recap graphic card

[gobbler]

hi,

does anyone has experience in recapping graphic cards?
i would like to know what faulty graphic cards are worth recapping.
thanks.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: recap graphic card

does anyone has experience in recapping graphic cards?

I haven't had a need to but some folks in here have.
I have done a TV Tuner card which isn't much different.
Is no different than recapping anything else.

i would like to know what faulty graphic cards are worth recapping.

Any that you want to get back instead of replace.

.

[370forlife]

Re: recap graphic card

Really depends on if the card is really worth the caps.

[gobbler]

Re: recap graphic card

Hi

Newbie here. Quite difficult to get faulty motherboards to troubleshoot and recap.
Can find quite a few faulty graphic cards with problem like no display, display with red lines etc. Not sure is it worth to get these cards to recap to revive it. Thanks.

[momaka]

Re: recap graphic card

Can find quite a few faulty graphic cards with problem like no display, display with red lines etc. Not sure is it worth to get these cards to recap to revive it. Thanks.

My 2 cents: Get the video card(s) only if you can see that there are bad caps on them (and if the card is really worth the caps). Otherwise there can be many other issues with the card besides the caps. For example, artifacts can be caused by missing components, a cracked core, cooked ram/GPU, etc.
I bought 8 "as is" cards like that on ebay. They didn't have heatsinks so I thought that would be an easy fix. Package arrived, I put a heatsink on one card, put it in my computer, got it to work but with artifacts. Upon closer inspection of the cards - surprise! 2 had cracked cores, another 2 small scorch marks, and all of them were missing some components (mostly ceramic caps near the edges where they got chipped off - you could see pieces of them still in there). Good thing I had 8 video cards, so what one card was missing the others had and I could tell what needed to be added where.
I haven't really gotten any of them fixed yet, though I did get one to post with artifacts - and before that it didn't work at all. The best thing that came out of that project is that I improved my SMD soldiering skills.
If you want a fun project and can get the cards for dirt-cheap, then it won't be a bad idea to buy a few (preferably of the same model). Otherwise I don't think it's worth the hassle at all (unless you know for sure it's the caps that are bad).

[PCBONEZ]

Re: recap graphic card

If your goal is to learn I would look for some older socket 370 motherboards to start with.
Look for boards that support 133MHz FSB and Coppermine 1Ghz [or up] and that will put you in the original 'bad caps plague'.
Boards like that are often very inexpensive.
-
Also check thrift shops and dumpsters for 'junk' to tinker with.
.

[gobbler]

Re: recap graphic card

Hi guys, thanks for the advice. I think I will give the graphic card a miss as I hardly can see any bloated caps on them. Will stick to motherboards, can get some socket 478 motherboards quite cheap here to play with. Was actually interested to play with socket 775 though. Thanks again.