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I have a Late 2009 iMac 27" i7. The GPU is failing and I am going to remove it and bake it. If I get another year out of the iMac, that would make it worth the trouble. But while I have the iMac apart… The optical drive croaked a couple of years ago and I bought an external drive for CDs, DVDs, etc. If I were to remove the optical drive, would the empty space help the internal fans in cooling the interior? And if I do pull the ODD, will it mess up the System software? I know I could stick a SSD in the ODD space, but first I want to get the GPU card restored. Thanks.
The problem with baking cookies is that if the temperature is to low the cookies don’t get done. If to high they burn. So how long and at what temperature do you bake at? You are trying to do reflow of the solder on the GPU. In an oven you have no idea of if that has happened or if it has been heated to the point that the solder just runs all over the place. So the question becomes, “at what temperature does the solder flow?” Since you have no idea of what solder it is (there are many different solders that melt at different temperatures) just where do you set the oven and how long do you bake it? If you use a hot air work station you can see when it flows and have control over just the area you want to heat. http://www.ebay.com/itm/XTronic-4000-Ser…
No, it won’t effect the systems cooling as it’s not in use. Besides, the thermal sensor within it would confuse your system if it was disconnected making things worse. You may want to focus on cleaning out as much of the dust buildup within the system. Between the fans & cooling fins you should be able to gain some cooling perfomance that way. Don’t forget to clean & re-apply a good thermal paste and you might want to get a good thermal monitoring app like: TG Pro. If you get the full version you can see the before and after effects of cleaning & refreshing the thermal paste.
