Please do NOT "reflow" these systems or bake the video cards in an oven. It is NOT a proper repair.

The "oven trick" has been done numerous times since this system's debut in 2007, much like the Xbox 360. It is NOT a proper repair. All Nvidia 8000 series chips suffer from "bumpgate". "Baking" the card in an oven destroys the PCB in most cases. 9/10, The correct repair is replacing the GPU chips with new ones via a BGA rework station. New chips can still be ordered online.

The video cards for these systems are very rare nowadays, especially the 9000 series models. "Baking" them is making them nearly impossible to repair as the PCB often gets destroyed during a "baking" process. The aforementioned "baking" hurts components on the PCB and will fry other components (memory, resistors etc.)

If you are buying an M1730 to tinker with, please be aware of "baked" GPUs and don't attempt to do it yourself. A dead giveaway is a discoloration of the GPU PCB (forest green to army green strongly suggests it was thrown into an oven).