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Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

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Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#31

Post by cl3misch »

davesmylie wrote: post #7

Never seen this done to a whole laptop, but it wasn't an uncommon last ditch method for pulling files off a dying HDD back in the days of spinning platters. Preferably in a zip lock vacuum bag and left over night. This is a 17 year old article, but I'm a little skeptical that 10 minutes in the fridge whilst still in the laptop would have made much difference. Probably the forced reboot did just as much. On the other…

I have also tried the Laptop baking many years ago with an ancient Dell Laptop which was known for its buggy internal Nvidia GPU.

However, I have learned in the meantime that lead-free solder requires temperatures much higher than achieved by baking PCBs in a literal kitchen oven.

Is there an explanation why this method is nevertheless so popular (maybe even successfull)?

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#32

Post by get-logname »

cl3misch wrote: post #31
davesmylie wrote: post #7

Never seen this done to a whole laptop, but it wasn't an uncommon last ditch method for pulling files off a dying HDD back in the days of spinning platters. Preferably in a zip lock vacuum bag and left over night. This is a 17 year old article, but I'm a little skeptical that 10 minutes in the fridge whilst still in the laptop would have made much difference. Probably the forced reboot did just as much. On the other…

I have also tried the Laptop baking many years ago with an ancient Dell Laptop which was known for its buggy internal Nvidia GPU. However, I have learned in the meantime that lead-free solder requires temperatures much higher than achieved by baking PCBs in a literal kitchen oven. Is there an explanation why this method is nevertheless so popular (maybe even successfull)?

I can confirm that this method resurected my GTX 970, but only worked for a couple of months more.

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#33

Post by Moru »

haolez wrote: post #21

I've done this once. I got a laptop from a new company that was really shitty, but I had hopes that running Gentoo with some nasty CFLAGS would make it usable. However, the thing would heat a lot when compiling the base system and would crash in the middle of the installation. Fair enough! I put it in the fridge and ran the installation from there. It concluded without issues and the laptop was MUCH faster than with…

I guess that is meaningful in a location with higher ambient temperatures. Here we just open up the computer a bit and aim a big table-fan at it for better cooling :-)

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#34

Post by the_third_wave »

Things I've baked which worked:

- HP laserprinter motherboards, 2 of them, one just a few days out of warranty. After a few minutes in the oven they went on to work for years and might still do so for all I know.

- HP JetDirect cards, 3 of them. All worked fine after baking, one of them needed a second bake after about a year. One of those is still in use, the other 2 got fried by lightning strikes - that was before I installed a surge protector in front of the fuse box.

- HP DV6000 motherboard, it worked for a number of years after that and probably still does, the LCD display eventually died which was the end for that piece of plasticky garbage

Notice a trend? HP seems to have had problems during the introduction of the RoHS directive [1].

- Asus something-or-other laptop motherboard, still works, one of the SoDIMMs died which left it with only 2 GB and it got retired

- PSU board for a 24" Hyundai monitor, still works and is hooked up as second monitor to the...

- Apple "Late 2009 27" iMac" graphics card, still works after the first bake, I'm using that machine (running Debian) as my main workstation.

The oven and the BGA reworkstation have saved a lot of equipment from early retirement, both at places I worked as well as here. I just repaired the PSU board for a HP (again HP...) 2910ag switch even though I could have swapped it on warranty because replacing a transistor and resistor is much quicker than going through the motions of a warranty replacement and to be honest also just because I can and to be even more honest because I only found out about the 100 year warranty on these switches after I had already fixed it...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Subst...

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#35

Post by mattclarkdotnet »

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #24
haolez wrote: post #21

I've done this once. I got a laptop from a new company that was really shitty, but I had hopes that running Gentoo with some nasty CFLAGS would make it usable. However, the thing would heat a lot when compiling the base system and would crash in the middle of the installation. Fair enough! I put it in the fridge and ran the installation from there. It concluded without issues and the laptop was MUCH faster than with…

Did condensation not pose a problem? Not just immediate shorts, but perhaps corrosion and the laptop dying earlier than expected.

Fridges are very low humidity environments.

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#36

Post by alx_the_new_guy »

cl3misch wrote: post #31
davesmylie wrote: post #7

Never seen this done to a whole laptop, but it wasn't an uncommon last ditch method for pulling files off a dying HDD back in the days of spinning platters. Preferably in a zip lock vacuum bag and left over night. This is a 17 year old article, but I'm a little skeptical that 10 minutes in the fridge whilst still in the laptop would have made much difference. Probably the forced reboot did just as much. On the other…

I have also tried the Laptop baking many years ago with an ancient Dell Laptop which was known for its buggy internal Nvidia GPU. However, I have learned in the meantime that lead-free solder requires temperatures much higher than achieved by baking PCBs in a literal kitchen oven. Is there an explanation why this method is nevertheless so popular (maybe even successfull)?

https://youtu.be/I0UMG3iVYZI?si=JztMr1sIkBzppkmn

The PS3 issue described in the video was more specific to it, but similar in it's nature.

TLDR from my very imperfect memory: The whole board-solder-chip sandwich expands at different rates due to heat, so internal stress and cracks develop in solder joints, which makes them fail. Baking PCB in an oven does something like making the crack close a bit, so that the solder joint works again.

Problem is, neither the crack, nor the internal stress that has been built up is gone, so the solution actually doesn't last.

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#37

Post by nanidin »

davesmylie wrote: post #7

Never seen this done to a whole laptop, but it wasn't an uncommon last ditch method for pulling files off a dying HDD back in the days of spinning platters. Preferably in a zip lock vacuum bag and left over night. This is a 17 year old article, but I'm a little skeptical that 10 minutes in the fridge whilst still in the laptop would have made much difference. Probably the forced reboot did just as much. On the other…

One of the fixes for the red ring of death on Xbox 360 was to wrap it in a towel so it would get hot enough to reflow bad solder joints.

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#38

Post by eru »

haolez wrote: post #21

I've done this once. I got a laptop from a new company that was really shitty, but I had hopes that running Gentoo with some nasty CFLAGS would make it usable. However, the thing would heat a lot when compiling the base system and would crash in the middle of the installation. Fair enough! I put it in the fridge and ran the installation from there. It concluded without issues and the laptop was MUCH faster than with…

What's a 'normal' Linux distro for comparison?

Do you mean one that ships binaries, or perhaps one that also enables a GUI by default?

Re: Adam? ... is there a reason your laptop is in the fridge? (2006)

#40

Post by alex_lav »

davesmylie wrote: post #7

Never seen this done to a whole laptop, but it wasn't an uncommon last ditch method for pulling files off a dying HDD back in the days of spinning platters. Preferably in a zip lock vacuum bag and left over night. This is a 17 year old article, but I'm a little skeptical that 10 minutes in the fridge whilst still in the laptop would have made much difference. Probably the forced reboot did just as much. On the other…

When I was ~11ish I found my desktop was overheating quite regularly. The solution I came up with on my $0 dollar budget was to pop the side of the case off and point a box fan into it. Worked like a charm…for a while.
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