Raidmax
Member
Artifacting its when the GPU Die its about to die, due to poor maintenance and heat damage, the substrate also gets damaged in the process, to a point that the GPU won't show any picture, hence the GLOD, not YLOD, reflow only fixes the Substrate temporarily, but the time-frame its unknown, what i observed through the years its, the more heat you give the longer it lasts, but sometimes that isn't the case.
If the GPU shows signs of Artifacting or GLOD then a Chip replacement its advised, but if the console refuses to start due to a YLOD, then yes, you have to replace the NEC Caps, but with reflowing and reballing when the console gives you a YLOD you're actually damaging/fixing the substrate GPU and temporarily restoring the NECs Capacitive properties, so its two birds with one stone.
Btw, reflowing a dead GPU doesn't need 350°C, because the lead free aloy has a tolerance of 217°C, so you are risking damaging the BGA grid in the process, but i bet that the heat-gun doesn't even push 350°Cs of hot air, combined with the ambient temperature that value decreases, so back to the point, next time when you want to "fix" reflow a dead GPU use 150°Cs, this is more than enough heat to fix the GPU substrate.
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It actually does push out 550*C. While it doesn't have any temperature sensor, I can tell whether it's on 350*C or 500*C by how much glow it does when powered on. 500*C is quite bright, while 350*C is faint.
Anyways, that G04 was already dead when I first got it. It came from a friend's IT repair shop, and he wanted to get rid of a few old things he had no use for. I got these 2 PS3s (this G04 and a H04), and a bunch of AM2/775/462 mobos, mostly working.
And finally, while most professional people that do reflows and such will say this is highly unorthodox, I literally don't have enough fingers on both hands and toes to number how many laptops and MXM GPUs (removable GPUs) I've brought back with this heatgun. Even the worst HP DV6700 I could get my hands on was brought back to life and is still chugging along great.

This is the heatgun I'm using, although it's branded Kaufland and not "Mader".
Haven't tried removing NEC/TOKIN caps with it tho.
I had to deal with these dreaded lil' buggers in a Acer Aspire 6920G lappy. I just pried away the top with a small sized wire cutter first, then used a combination of tweezers + pliers to gently rip the cap innards away until I was just left with the terminal pads. Tinned them, stuck in 3x330uF (depends on the application) and it came back to life and worked like brand new.
