An unusual story of a graphics card repair appeared on Reddit. A user under the nickname External_Length_8877 said that his father managed to restore a faulty GeForce RTX 3070 using a capacitor taken from an old radio. According to the author of the post, this repair saved approximately $115.
In addition to replacing the failed capacitor, the enthusiast also updated the thermal paste, using a compound designed for high-voltage equipment. According to the graphics card owner, after the repair, the accelerator works even better than before the breakdown.
However, there were compromises. The capacitor from the radio turned out to be noticeably larger than the original, so now it protrudes beyond the edge of the graphics card's printed circuit board. In most cases, this should not be a serious problem, but in compact systems, the additional element may interfere with installation.
According to the author of the post, after the repair, the graphics card in Marvel's Spider-Man at maximum graphics settings (without frame generation) is loaded up to 99%, but the graphics card temperature does not exceed 80 °C, and the processor temperature is 75 °C. Before the repair, the situation was significantly worse: during stress tests, the graphics card temperature exceeded 100 °C, and under normal load, it could rise above 80 °C.
The user himself notes that the current solution is only temporary. In the future, he plans to find a capacitor that fully matches the original in size and characteristics to finally complete the repair.