cooked my puter...literally

[meach]

For those that like to mess with computers, I cooked my laptop's mainboard in the oven for about 10 min. at 400 degrees, right after the wife took her chicken out (no way was it going in with the chicken), heres why:

 

Long story short, a laptop I've had (hand me down from wife when she got new mac) started acting up lately. Been a good computer for several years as far as cheap compaq's go, been running linux last year or so. So anyway it started acting up, thought it might be overheating, cleaned and checked everything, got worse and finally would not come on at all, lights would come on for like 1 sec then cut off. Spent many a hours checking everything, finally determined it to be main board/cpu went south. While doing some research I learned that some graphics chips are notorious for the solder having cracks, etc. and a solution which I had never heard of is to bake it in the oven like I did to resolder. I figured why not, it was dead anyway. Sure enough mainboard powered right up after removing from oven and letting cool off then attaching just enough hardware to turn on, put it all back together and running great as I type this on the laptop. Now to get rid of the funky burnt plastic smell in the house.

[dingy]

This might be handy for Eck, cold solder joints aren't his main issue, I think it is high moisture content.

 

 

Gary

[pmelah]

For those that like to mess with computers, I cooked my laptop's mainboard in the oven for about 10 min. at 400 degrees, right after the wife took her chicken out (no way was it going in with the chicken), heres why:

 

Long story short, a laptop I've had (hand me down from wife when she got new mac) started acting up lately. Been a good computer for several years as far as cheap compaq's go, been running linux last year or so. So anyway it started acting up, thought it might be overheating, cleaned and checked everything, got worse and finally would not come on at all, lights would come on for like 1 sec then cut off. Spent many a hours checking everything, finally determined it to be main board/cpu went south. While doing some research I learned that some graphics chips are notorious for the solder having cracks, etc. and a solution which I had never heard of is to bake it in the oven like I did to resolder. I figured why not, it was dead anyway. Sure enough mainboard powered right up after removing from oven and letting cool off then attaching just enough hardware to turn on, put it all back together and running great as I type this on the laptop. Now to get rid of the funky burnt plastic smell in the house.

 

i have 2 laptops like that i will have to try that with thanks for that info and a Orek true max air filtration unit will take care of the burnt plastic smell in the house and any other smell that sneaks in or out :stirthepot::rotf:

[ragtop69gs]

HA.. go figure. What temp and how long did you bake it ?

[pmelah]

This might be handy for Eck, cold solder joints aren't his main issue, I think it is high moisture content.

 

 

Gary

 

 

:rotf: im not touching that hes only 3 1/2 hrs north of me and we got a lot of moisture here and im still crippled

[pmelah]

HA.. go figure. What temp and how long did you bake it ?

you want to heat oven to 350 put it in for 3 to 5 min with oven off tn take out to cool off that would be a minimum time i use to seperate seald headlight assembly on these new cars to put strobe light in them then heat to resael them

[meach]

HA.. go figure. What temp and how long did you bake it ?

 

I did around 400 degrees for 10 min which is what I saw some guys on youtube do. At the end of the 10 min is when you could really smell the plastic. I removed any plastic that I could, that would come off prior to baking, I was afraid it would melt my cmos battery holder but everything was fine. I put some balls of tin foil under the MB to raise it off the cookie sheet.

[SilvrT]

i use to seperate seald headlight assembly on these new cars to put strobe light in them then heat to resael them

 

yup, did that with the lights on my Wing in order to "black out" the inner chrome reflector (not the part that projects the light).

 

Bake it at 350 for 5 min ... comes apart easy .... reverse process to seal it back up.

 

Apparently it uses butyl rubber sealer.

[Snaggletooth]

Now to get rid of the funky burnt plastic smell in the house.

 

Quick! Before the smell goes away!! Get your powder coating done!!!

[etcswjoe]

Sounds interesting but I don't think I would do it unless it was a last resort.

[Mike G in SC]

Tell us what the NEXT chicken taste like (mmmm?).

 

And, if you byte the motherboard,,,,, does it now taste like chicken?

[dingy]

Just talked to one of the Electrical Eng. I work with and he said a 'normal' solder reflow temp is around 480 F. It would depend on board design for the precise temp. There are processes where there are differing solder rflow temps used on one board due to construction requirements.

Point being the 400 deg temp would be well below normal reflow temps. So there may be someother cause and effect scenario going one by doing this.

Gary

[bongobobny]

To answer that, depending on what ratio solder it is, it's melting point is below 400 degrees. Tour engineer was probably referring to an actual wave solder machine so you have to account for cooling as the room temperature board passes across the vat...

[meach]

Sounds interesting but I don't think I would do it unless it was a last resort.

 

It was in this case, if this didn't work laptop was going in "spare parts" pile anyway, hardware was going on 5 yrs old, wasn't worth $ to purchase a replacement board or any other parts, also have a netbook I can use.

 

Tell us what the NEXT chicken taste like (mmmm?).

 

And, if you byte the motherboard,,,,, does it now taste like chicken?

 

I made sure to put a baking sheet under in case anything dripped off:), later in the evening daughter cooked a pizza and I didn't notice any plastic aroma, I asked her if her pizza had any extra flavoring:rotf:

Just talked to one of the Electrical Eng. I work with and he said a 'normal' solder reflow temp is around 480 F. It would depend on board design for the precise temp. There are processes where there are differing solder rflow temps used on one board due to construction requirements.

 

Point being the 400 deg temp would be well below normal reflow temps. So there may be someother cause and effect scenario going one by doing this.

 

Gary

 

I thought about this also so I had looked up the melting point of solder, seems it varys from 90 - 450 F. or so depending if its "soft" or "hard" solder, etc., etc. but yea it could be something else, I didn't really care as long as it worked. MB is still working fine after several hours of use with none of the previous problems I wouldn't have thought it would survive being in the oven at 400 deg. let along work fine afterwards. I had visions of having a big glob of melted plastic and circuit boards. (I did remove the CPU before baking)

 

Other folks use a heat gun to do the same thing.

Edited March 26, 2013 by meach

[etcswjoe]

Yeah my reply was sort of redundant I am glad it worked for you.

[friesman]

This might be handy for Eck, cold solder joints aren't his main issue, I think it is high moisture content.

 

 

Gary

 

 

DO you mean Eck or his computer? Personally I think Ecks issues might be more than high moisture content.....