What are the odds only the Mobo/PSU is bad after water damage and is it even worth fixing?

Kawaii Koneko · January 12, 2021

So my beloved Dell XPS 12 9Q23 suffered a bit of water damage. I spilled a glass of water over the keyboard while it was running. It instantly died and after thoroughly drying will no longer start up. So I'm pretty sure I at least fried the mobo and possibly the CPU. But what about the screen? Do you think that is still good?

Reason I ask is because I'm looking on eBay and I see I can get a replacement for under $200 but with water damaged or totally bad screens. Shells are a bit rough too in some cases but I figure I can just swap over the internals into mine and have a perfectly good laptop. Plus, my unit was on only the i5 with 4GB RAM. The ones I am looking at have the i7 with 8GB.

Also, I'm not sure if it is worth fixing. It is from 2013 and only has a 4th gen i5 (i7 with the update). But here is the thing. I ABSOLTELY love this laptop. It does everything I need or want in a laptop anymore. 1080p, small form factory (although a little thick compared to today's standards), backlit keyboard, great typing experience, pretty good touchpad, touchscreen and convertible, and plays YouTube 1080p 60fps video and 1080p 10bit video flawlessly.

I don't travel for work anymore so gaming on the go is of no concern anymore. I have a gaming PC so gaming performance isn't important in general really. I really only use my laptop for general web surfing and YouTube while on the couch. I do use it in tablet mode for reading manga when my tablet is dead as well.

If I were to upgrade, I would get the XPS 13 2-1 but the added performance wouldn't really get me anything. Form factor and build quality would really be the main reasons to get it.

Also, any new laptop that I look at around the price of fixing mine, even if I throw a couple hundred extra \at it, just doesn't stand up build quality wise even if they do far outperform mine.

Anyway, what do you all think? Should I just take the risk and assume the screen is good on mine or maybe try to find something else used for a few hundred bucks that is comparable to mine. Maybe even take the plunge and just get the XPS 13 2-1? Any suggestions welcome.