Spilt water on my tower like a dumbass

[Aidan_hd5]

Earlier today i was watching youtube with my feet on my desk, as my cat was doing something I turned around to see what he was doing, spilling my cup of water in the process. The liquid (about half a cup) landed right into the top of my tower and got flung everywhere by the fan. I sat there in disbelief for about 3 seconds when i subsequently lost video output from my GPU. At that point i was like “oh shit” and immediately yanked the power cord from my PSU. I pulled off the side panel and unplugged some of the PSU cables from the GPU and motherboard and got a paper towel to wipe up any visible liquid. I then blew into the ports that had water in them in an attempt to dry them out. After reassembling everything I plugged it back in and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. I did that a few times then after realizing that it wasn’t gonna turn on I removed the PSU entirely to let it dry off for a while. Upon further inspection the CPU power port on my motherboard had visible liquid in it, as well as on my GPU. So that poses a few questions.

 

1) What components, if any, are fried?

2) What would the best course of action be from here. IE letting it sit for 24 hours and trying again.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

After reassembling everything I plugged it back in and tried to turn it on

No, god damn it. Do not try turning on wet electronics, you risk blowing it all up even worse! For fuck's sakes! Wait at least 24 hours before even thinking of trying anything!

[Hackentosher]

Womp womp. That sucks man, I've been there. For future reference, you should wait 24-48 hours to make sure everything is drier than the Atacama before you think about plugging the power supply back in. It's hard to say what is dead because you haven't done much troubleshooting, but at this point that's probably for the best. Unplug your power supply, tuck yourself into bed, and try again in a couple days, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Given that you poured in water from the top, I'd imagine that water got on the back of your GPU, so that might be done, but it's almost impossible to say at this point.

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

No, god damn it. Do not try turning on wet electronics, you risk blowing it all up even worse! For fuck's sakes! Wait at least 24 hours before even thinking of trying anything!

Chill bro, they didn't know any better. Now OP learned the really hard way.

[zeusthemoose]

3 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

2) What would the best course of action be from here. IE letting it sit for 24 hours and trying again.

You should have let it dry for much longer before turning it on again. Best thing to do is disassemble it as far as you can, clean any visible water with a paper towel, and let it air dry for about a week. Clean any corrosion you see with rubbing alcohol. Let it dry for a little bit longer after that.

 

5 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

1) What components, if any, are fried?

After that, you can try to diagnose what is broken. It’s impossible to tell now. Once it is completely dry, see if it works. If it doesn’t (very likely), comment here with what is happening and we can diagnose from there.

[aisle9]

17 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

1) What components, if any, are fried?

2) What would the best course of action be from here. IE letting it sit for 24 hours and trying again.

1. At the very least, your PSU is dead. Your motherboard probably is too, based on where that water was. Your GPU and CPU are up in the air. SATA SSDs should be fine, but if the PSU is dead, it very well may have nuked everything when the water shorted it out. I mean, I don't want to pile on, but if your system gets wet, especially your PSU, trying to turn it on is the absolute worst possible thing you can do.

 

2. Open up your PC. Remove everything. Disassemble it completely. Lay the components out in a safe, static-free place to dry. Leave them alone for at least 5-7 days, ideally more like 7-10. Water evaporates, but not quickly. Set them in a way that will encourage water to drain, like your motherboard vertically instead of horizontally. Seriously, do not touch them again once they're set up to dry. Then test your system with a new PSU because yours is toast and hope for the best.

[Aidan_hd5]

Welp, guess it’s time to sell my phantom 4 lol. One thing I don’t understand is, my PSU is in the basement of my case, and had no water on it at all. So I don’t quite get how it could’ve fried everything.

[Bombastinator]

40 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

No, god damn it. Do not try turning on wet electronics, you risk blowing it all up even worse! For fuck's sakes! Wait at least 24 hours before even thinking of trying anything!

He did say “like a dumbass”. I think this was that part.

 

16 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

Welp, guess it’s time to sell my phantom 4 lol. One thing I don’t understand is, my PSU is in the basement of my case, and had no water on it at all. So I don’t quite get how it could’ve fried everything.

The ends of the cables it’s attached to aren’t though and if there’s water enough to short across two pins, boom.

