Recently posted in our community, Greg Hrutkay was in the process of baking an already dead 7300 GT, some community members shared some valuable insight – now to be featured as a part of the “Low End Mac Mailbag“. As a part of the Low End Mac mailbag, we aim to:

• Greatly increase daily article output
• Save the knowledge shared by others
• Have our community be more “out there”, etching their name on the website.
• Answer commonly asked questions, helping you problem-solve your Mac.
• Showcase projects done by others to encourage people to fix their devices.

Greg Hrutkay: “Max Peters made me want to revive my dead 7300 GT from my 2006 Mac Pro. DISCLAIMER: DO NOT DO THIS this card was dead. This will not permanently fix your GPU. This is a temporary Band-Aid and in the end will probably make the card even worse after a while if it works at all.”

“But allows me to test a few theories and this is the first time I’ve ever done it successfully. This card is totally worthless. No one wants one so it doesn’t matter if I fry it or not. DO NOT do this to a valuable card or any card. You don’t want to cause irreparable damage to.

This card now has bulging caps on it and will probably only last hopefully until the end of the night and then it’s probably going in the trash. You need a professional to do it properly. It’s not reflowing the balls 90% the time it’s reflowing the substrate that is just screwed up on the card.”

Why the baking method mostly doesn’t work, even if it did this time

A community member replied: “The important thing to know is this: When the GPU goes, it’s typically a bond wire within the GPU and not a bad solder ball under it. Though solder balls can be replaced and the chip re-attached, it’s a complex procedure and really needs an expensive machine to do correctly. Heating the whole board in an oven can damage other components like the capacitors.

Also, when a solder ball does come loose, there is typically corrosion involved in some way. Solder won’t stick to corroded solder. That makes it really hard to reflow a BGA chip without taking it off, cleaning up the old solder, reballing the chip, and re-attaching the whole thing.

So, re-flowing the chip is worth a try, but it’s best to use a surface mount hot air station on the top and a board pre-heater on the bottom to do it. That way you can avoid blown capacitors and the cleanup they entail.”

Someone else replied: “And more important: do not do it in the oven you plan to put a food in after that.”