In the ComputerBase community there is now a detailed blog that deals with graphics card modifications such as those about “zombie boards”, repairing defective graphics cards and troubleshooting crashes and image errors. It was brought to life by Masterchief79.
Let others participate in the hobby
Sure In the past, Masterchief79 regularly documented repair attempts on various graphics cards in the graphics card picture thread he initiated in 2014. In his new My Graphics Card modding and repair blog, the topic should receive its own attention in the future. In addition to repair attempts, modding should also be an issue.
I got back into my hardware hobby stronger than ever and the idea is to document my progress and learnings and ideas, successes here and openly discuss failures with you.
Masterchief79, Community Member
While the repairs and mods often revolve around reballing chips or changing the cooling system, Masterchief79 describes, for example, how he creates so-called “zombie boards” with partially defective graphics cards by removing the functioning part of the PCB with the power supply and thus the power supply replaced with a still working but weaker equipped graphics card to enable extreme OC attempts.
Older graphics cards are particularly susceptible here, as there are too few phases available for stable OC operation, these are restricted by protective mechanisms, or the PCIe connection does not provide enough power.
Defect does not mean completely useless
Using a Zotac GTS 250 with a defective GPU from 2009, he shows step by step how he modifies this PCB. The board was sawn up with a chop saw, then the edges were deburred, sanded and protected with plastic 70 spray. Masterchief79 has done this before, but this is the first time he has done it without a template from someone else.
Cross-cut saw in use (Image: Masterchief79)
Zombie board under load (image: Masterchief79)Compressor cooling and troubleshooting
In addition, Masterchief79 shows in his blog how he overclocks Radeon HD graphics cards with the help of compressor cooling and which errors can occur when soldering, always supported by the community. Step by step, he tracked down errors that occurred independently with several graphics cards and were caused, among other things, by the soldering work.
His latest construction site is a Radeon R7 260X, the repair of which is gradually approaching a successful conclusion.
Dmgg is what Mods/Mats is to Nvidia. A small script to test the memory chips on AMD graphics cards. It even tells you which memory chip has failed, so you don't have to fix all 8 or 16 chips – an incredibly important tool.
Masterchief79, Community Member
Radeon R7 260X (pic : Masterchief79)Feedback expressly desired
Questions and suggestions as well as praise and criticism on the subject are, as always, expressly welcome in the comments on this message. The author and editors look forward to hearing about your point of view first-hand.
Bring on the hints!
< p class="p text-width">In the “From the community” category, the editors repeatedly focus on interesting reader articles from the ComputerBase forum.
Last the following reader articles from the ComputerBase forum have secured a place on the start page:
- AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT optimized for efficiency
- In search of the strongest AGP platform
- The 3dfx T-Buffer
- Steam Deck reviews
- Do-it-yourself Airbus A320 cockpit
- Dual Xeon CPU vs. Ryzen 1700X
< li> GPU coolant: WLP, cheese, potatoes and ketchup compared