - since the sticks are rated for 1.35V and 3200Mhz this is no issue at all. Once i saw the test was without issues, i ramped in the second (good) stick,

That managed a full pass which took around 35 to 40 minutes.

And everything works again .... You tell me whats going on here lol. But, i did notice one thing.

When you set the bios Memory voltage at 1.35V, the voltage reported is well over 1.39V. So i toned it down at approx 1.31v to get a cleaner 1.35V. Perhaps this was the problem; a voltage that was higher then set. I know some DDR4 sticks really don't like higher voltager other then what they are rated for. I just leave that in the middle.

I also removed the heatsink, this is thin as a flat-head screwdriver. Once i turned the system off and touched the ram chips we're talking about hand-warm type of heat. Since i don't or can't oc this ram i dont think a heatsink is even needed at this point. There's sufficient case-flow and all that.

 

[iameatingjam]

Thats great and all, but I've personally been kind of hesitant to ever try the oven trick just since you know... I use the oven to cook food.

 

[LabRat 891]

After, i don't know, almost 3 to 4 years, the errors start to come back, i noted it while games would chrash.

View attachment 344373

It was one of the two sticks - after pulling one of 'm out i found the guilty one. I have to say it lasted, long. Most of the time system was up with barely any reboot. I'm not going to repeat the oven trick here, even tho i'm sure it would solve something.

Ive ordered a better / faster kit that's QVL certified on the motherboard i'm using. Problem was with these they simply would not run beyond 3166Mhz while on a different board they could be easily OC'ed to 3600Mhz. Obviously it's a motherboard incompatibility and not thing like mismatch of kit, slots or whatever. CPU did work on a different board with the same kit at or beyond rates speeds as well.

So: can you rebake RAM? Yes. Does it work? In my case, yes. And it lasted for at least 3 years.

Legit 'necro'. Thank you for following up

Well, i actually did it.

View attachment 344378

same tools applied (lol), preheat the oven at 200 degrees celcius, place the thing GENTLE inside, close lid, put timer at approx 8 minutes, one minute for preheat since it lost heat once you open the lid.

View attachment 344379

At this point it was 200 degrees lol... let it cool off, dont touch it as components might be lose or fall apart at that temperature.

View attachment 344380

First test was a 10 minute one at 3000Mhz - since the sticks are rated for 1.35V and 3200Mhz this is no issue at all. Once i saw the test was without issues, i ramped in the second (good) stick,

View attachment 344381

That managed a full pass which took around 35 to 40 minutes.

And everything works again .... You tell me whats going on here lol. But, i did notice one thing.

View attachment 344382

When you set the bios Memory voltage at 1.35V, the voltage reported is well over 1.39V. So i toned it down at approx 1.31v to get a cleaner 1.35V. Perhaps this was the problem; a voltage that was higher then set. I know some DDR4 sticks really don't like higher voltager other then what they are rated for. I just leave that in the middle.

View attachment 344383

I also removed the heatsink, this is thin as a flat-head screwdriver. Once i turned the system off and touched the ram chips we're talking about hand-warm type of heat. Since i don't or can't oc this ram i dont think a heatsink is even needed at this point. There's sufficient case-flow and all that.

Mad Lad.
I love it.