Picked up an “untested” GTX 780 today for £10, figured it’d be a fun gamble.
Plugged it in — it booted fine and showed display using the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter, but as soon as I tried to install NVIDIA drivers, it’d crash or fail to initialise.
What I tried (all today):
Booted into safe mode
Ran DDU
Tried multiple driver versions (old & new)
Flashed a custom and different vBIOS
Tweaked BIOS settings
Still no luck. NVIDIA drivers just wouldn’t.
I was about to give up and declare it dead -but then I saw posts about cracked BGA solder joints under the GPU die causing this exact issue.
The fix:
Took the heatsink off
Hit the GPU die with a hair dryer for 20 minutes straight
Let it cool naturally
Reassembled it, slapped on some paste
It worked!
NVIDIA drivers now install and initialise with no issues. It’s running games and benchmarks fine.
No artifacts, no crashes, no black screen. Just a fully working GTX 780 for £10 and a hair dryer.
Might not last forever, but for now?
Budget PC repair wizardry: achieved.