Hello folks. As I am currently on holiday, I’ve decided to spend some time tinkering with old hardware, which I find both enjoyable and a great way to practice using my cheap Chinese hot air station (JCD 8898) that I got from Aliexpress. I decided to work on an old, passively cooled Gainward 9400 GT that was heavily artifacting. I applied flux to the memory chips and GPU core, shielded the capacitors with tinfoil to prevent them from popping, and set the hot air station to 400°C (I believe it’s Celsius). Using a circular motion, I treated the card for a few minutes on both sides, let it cool, and reassembled it. To my surprise, the artifacting was gone, so I suspect the (faulty) VRAM chips might have been successfully reflowed. However, the card still crashes under any graphically intensive load, suggesting the GPU core may need further work. Since I’m not planning to reball the card, I’m wondering if using an even higher temperature might improve the GPU core’s condition. My goal here isn’t a permanent fix, but rather to learn how to use the hot air station more effectively and understand what temperatures are needed for successful reflows. Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Vintage Geforce 9400GT question
- Thread starter ppanickk
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eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
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There might be youtube videos of this subject
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You'll need to get a PCB Preheater for doing BGA rework, don't even bother trying with just hot air by itself or you'll just burn up the chip by the time you get the solder to fully melt. You also need flux specific for BGA rework.