Watch On The fan, heat sinks, and other components went under the faucet as well, with the fan motor being the only thing left out. Instead, they cleaned that part with isopropyl alcohol, after which they applied bike chain lubricant to make it run smoothly and quietly once more.
With everything cleaned and dried, the technician applied new PTM and reassembled the GPU. The final result is quite impressive, given the age of the graphics card. During the cleaning process, Madness727 said, "It looks brand new; no scratches, nothing —which is crazy, by the way. It’s in perfect physical shape; there’s [ sic ] no dents or scratches, or missing MLCCs or resistors on the PCB. Everything is perfect."
Some extra photos of the Refurbished card pic.twitter.com/LLPXpMYsrR November 8, 2025
Lastly, they tested the card slotted in an MSI Z390-A Pro motherboard with an Intel Core i5-9600K processor and some Viper RAM sticks. They got the GPU running, with the card pushing out around 16 FPS on their benchmarking software, and about 5 FPS in Crysis. These aren’t playable numbers, but that’s understandable, given the games, settings, and age of the card.
We don’t know where the refurbished Asus ROG Matrix 9800 GT will end up, but the tech mentioned that they have already sold a couple of these GPUs they’ve previously owned to a collector. We’re hoping that this lovingly restored piece of computing history will also get the same treatment. After all, even though it can no longer run the latest games and compete with the best gaming GPUs you can buy today, it still has a unique design that Asus is continuing today with the ROG Matrix RTX 5090 with built-in sag detection .
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/computer-technician-refurbs-gpu-clogged-with-tar-and-nicotine-from-years-of-use-by-a-smoker-i-am-not-blowing-on-that-im-getting-cancer-from-this-says-repair-tech#main
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