AX Gaming RTX 5060 Ti bent in half survives because its PCB is tiny
© Brother Zhang An AX Gaming GeForce RTX 5060 Ti arrived at Chinese repair technician Brother Zhang in a shape NVIDIA probably did not include in the board specification. The card had been stored in a car that was rear-ended , leaving the cooler, backplate and bracket severely bent. The GPU looked almost folded in half, but the owner was unharmed and the card still had a chance.
While GPU repair centers rarely fix mid-range card in this state, this particular model has a very short PCB. Most of the visible damage affected the cooler section extending beyond the board. Brother Zhang found only a slight bend in the PCB itself, with no obvious short circuit. After some careful straightening, the card powered on and displayed an image, which was already a good result for the unofficial curved edition.
© Brother Zhang 
© Brother Zhang The first victory did not last. Windows could detect the RTX 5060 Ti, but installing the driver caused a black screen. Memory tests did not report errors, so Zhang removed and resoldered the memory chip closest to the bent section. The card then booted with the driver installed and was correctly recognized as an 8GB RTX 5060 Ti with Samsung memory and a PCIe 5.0 x8 interface.
© Brother Zhang The original cooler was beyond repair, so the test setup used the partially straightened heatsink and two externally mounted fans. It was not suitable for a product photo, but it completed stress testing. The GPU reached 67°C, while the memory temperature peaked at 68°C. The stress test also reported a 98.9% stability result.
© Brother Zhang The owner now only needs to find a replacement cooler. This repair remained practical because the short PCB, GPU and most board components survived. If the impact had cracked the PCB or required work under the GPU core, repairing an RTX 5060 Ti would probably cost more than it was worth. In this case, the tiny board saved a graphics card that had already completed its own bend test.
I guess this is the very rare case where aftermarket GPU coolers start to make sense. Unfortunately, cutting the original cooler in half would most likely expose heat pipes and destroy the entire cooler (ever more).
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