Quote from: adaseb on Today at 04:15:33 PM

Quote from: Bravehash on Today at 07:07:57 AM

It's not stressful to pull a gpu apart, all you will be removing is the heat sink, how is that stressful? I've repaired two GPUs before with a pressing iron and it worked, the gpus still working due to high temp and I use the iron to sit the chip back in place, there are some videos on youtube about it

Taking a GPU apart is not difficult but it’s a bad design where you need to separate the heat sink from PCB just to change out a fan. Fans commonly go bad and on some GPUs only way to replace the fan is you need to pull the heat sink assembly off.

Pulling heatsink assembly can cause issues. One of them is that the thermal pads usually rip. They commonly cover the memory chips and maybe some MOSFETs. So if they rip what do you do? You need to find a replacement somewhere and they are hard to locate. I had to over from like 3 different sellers until I got the correct thermal pad that would fit.

Second is that if the GPU is really old then it’s hard to separate from heatsink. So you pull and pull to get it off and usually break some solder balls in the process. Then when cold your GPU won’t work.

Amen brother. The 1070 seemed dead already, but separating the heatsink from the PCB ripped half the pads to shit, not to mention the thermal paste had transformed into thermal cement. I looked into the hassle of buying .5mm 1mm and 2mm pads online, and realized, why am I doing this? Someone out there would probably make $$ repairing cards, right?

Might try to sell it on Ebay, but I might get a bad review from a scammer even if I'm super clear the card does not work. Life is complicated.

I have a few 1080ti's that are long in the tooth, and except for one amazing golden sample, they need to get the full cleanup to keep going IMO. Replace the pads with high quality pads, new fans. Maybe get 3+ more years out them. They have ROI'ed many times now since I bought them in the 2017 craze. I have my weakest 1080ti card mining at 107Watts and 30MH because of bad design/weak fans after 3 years.