Fishing caught a computer, and it was an eSports console powered by NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti! China’s well-known hardware repair YouTuber “Brother Zhang, who repairs computers” recently received a mysterious package from a female viewer. It contained a soaked computer “fished” from the river. The entire machine was covered in mud and severely rusted, almost like a newly unearthed cultural relic. But after some miraculous repairs by Brother Zhang, this RTX 3070 Ti miraculously came to life, and even the data on the hard drive was completely preserved!
A netizen fishing on the river actually caught an RTX 3070 Ti computer soaked in water
Brother Zhang mentioned at the beginning of the video that a video circulated on the Internet a while ago, in which a woman accidentally fished a computer host from the water while fishing at the beach. At that time, many netizens were talking about it. Some thought it was a script, but others reminded the woman: “This graphics card of yours is very valuable. I suggest you send it to Brother Zhang for research.” Brother Zhang was dubious at first, but unexpectedly a few days later, a large and heavy cardboard box was actually sent to his studio. We also found the original video of catching the host, which really looked like a joke.
Unboxing: Horrible “Cultural Artifacts Unearthed from the Water”
When Brother Zhang opened the carton, the situation at the scene was more tragic than imagined. The entire computer host has been severely deformed, the interior is full of mud and water stains, and the parts are severely oxidized and rusted, just like a cultural relic just fished out of the bottom of the water. Brother Zhang described it: “It feels like a newly unearthed cultural relic.”
After preliminary disassembly, the host is equipped as follows:
- Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti(Value approximately NT$15,000~20,000/RMB 3,000~4,000)
- CPU：Intel Core i5-13600KF(worth approximately NT$4,500/RMB 1,000)
- Memory, SSD solid state driveWaiting for surroundings
Among them, the entire graphics card was wrapped in mud, and the radiator and backplate were severely corroded. However, Brother Zhang found that the appearance of the core and memory particles seemed to be quite complete, and judged that there was still a chance of repair.
Deep cleaning: ultrasonic cleaning + oven baking
Faced with this graphics card full of mud, Brother Zhang adopted the traditional cleaning process:
- Rinse with water: Rinse repeatedly until the circuit board is clean again
- Hand brushing: Use cleaner and brush to carefully remove large pieces of sludge from the circuit board
- Ultrasonic cleaning: Put the graphics card into the ultrasonic cleaning machine and use high-frequency vibration to shake out the stubborn dirt in the gaps.
- oven baking: Put the cleaned graphics card into the oven to dry at low temperature, and let it sit for a few days to ensure it is completely dry.
Brother Zhang also washed the motherboard, but he admitted that the motherboard “cannot survive”. Since the PCB board has been severely deformed, there is a high probability that it will not be saved.
Circuit Diagnosis: Find the 3.3V power supply disconnect
After baking and drying, Brother Zhang began to conduct circuit testing on the graphics card. First, he measured whether each power supply node was short-circuited:
- PCIe 12V ground value: 501
- 12V power supply: normal
- 5V power supply: normal
- 1.8V power supply: missing ❌
Brother Zhang determined that the problem was that the 1.8V power supply was not generated, and the root cause was the abnormal power supply of the PWM control chip. After repeatedly running the circuit, he finally found the fault point: the 3.3V power supply via (Via) leading from the B10 position of the gold finger to the chip was broken due to oxidation, causing the chip to be unable to obtain working voltage.
After finding the problem, Brother Zhang modified the resistor circuit to lead the 3.3V power supply directly to the PWM chip. After the welding is completed, power on and test again. 1.8V is generated smoothly, and the power supply of other groups is also output normally. Brother Zhang installed the graphics card on the test platform and the screen lit up successfully!
Performance test: 290W fully loaded machine passed stably
After installing a set of dismantled cooling modules on the graphics card that can be lit, a rigorous stress test was then conducted. Finally, 3DMark conducted a stress test with a pass rate of 99%. For a graphics card that was once soaked in water and covered with mud, this result can only be said to be a very lucky one:
- FurMark burn-in: The core frequency climbs steadily, the power consumption reaches 290W, and the TDP is 100%
- temperature performance: The power supply and temperature curves are stable and have no abnormal fluctuations.
- 3DMark stress test: Passed successfully with a 99% pass rate
- Continuous testing: Brother Zhang let this card run for two consecutive days, running for two hours every day, without any crashes or errors.
Other parts: CPU died, memory and SSD miraculously survived
In addition to the graphics card, Brother Zhang also tested other parts:
- CPU（i5-13600KF）: ❌ Definitely killed in action. After changing to another motherboard, the motherboard directly lights up the CPU fault red light.
- memory:✅ Miracle survival! After plugging it in, you can boot into the system normally.
- SSD hard drive:✅ Totally normal! Not only was the data completely preserved, but the system could start smoothly. Brother Zhang also saw files from 2022 to 2024 on the hard drive. He speculated that the computer may have been soaked in water for more than a year (but in fact it should not be possible. It should be that the host that has been idle for a long time was just thrown into the water)
Brother Zhang said humorously: “The CPU is down, but everything else is fine. This little girl found a big leak!” (He should have forgotten that the motherboard is also down)
Friends who are interested can watch this video, it is quite interesting:
Summarize
An RTX 3070 Ti graphics card, memory, and SSD that had been soaked in river water, covered in mud, and severely corroded were successfully resurrected under professional maintenance techniques, and the performance is almost the same as the original (it may also take a while to cause problems), which fully demonstrates the amazing durability of modern electronic components under certain conditions. However, Brother Zhang also reminded that whether electronic products soaked in water can be repaired depends on many factors: whether it is powered on when soaked in water, the length of soaking in water, the acid and alkali properties of the sludge, etc. This success story is quite lucky, and it does not mean that all graphics cards that have been exposed to water can be resurrected by such a miracle.
For the girl who caught the computer while fishing, almost all of it except the CPU was rescued, including the data on the hard drive, which can be said to be a very lucky ending.
Source: KOCPC Chinese