[ColtronYT]

oof

 

[Aidan_hd5]

Well I wasn’t expecting to be in the market for a new GPU as well as a CPU. With that being said, what components can I count on not being cooked? 

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

Well I wasn’t expecting to be in the market for a new GPU as well as a CPU. With that being said, what components can I count on not being cooked? 

None.  Got to test everything   Even a cable could be fried though it’s less likely.

[Aidan_hd5]

Well after two days of drying it still won’t turn on, so I think it’s safe to say that at the very least my PSU is cooked. I have another one coming in the mail tomorrow. I have set aside around 800 dollars to get a new CPU, GPU, and MoBo. I have been meaning to upgrade from my 1070 and i7 6700k for awhile so I guess now is a better time than ever to do so.

 

An off topic question, if the ram isn’t dead, would it still be compatible with a ryzen cpu? 

[ILiterallyHaveNoFriends]

3 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

An off topic question, if the ram isn’t dead, would it still be compatible with a ryzen cpu? 

Probably

[Bombastinator]

11 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

Well after two days of drying it still won’t turn on, so I think it’s safe to say that at the very least my PSU is cooked. I have another one coming in the mail tomorrow. I have set aside around 800 dollars to get a new CPU, GPU, and MoBo. I have been meaning to upgrade from my 1070 and i7 6700k for awhile so I guess now is a better time than ever to do so.

 

An off topic question, if the ram isn’t dead, would it still be compatible with a ryzen cpu? 

Ryzen takes ddr4 which is the same stuff as has been used in pretty much everything for the past few years.  It prefers high speed memory but it will work with slower stuff.

[Aidan_hd5]

Well after getting a new PSU and motherboard I installed the CPU and GPU that were in the damaged system. I got power to both the GPU and CPU however, the system won’t post. I tried using the HDMI out on both the mobo and the GPU. Is this an indication that my CPU is damaged? 

 

For anyone wondering, the mobo is a ASUS Prime B360M-C. Yes I know it’s not a board meant for gaming, but it was the only thing for sale at any local computer shops, and I read that I shouldn’t have any compatibility issues with the 6700k.

 

[zeusthemoose]

Are the system fans and gpu fans spinning when you turn it on?

[Aidan_hd5]

Quote

12 minutes ago, zeusthemoose said:

Are the system fans and gpu fans spinning when you turn it on?

 

The system and GPU fans turn on for about 3 seconds then go off, but then they come back on and stay on, but I still don’t get any video out.

[zeusthemoose]

15 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

The system and GPU fans turn on for about 3 seconds then go off, but then they come back on and stay on, but I still don’t get any video out.

Have you made sure all the cable are in properly?

[Aidan_hd5]

2 minutes ago, zeusthemoose said:

Have you made sure all the cable are in properly?

Yeah i’m pretty sure everything is connected properly.

[zeusthemoose]

7 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

Yeah i’m pretty sure everything is connected properly.

When you tested the cpu only, did you remove the gpu?

[Aidan_hd5]

1 minute ago, zeusthemoose said:

When you tested the cpu only, did you remove the gpu?

Yes I did.

[zeusthemoose]

Just now, Aidan_hd5 said:

Yes I did.

Then it’s either the ram or cpu. My guess is ram because the rest of the system seems to be working.

[Aidan_hd5]

Well I finally got the damn thing to post and boot into windows and I found that the GPU isn’t dead. Only things that died were the CPU, PSU, and MoBo. I suppose I got off pretty lucky considering the fact that I tried turning the thing on only minutes after soaking it in beverage.

[zeusthemoose]

1 minute ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

Well I finally got the damn thing to post and boot into windows and I found that the GPU isn’t dead. Only things that died were the CPU, PSU, and MoBo. I suppose I got off pretty lucky considering the fact that I tried turning the thing on only minutes after soaking it in beverage.

Thats unfortunate, but still better than what could of happened. Good luck with future use!

and keep water away from your computer...

[Bombastinator]

21 minutes ago, Aidan_hd5 said:

Well I finally got the damn thing to post and boot into windows and I found that the GPU isn’t dead. Only things that died were the CPU, PSU, and MoBo. I suppose I got off pretty lucky considering the fact that I tried turning the thing on only minutes after soaking it in beverage.

There was a “if it’s not dead already kill it again” aspect to that one.  Could have been worse.

[Aidan_hd5]

Well thanks a ton for the help guys.