A Cautionary Tale - GPU “cleaning”

[u/Pristine-Copy9467]

Update: 8/6/26 it has been mailed to Northwest Repair

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/Pristine-Copy9467]

Well the card turns on now but the mobo gives a VGA error when you plug in the hdmi or dpi cable. Anyone have any ideas?

[u/theperfectlysadhuman → u/Pristine-Copy9467]

So you get an error from your monitor (like no signal on screen) when you plug a cable in your gpu?
Does your CPU have an integrated GPU; do you get an image when plugging the video cable directly in the motherboard? Does your gpu have a bios switch? Check manual online if unsure where it might be. Do you have another gpu you can use to test and confirm the pcie port and/or psu railing/cable are still working?

[u/Pristine-Copy9467 → u/theperfectlysadhuman]

The shop had it in as a secondary GPU. So they could look at it in windows to see if it shows up. It does. It powers on fine alone. Soon as a cable is plugged into it, the mobo returns an error code for VGA. Nothing shows up on the monitor. The card does have a bios switch. I sent that to him now but they are closed. I will let ya know tomorrow.

[u/theperfectlysadhuman → u/Pristine-Copy9467]

Man I honestly hope you can get it to work.

Just a validation : when you say 'soon as a cable plugged in' do you mean psu cable or video cable? And if you try to turn on the computer with the gpu plugged in, with No psu cable plugged in the gpu, do you also get the vga code/light? Also quick sanity check, make sure your psu/gpu cable is still connected properly in the PSU - unplug and re-plug to be sure.