DCEmulation

I'm on GPU number 4 on my Dell Inspiron. The first three were of the 7900GS variety and the one one I'm using now is a 7950GTX. I don't play games or do anything intensive at all so I'd like to blow up Dell's HQ if anybody's with me. Just kidding, but I am gonna join the ranks of retards on the internet and see if cooking my video card will really fix the broken solder joints without destroying anything else. At any rate, I'd rather solder everything myself but that's not fun at all! I'll post pics if anything interesting happens.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=606658
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=410561

UPDATE (Unsolved Mysteries style!): Yup, worked. Taking apart a mobile GPU is a bit of a unique task albeit mundane compared to cooking it at 385°F for 6 minutes, allowing 30 minutes to cool before serving. It was somewhat comforting to know this works on desktop models as laptop revisions are designed to work at higher thermal stress. Also allowed me to remove the crappy thermal paste caked on and apply my own grease. I wonder if it'll work longer than it did from factory?

P.S. There's an inviting chocolate chip aroma emanating from my lappy's right fan exhaust

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"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is
that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too." -Oscar Levant

Yeah, I know some people who did that to their xbox 360 to fix it.
It could completely blast the rest of the components if you don't protect them but it is a nice workaround

Intriguing to say the least!.

Search for Fire Paste and you should find some 'so-called' inventor going by the name of Troy trying to make a killing on a heat resistant formula, even though I've used very similar (if not the same) stuff for about two decades, TIG welding most material (including Titanium) with Fibre reinforced Nylon no more than a quarter of an inch away from the seam - with no heat damage whatsoever.

My point is: if you are using anything that could be classed as extreme heat treatment, look up details on quality welding supplies, you can easily coat an entire motherboard with a certain heat resistant paste whilst applying a blow torch (or a heat blow gun for those with no testicles) to a particular area to re-fuse joints, to remove, or even melt off a component without any damage to the board itself.

Shame all the big PC manufacturers haven't cottoned on to the basics yet, soldering, brazing, welding... it's all the same really - heat something to a certain melting point and join it to another.

If the joint on anything of this nature 'breaks' it's purely down to bad decisions - in this case it's probably low quality or the wrong type of solder, or more feasibly a low build quality.

4 balls of foil and gas mark 6 = priceless!.

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The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

Ahh yes, the horrible batch of Nvidia Chipsets. I deal with these on a daily basis at work.

You can try to reflow them by placing a thermal conductor on top of the chipset, and then applying a generous amount of heat.

At our shop, this usually involves aluminum foil and a large forced air heategun running for about 30 minutes. It works 90% of the time.

nVidia played the blame game on the poor thermal transfer in many Dell laptops. Worst part is nVidia never made a proper revision and instead just basically gave away free replacements. It's not like you really have much of an option in these laptops. If I can find that cheap ATI card that was the other option I might snatch one up.

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"The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is
that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too." -Oscar Levant