So one day, my laptop’s graphics stopped working. Its a great laptop, but the graphics are completely messed up. I took it apart to try and fix it, but it is currently not working. Below are some photos of the inside, as well as a list of what I have tried. Comments and suggestions are welcome! The photos below are blurred slightly to prevent the serial numbers from being read. Those which contain no such numbers are not blurred.
This is the laptop with the keyboard, monitor, and most of the case off. The left heat pipe cools the northbridge and the CPU, while the right heat pipe cools the graphics card.
This is a close-up of the graphics card, the heat pipe is cooled by the fan on the right.
The underside of the card, with the main memory cooling piece.
This is the top of the cooling assembly. As soon as I opened it up I put some Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste on where the thermal pads used to be(the memory chips and the GPU). My theory was that it was overheating due to the terrible thermal pads. I’m not sure if this was a mistake or not, as it could be that everything else is now fixed but the memory chips just don’t touch the top of the cooling assembly. This is not likely though, as the bad graphics can occur right after turning the laptop on, and the problem can be temporarily fixed by pushing the graphics card into the motherboard and holding it there. I have tried various methods of securing it, but none seem to work well enough to keep it there for more than a few hours.
The graphics card with none of the cooling assembly, the card is an Nvidia 7800.
The back of the card.
The back cooling piece.
| Things I have tried | Results |
| Push down on the card before turning the computer on. | Computer works for a short while before messed up graphics and a memory parity error ensue. |
| Hold the card in place during operation. | Works, but I eventually have to let go because of the heat. |
| Keeping the card in place with inserts made of electric tape and aluminum foil(the electric tape surrounds the foil so nothing is shorted). | Computer works for a short while before messed up graphics and a memory parity error ensue. This tends to increase the time that the computer remains operational. |
| Apply AS5 Thermal paste. | Helped a bit, but did not lengthen operational time more than a few percent. |
| Put aluminum foil and electric tape inserts between the card and the motherboard(the parts other than the connection to the motherboard), while putting similar inserts above the card but below the casing(to hold it in place). | Worked for a surprising amount of time but then stopped, it is not a reliable method. |
| Lodging a screw driver in between the top case and the card to hold the card in place. | Worked for quite a while before the plastic case started bending to accommodate the screwdriver. |
| Screw the card in really tight. | Worked for a while before ceasing to work. |
| Turn up the fans of the computer during operation | Worked for a while, but always fails eventually. |
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