The well-known Chinese maintenance YouTuber “Brother Zhang, who repairs computers” recently received the most tragic maintenance case in his career. A photo studio was struck by lightning due to a fault in the building’s lightning protection system. Tens of thousands of volts of high-voltage electricity instantly penetrated the studio and two computer mainframes were burned on the spot. However, he miraculously rescued an RTX 3070 graphics card with the wonderful “boiling method”.
The cause of this incident was an abnormality in the lightning rod system on the top floor of the building. According to subsequent investigations by firefighting and electric power professionals, the water tank on the top floor was too close to the lightning rod system, which produced a dangerous “step voltage” during thunderstorms: After lightning struck the lightning rod, the current spread rapidly on the ground to form a potential difference. The closer to the lightning strike point, the higher the voltage. The ground wire of the building was reversely penetrated, instantly carrying tens of thousands of volts of high-voltage electricity.
The powerful current instantly triggered a chain reaction. Two computer hosts in the photo studio were burned on the spot, and the router and all network cables were burned out. What’s even more shocking is that the entire store’s furniture and photography equipment were almost burned to the ground (it was miserable enough). Fortunately, the shop owner was not present when the accident occurred and he escaped unhurt.
The moment Brother Zhang opened the case, even he gasped: the figures inside the case were burned beyond recognition, and the surface was covered with a thick layer of white slag (the corpse of the doll that was originally on it); the power supply line under the motherboard was completely melted, and the blackened wires were firmly stuck to the PCB board; and the casing of this RTX 3070 graphics card was blackened by thick smoke, and the fan and the entire cooling casing were completely deformed and scrapped.
However, after Brother Zhang used a multimeter to measure the circuits one by one, he unexpectedly found that there were no obvious traces of short circuits on the graphics card, and the core chip was most likely intact. This made him decide to try his luck.
“Boiled Dafa” Practical Combat: Boil the graphics card to save the core
In order to completely remove the carbonized residue and smokey gum from the circuit board, Brother Zhang used the “washing method”, first scrubbing the surface of the graphics card with detergent and water:
Then put the graphics card into high-temperature water and use ultrasonic vibration to completely shake out the remaining conductive particles in the gaps of the electronic components. As you can see from the video, he cooked the entire RTX 3070 in boiling water, took it out, rinsed it with water, and then placed it in a professional constant-temperature drying oven to ensure that the inside of the circuit board was completely dry to avoid secondary damage.
After cleaning and drying, Brother Zhang conducted a thorough inspection of the graphics card and confirmed that there was no short circuit fault:
Then it was transferred to the test platform, turned on, and the screen lit up successfully. After that, the owner purchased a new cooling module and installed it for testing.
As can be seen from the later part of the video, Brother Zhang not only ran the 3DMark stress test (Kone reached 99.2%), but also changed three different brands of games for three consecutive days, and “no problems occurred during the process.” Brother Zhang concluded: “Nakana’s body is very healthy.”
Brother Zhang said that it is extremely rare in his maintenance career that the graphics card can survive such a strong high-voltage electric shock. Generally, in a lightning strike of this level, the hardware will be directly penetrated and scrapped. The core was saved this time because the motherboard and power supply withstood most of the current surge, allowing the GPU core to escape.
Use after repair
This miraculously restored RTX 3070 graphics card has now been returned to the user. But it won’t just be put back into the computer and continue playing games – it will serve as an important key evidence for insurance claims and be used by relevant departments for technical research on lightning protection.
“Boiled Dafa” Controversy and Professional Warnings
Brother Zhang also repeatedly emphasized in the video: “You must not learn how to operate like me.” If the washed circuit board is not completely dried, the residual moisture will cause a short circuit; and the boiling process may cause the solder joints to loosen or the passive components to crack. This requires a very professional follow-up process, and ordinary consumers should not imitate it. The owner of the machine where the video was interrupted also described what happened that day. Friends who are interested can take a look for themselves:
Source: KOCPC Chinese