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!
-
Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.
Vintage Geforce 9400GT question
- Thread starter ppanickk
- Start date
eidairaman1
The Exiled Airman
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2007
- Messages
- 42,697 (6.68/day)
- Location
- Republic of Texas (True Patriot)
| System Name | PCGOD |
|---|---|
| Processor | AMD FX 8350@ 5.0GHz |
| Motherboard | Asus TUF 990FX Sabertooth R2 2901 Bios |
| Cooling | Scythe Ashura, 2×BitFenix 230mm Spectre Pro LED (Blue,Green), 2x BitFenix 140mm Spectre Pro LED |
| Memory | 16 GB Gskill Ripjaws X 2133 (2400 OC, 10-10-12-20-20, 1T, 1.65V) |
| Video Card(s) | AMD Radeon 290 Sapphire Vapor-X |
| Storage | Samsung 840 Pro 256GB, WD Velociraptor 1TB |
| Display(s) | NEC Multisync LCD 1700V (Display Port Adapter) |
| Case | AeroCool Xpredator Evil Blue Edition |
| Audio Device(s) | Creative Labs Sound Blaster ZxR |
| Power Supply | Seasonic 1250 XM2 Series (XP3) |
| Mouse | Roccat Kone XTD |
| Keyboard | Roccat Ryos MK Pro |
| Software | Windows 7 Pro 64 |
There might be youtube videos of this subject
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2015
- Messages
- 1,009 (0.29/day)
| Processor | Ryzen 5 5600 @ 4.65GHz CO -30 |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | AsRock X370 Taichi |
| Cooling | Cooler Master Hyper 212+ |
| Memory | 32GB 4x8 G.SKILL Trident Z 3200 CL14 1.35V |
| Video Card(s) | PCWINMAX RTX 3060 6GB Laptop GPU (80W) |
| Storage | 1TB Kingston NV2 |
| Display(s) | LG 25UM57-P @ 75Hz OC |
| Case | Fractal Design Arc XL |
| Audio Device(s) | ATH-M20x |
| Power Supply | Evga SuperNova 1300 G2 |
| Mouse | Evga Torq X3 |
| Keyboard | Thermaltake Challenger |
| Software | Win 11 Pro 64-Bit |
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.