Fixed NIVIDIA GPU OVERHEATING and repaired chip with a Lincon Head penny and a bic lighter [ Edited ]

[Tazzman]

I have read alot of forums on this overheating problem. I have a hp dv9260nr laptop i bought in 2006. I use it like a desktop model for everything from music, video, and work. It has been a good system but at times runs very hot. Recently my screen got strange colors and then some lines. I thought win 7 lost graphics drivers or something but that wasn't the case, the video chip was failing from over heating. My fan was also running fast and noticably louder. I have win7, vista, win xp and a linux build all installed to different partitions on one 120 gig harddrive so i tried booting to them each to find the screen still had lines and bad graphics in all operating systems. I then knew it was for sure the GPU failing. I read some forums of alot of people having very similar problems. At last my computer would not even boot into a operating system and even at startup i didn't see a screen of any quality. It would be garbled and then just slowly fade to black. I started to find a new motherboard as the GPU is a component built into the MB in laptops unlike seperate card in desktop model giving you the option of just getting a new video card.

     I found a forum telling of re-baking or sodering the GPU using various methods from a torch to actually backing the MB at 400 deg for 10 min to fix the problem without buying a new MB for $125 to $500. One forum said the solder used has a melting point of 210 deg. I dont know the actual facts but had to try something. I disasembled my laptop and got my MB out of case.

     THE FIX temperary or not I dont know but what I did was take my BIC lighter and rolled the flame  just under the sides of GPU for 10 sec or so the gave it about 5 secounds to penatrate into the chip then gave it another blast for 10 secounds holding the MB upside down in my hand. Im not sure how hot i got it but it did scorch the surfave very little and a very slight bubbleing on surface. I then carefully turned it right side up and let it cool. I put it all together and low and behold it was working again.

     The GPU was working again and screen was nice. Also while I had it apart I cleaned the cooling fan. It was running real quite. I then downloaded TechPowerup software to display my GPU temp. It was 86 deg celsious now at 5 minutes of being idle. Now im not good at metrics so converting it to farenheit I got 186.8 deg. way to hot for me and I wasn't even doing anything like a movie or a game so I knew I had to do somethin.

     LOWERING THE TEMPERATURE!

I disasembled the laptop again and went to radio shack and bought some heat-sink compound for $7. I took the cooling system back off and removed the little het-sink pillow form copper plate that was inbetween the GPU and cooling plate. I then put a dab of compound on chip and put a nice shiny Penny ( yes Lincon Head Penny) which was visably about the same thickness of pillow or whatever it is onto GPU and added more compound to penny between cooling plate and penny. I then put all back together taking care to get all those little cables and screws in the right place. I am pretty handy at alot of things but thought this might be over my head. After I got all put back together and working I was only able to boot to vista. I had diconected my bios battery during all of this and by default my SATA support in bios was turned back on no enableing my other operating system to boot as i installed all operating system with SATA support turned off because I play around with alot of different operating systems that wont work with that setting in Bios. Any way back to Temperature reading I found that I had dropped from 85deg celsious to 59 deg. in English 186 to 138 deg at idle. This is fantastic.

     I have been using this now for days and enen in vidio and as the time of this post the fan runs real quiet and highest temp so far has bee 63 deg celsious ( 145.5 deg).

     If I have to get new MB down the road I will do this mod first thing. I spent $2800 for this laptop new and is still a great machine.

     I have never wrote to a forum until today and I hope this helps somebody. The procedures I done might not be the best and can be done using alot better technics but its how it has worked for me.  Derrick  [Personal Information Removed]