Michael's dashboard

Sorry, I meant the GPU, the rest of the parts will go through Ebay, I guess I should have been more specific. – Michael, on November 11, 2009 15:08

Hey all

I found a solution to our collective issue and although a bit unconventional, it worked.
I have done a little stress testing with a graphic intense game, my gpu hit 61c and no problem. Now to be up front about this, I'm not sure how long it will last, I will report back with my findings as I only fixed my card yesterday Sept 4 / 09. I also installed i8kFanGUI, as per Airburst's instructions posted above. The instructions on how to fix your gpu came from a Dell community site http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t... and is a little advanced to actually do, as you must be comfortable with completely disassembling your lappy.

Here is the direct copy and paste from srenna7's post.

"Put your NVidia 7900 GS in the oven !

Yes ! In the oven ! This is not a hoax, even if it seems really odd, but it solved the problem for me! I do no longer have vertical bars displaying on my screen and can use it as before.

The solution comes from these french websites :

- http://www.espacerezo.fr/index.php?re...

- http://www.commentcamarche.net/forum/...

They are in french I'm sorry, but you can google-translate them.

To sum up this is what you have to do :

* Take the NVidia 7900 GS out of your laptop, remove the metal cooling case around it, even the black one under it.
* Pre-heat the oven for approximately 10 minutes at 150 °C - be carefull, do not use a Microwave oven, and in btw these are Celsius degrees, not Fahrenheit
* Put your NVidia 7900 GS in the oven - naked, without the cooling casing, not directly on the cooking plate use a cooking paper to avoid metal contact - for 3 minutes on each side (for a total of 6 min)
* Take it out and let it cool down completely
* Once completely cool, put it back in the computer. It should boot without any problem, there might still be some little artifacts or bars left on the screen the first 2 boots, but they should dissapear.

The website says that the problem with these video cards come from the contacts between the layers of the chip's printed circuits that get a little bit messed up with time, and a bit of heating put them back to order !"

This worked for my 7900 go GTX. Just remember, the instructions say 150 c, that is 302 f, and I used regular printer paper, 4 sheets folded in half, so 8 thick as a bed. It won't ignite until about 450 f so it's pretty safe. I also reapplied heat sink paste after my card cooled, but I'm not sure it was really needed.

Good luck to those who would try this, I will post back if my card fails again.

--Michael--

To Lou

I have done a little reading on the subject as I also have a dead Dell M1710, mine matches Vicki's picture posted above. If you do enough reading, you will discover, the suspected issue is ambient heat vs bad solder. Enough heating and cooling causes expansion and contraction, cracking the solder on the gpu chip. This is referred to as a cold solder join. The problem is cheap solder with low or no levels of silver, making the solder brittle. This issue is also what was suspected to cause the Xbox 360 "Red Ring" issue, at least one of the issues :-) The repair can be done by anyone who is experienced with soldering micro electronics and can detect which solder join has failed. From the reading I have done, it is mostly the same spot on all the 7900 / 7950 cards. I'm personally thinking of cutting my losses and not repairing mine as I have spent enough on this product. Dell will NEVER get me back as a customer. Lesson learned.