Mobo went swimming and survived

kangk81 · March 6, 2016

Hi, I think this is my first ever post on the LTT forums so I thought I would share what I have been through over the past 2 days.

I went out and bought a bunch of stuffs to fix a slow leaking rotary joint and took the chance to change my rad from 30mm to 60mm. Went home drain, dismantle, install and all that finger tearing stuff.

It was 11pm at night during the filling process, that I realise there was a puddle on the floor and the VRM fitting was wide open and there was a mini fountain.I have been through this and it took out the mobo, RAMs and CPU, now it was the 2nd time.

But it was different this time, I remembered my lesson 1 year ago and removed the 8-pin CPU power and 24-pin ATX(I was using it to jump start the PSU) prior to filling so there was absolutely no power going to the mobo. However it was late and I was feeling tired and defeated, I left the rig swimming in a puddle of coolant and went to sleep.

The next morning woke up, had breakfast, shat and started tearing everything apart, I removed every detachable component on the mobo and took it to the bathroom and gave it a gentle shower. Then out comes the canned air and the major droplets were gone. Then I gave the now naked mobo the hairdryer treatment for 30mins. After I finished i left the mobo laying and went for lunch.

After lunch I came back fitted everything full the loops and it's back in action.

Lesson learnt: disconnect all power to your mobo so if it goes swimming you can take it for a shower and save it

Ruhel · March 6, 2016

26 minutes ago, kangk81 said:

Lesson learnt: disconnect all power to your mobo so if it goes swimming you can take it for a shower and save it

Glad it worked out but I would have left the components much longer with some moisture absorbent material.

Stefan1024 · March 6, 2016

During the first days of use, don't runn very intensive programms like games or stress tests. Normal use is good as it will heat up the baord gently and dries the plastic packages of the chips. But when they get to hot to fast the chip packages can crack.

But yes, not powered electronics can handle a lot without getting long therm damage.