Revamping a laptop

Technician1002 · Sat Oct 08, 2011 2:38 pm

Ragnarok wrote: There was an era of Nvidia GPUs that were made in a way that means they could fail at very low temperatures, or even just a relatively modest number of shallow thermal cycles (at a temperature right about the "moderate workload level" as well). When it became public, there was a big broohaha, Nvidia lost 31% on the stock market and had to start paying out all sorts of compensation.\

This to me is a design flaw. For me this is all the more reason to get a machine with a much better MTBF. Unless there is a permanent fix for a flaw, it is not worth fixing for a short time only to break again.

Ragnarok · Sat Oct 08, 2011 10:17 pm

Technician1002 wrote:This to me is a design flaw. Unless there is a permanent fix for a flaw, it is not worth fixing for a short time only to break again.

Read the bottom paragraph of the post you quoted. I'd be replacing the faulty 770 with the replacement 771 spec - fully compatible, but does not have the same thermal problems.

I know you don't think it's worth it, but I like my daft little projects. I'm not looking for reasons why I shouldn't do it, but reasons why I can't.

Moonbogg · Sun Oct 09, 2011 12:15 am

Money is a huge reason why it should be fixed if possible. It will save an ass ton of money.

Zeus · Sun Oct 09, 2011 3:53 am

I've actually already got a soldering heat gun. Not a huge amount of practise with it beyond abusing it for reshaping plastic parts for models, but it's certainly very good at that. I've got some old electrical junk I can test it on first though.

Excellent, go out and find some scrapped computers, Pentium 1s and 2s are readily available, do at least a dozen processor holders without them getting too hot to touch, and you'll be fine with it.

Make sure you leave the processor in, and the heatsink off, and you'll have no troubles.

I won't wish you good luck, only a word of advice; Soldering irons/heat guns can never be too cold.