What to do with old dead card?

[Meddling-Monk]

Yeah, no, it's not a funny question or anything. The card "will" be leaving me in some fashion physically.

So, tiny bit of history. My Sapphire 7950 3GB OC edition died yesterday (after 6 glorious years of service with 25188 hours of powered on time). Screen corruption and stall of PC/Crash, repeat after then wouldn't even post. I tried it in the other machine whilst the 7750 1GB I've got in the other system is in the main rig until the new RX 580 8GB arrives.

So I do the usual maintenance (cleaning out and reapplying any paste to appropriate areas) and on testing, it did live for 1 time on the secondary machine until I rebooted, but then it refused to post again. During the cleaning, I found a lot of the solder has the yellow gunk running alongside it (flux/flow?) and checking around, it appears that the 7950 may not be completely dead, just the solder connections are no longer fully connecting to the PCB (it's got that poor design where the card ends up slightly warped/non straight line from the weight of the HS/Fan).

So, questions:

1. Is there anything else I can try and do to get the 7950 running without heading off to buy equipment to try and get the solder working again? (No oven available for baking, no soldering iron, and no heatgun at this time) Would an RMA for repair even work if I request one? (Not that they'd have components, but in theory? And darn, what about the cost if that was even possible?)
2. If there's nothing more I can do, what's the best disposal options to execute? I'm aware that there's plenty that can be recovered from the card (recycling?). But unsure where to send it/take it to in London to allow such recovery (as some places require functional devices to resell on, that's why I've been giving away functional gear instead). Or should I just simply bin it?

Thanks everyone for any ideas or suggestions on what I can do.

 

[mrbazmondo]

Do you have any one you know with an oven you can use? I brought life back to a 8800 gtx by baking it several years ago.
It gave it another 6 months life before it died again.
I don't recall seeing any flux though.

 

[ExoMale]

Mean I have a 6870 than does the same scrabbled screen no matter how much I change the paste or anything, I’ve been too lazy to chuck it, would be ideal if I could get it to work, but I have no clue so unless you are able to repair it then dump it

 

[Lordgrayone]

Do you have any one you know with an oven you can use? I brought life back to a 8800 gtx by baking it several years ago.
It gave it another 6 months life before it died again.
I don't recall seeing any flux though.

Do this. .....strip it down and stick it in the oven, Google it you will get numerous hits of it working.

 

[mrbazmondo]

Make sure you also take off everything plastic that's removable and all stickers. Chip side up otherwise it might fall off. Don't over bake it. Check the success stories on Google for temp and duration.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Managed to contact a friend who could let me utilise their oven for this, will try this next weekend. So will see how that goes later. But if I need to remove on a permanent basis (which seems to be more likely the case sooner than later...), what does everyone think?

1. Recycling/Electronic Waste management company? (Also, does anyone know of any in London?)
2. Or straight bin? (More wasteful, but it IS a dead card...)

 

[Confused Stu]

Ebay? Be honest and mark it up as spares/repairs, explain what it can do and can't and someone will still buy it - they seem to be going for about £30 on there at present. Some people may be buying because they believe they can repair the card, others may be buying because their GPU works but their cooler fans broke and they want to make one working one from the broken bits (I've done this before).

 

[andybird123]

If you are going to bin it, at least take it to your local waste management place (local tip) as they will have an electronics bin where it'll go for recycling.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Managed to contact a friend who could let me utilise their oven for this, will try this next weekend. So will see how that goes later. But if I need to remove on a permanent basis (which seems to be more likely the case sooner than later...), what does everyone think?

1. Recycling/Electronic Waste management company? (Also, does anyone know of any in London?)
2. Or straight bin? (More wasteful, but it IS a dead card...)

Sell it for spares on eBay. Someone will buy it. Mark it VERY clearly Not Working/For Spares Only or someone will complain and want a return because its not working (yes people are that stupid)

 

[z10m]

I had 2 attempts at bringing back to life laptop GPUs and it worked with both so 100% success rate. I did use heat gun on just the die so no burning smell or anything.

 

[mrbazmondo]

If its still broken try again - what have you got to lose. Maybe a few degrees hotter, or 5 mins longer.
Remember to plug the fan power back in when you reassemble otherwise you'll repeat my mistake
If its still broken sell for spares on ebay (mark broken/spares in title) or take to your local recycling centre.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Thanks all for the suggestions all. Will be trying the baking this weekend, but I'm not going to be using ebay to send it anywhere, because I've seen plenty of those idiot buyers and those trying to pull a fast one as well. So I'd rather not. It's recycle or binning, hopefully the recycling centere here will take it without questions.

 

[Aretak]

Thanks all for the suggestions all. Will be trying the baking this weekend, but I'm not going to be using ebay to send it anywhere, because I've seen plenty of those idiot buyers and those trying to pull a fast one as well. So I'd rather not. It's recycle or binning, hopefully the recycling centere here will take it without questions.

Ebay have a seperate spares and repairs category to list things in, which precludes the buyer from trying to claim they didn't know it was faulty. People pay pretty decent money for broken cards on there, whether they think they can fix it or just want the cooler or something.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Ebay have a seperate spares and repairs category to list things in, which precludes the buyer from trying to claim they didn't know it was faulty. People pay pretty decent money for broken cards on there, whether they think they can fix it or just want the cooler or something.

Oh. I did NOT know that (shows you how long I've not used the bay). So I'll give it a consideration to chuck it on the bay after I try the bake this weekend.