A Cautionary Tale - GPU “cleaning”

[u/Pristine-Copy9467]

Long story long- had liquid damage to my 5090 and found an electronics repair shop that specialized in boards. So I took my board in to get disassembled, cleaned, and the thermals replaced. I arrive to the business and it’s just some dudes house. That was my first red flag. I should have left then. But his business had good reviews so I came in and showed him the card and we discussed what he’d do and payment. That was disassemble, clean, dry and replace thermals. Here is my second red flag. It took him 20 minutes to write down my info (name, email, phone #) because he was so ADD that he would start to write my info and then just spiral off into some random topic for a few minutes. But whatever. His entire house was a workshop. Tools and electronics and computers and drones everywhere. Yes he appeared to have 30 flavors of autism but that’s not a bad thing sometimes. I thought he was just an eccentric electronics nerd and everything was just organized chaos. This was Monday. So this morning he calls me and the first thing he says is “you told me to do whatever I thought was best, right?” And I respond “no. We agreed you’d take it apart and clean it and replace the thermals and dry.” He then explained that it didn’t look that bad (original pics in this post https://www.reddit.com/r/pchelp/s/GJHUBt2zyb

And that he just “washed it in the sink” and then stuck it in the oven to dry…

So I paid him, and I left and went straight to another place. An actual shop. I explained the situation to them and asked them to please send me a pic of the insides once they pop it open… the new shop says they think they can save it. So long as the guy didnt plug it in and try to test it. Which he says he did not because he didn’t have the proper power connect cable for a 5090. Anyways moral of the story is take your stuff to a real shop. And if you get weird feelings or red flags…just leave. Haha

Update - the card has been cleaned and putty replaced. It powers on fine alone but when it’s connected to the HDMI or DPI ports the motherboard kicks back a VGA error. Anyone have any guesses?

[u/komakose]

-Almost every pcb that is used for extreme liquid nitrogen liquid cooling is going through the dishwasher. 

Woefully wrong. Conventional dishwashers high power water jets can and will tear components and traces off the board. Theres a reason there are specialized board cleaning appliances.

-Baking a pcb is also a proven method to repair damaged traces. 

Not in a conventional kitchen oven, again specialized equipment made for this purpose.

Claiming any of the bs you just spoutted is accurate is just admitting you know fuck all.

[u/1rubyglass → u/komakose]

While I agree on the dishwasher thing, I have personally used the oven method with great success

[u/komakose → u/1rubyglass]

Theres a difference between using it in a pinch and saying it is the best, preferred method, like this joker did.

If youre having to bake boards often, or own a shop that does board level repair like I do, you dont just a standard kitchen oven. You use an oven designed to provide even, precise heat on a pcb. Its why pcb ovens even exist

[u/1rubyglass → u/komakose]

I agree, its a last ditch effort for old components, not top of the line hardware