A few weeks ago, I'm playing Minecraft, minding my own business. (Or should I say mining.... hohohoho, witty). For anybody who knows anything about the game... I had recently found a lava pool and made some obsidian, so my current goal was to find some diamond so i could mine the obsidian. I decided to do this by digging under my house all the way to bedrock. The final layer before bedrock.... Diamonds! I was happy! I quickly mined it and ran back upstairs to put it in a chest. But right after I did, my screen got filled with artifacts and froze. I had to hard reset my system. When I booted it back up... corrupt save file. Woo..... After a little tinkering, I did manage to get an the prior save working... however I had already mined the diamond, but it wasn't in my inventory. Upset, I continued digging until I found more diamonds. Except all i found were more artifacts and freezes. I gave up. Next day, my computer wouldn't even boot up Windows and was artifacting right on the motherboard screen. UGH! After doing a little research, I found out some people had success baking their video cards. Essentially resoldering all the tiny joints, fixing any loose spots. This is my adventure into a place where no man had gone before.... the kitchen.


Here it is. GeForce 7600GT. Not exactly the epitome of greatness, but when you have an old PC that has an AGP port, you don't have many options.


Took the fan and heatsink off. Also wiped up some mysterious white fluid inbetween the fan and chip.... I guess someone at the factory had a weird fetish. :\


The mount plate comes off. One screw was directly on the card, and the other screws are the things that the VGA and DVI plus screw into... Didn't know this. Needed a set of pliers to get those loose.


Preheating the oven to 385F. While that's happening, I set a sheet of heavy duty Reynold's Wrap on a cookie sheet, and place 4 balled up pieces of aluminum foil to elevate the card. Now we wait...


Waitings done. Throw that bad boy in there!


Fast forward 8 minutes.... Smells delicious.


Wait. Oh shhhhhhhh. It's at this point that I keep throwing the card in the oven every few minutes to try and get those pieces back where they belong. Had to do it a few times because the solder kept hardening before I could get them all in. Definitely not good.... Eventually, i get them in and wait for the card to cool. Throw it in my computer and.....


Looks like it's too far gone.