The 4070S Still Powered On After Being Smashed and Doused with Oil! *PC* Gamers Find It Too Hard to Watch

When I saw that RTX 4070 Super wrapped in plastic wrap and sent in for repair, my first reaction wasn’t that it was outrageous, but that it was a little upsetting. It felt like it had been swept into an emotional storm that had nothing to do with it. It was clearly just a piece of hardware inside a PC, yet in the end it became the one to “take the damage” after an argument. On April 9, repair blogger “Brother Zhang Who Fixes Computers” posted a video fully showing the restoration process of this battle-damaged 4070 Super. The cause was that after a husband-and-wife quarrel, the graphics card was first smashed and then had cooking oil poured into it through the heatsink fins.

The graphics card was still wrapped in plastic wrap when it was sent in, and after it was opened, a large amount of cooking oil flowed straight out. That image was genuinely striking. Besides the oil contamination, the card itself also had obvious physical damage, including a bent bracket, deformed aluminum fins, and a loosened outer frame. It was no longer as simple as just being “dirty.” The repair technicians could only start by scrubbing the PCB with dish soap, then rinsing it with water, drying it in an oven, and finally using alcohol for further cleaning—essentially treating a high-end graphics card like a critically injured patient and painstakingly bringing it back bit by bit.

What impressed me most this time wasn’t actually the “revival” of the graphics card itself, but the almost stubborn patience in the repair approach. After cleaning, testing showed that the DP port needed to be replaced, and the card was still stuck in the B2 state and unable to boot. Further investigation confirmed an error in the memory B1 channel. Even more troublesome, after the memory chip was removed, 6 PCB solder pads had actually come off, and 4 of them were critical signal points. The only way forward was to repair them with jumper wires, rebuild the solder balls, and re-solder the chip. Only then was the card finally able to light up successfully.

But what pulled me out of it was that many people in the comments focused on the husband-and-wife fight and meme-making, with jokes like, “The couple fought, I won, the graphics card lost.” Sure, jokes spread easily, but if the whole incident is treated as nothing more than a punchline, it feels a bit uncomfortable to me. Because what really leaves lasting damage here isn’t just the cost of repairing the hardware, but also that sense of losing control and using objects as an emotional outlet. There’s nothing lighthearted about it.

Judging from the outcome, although this 4070 Super was repaired to the point of lighting up again, it can’t really be considered a “full recovery.” The original post mentioned that because the PCB suffered severe compression deformation from the impact, the stress condition of the gold fingers had already changed. Once the computer is placed upright, the graphics card will sag under gravity, causing poor contact and possibly even preventing it from powering on. In other words, it can only barely be used when the case is laid flat. Even a GPU support bracket can’t completely solve the problem, and a riser board may be needed for a suspended mounting setup.

If you’re an average gamer, my advice is actually very straightforward: for a battle-damaged card at this level, watching repair videos to learn something is fine, but if you’re really buying second-hand, stay far away from graphics cards that are “repaired and usable” but already structurally damaged. Because being able to light up does not mean it can accompany you through games stably over the long term. It’s more like a relationship that’s being held together by sheer effort: it may look reconnected on the surface, but the frame underneath is already warped. Rather than gambling on future risks, carefully checking the GPU’s outer frame, ports, gold fingers, and stress condition will always matter more than hearing someone say, “It’s already been fixed.”