Water spilled in pc

[Sineater]

I may have done did an uh oh. I just finished replacing all the tubing and fittings in my DIY desk PC. When I opened my gallon of distilled water, it splashed in my psu, then when filling the loop it had a major leak all over my CPU socket area. MY PC WAS COMPLETELY OFF AND UNPLUGGED. I held the power button for a minute before even starting, so I'm pretty sure everything is discharged. Before I continue with anything, any suggestions? I dried what I could find and used a hair dryer for several minutes.

[TheFlyingSquirrel]

No hair dryer, direct heat may damage components.

 

Dismantle the pc, and air the affected parts. Use a non static cloth and clean it.

[Crunchy Dragon]

I would let it sit for a day or two, completely disassembled and let everything dry to the best of your ability.

 

The PSU is the one you'd really want to blow air through, as it's gonna be especially nasty if something shorts in there. CPU socket as well, make sure that's as dry as you can get it.

[Jurrunio]

distilled water, you can just leave it dry in the air, maybe with a fan helping it. Dont use a hair dryer, plastic and solder commonly found on motherboards don't like heat and hair dryers aren't good at controlling heat outputs

[Neo-revo]

yea no heat, if you want you can make a single layer of paper towel and dump some rice on top.  Rice is hands down one of the best natural desiccants.

[SolarNova]

Take out the PSU , turn it upside down so any water inside can drip out.

 

Dry everything u can. The CPU socket, use compressed air.

 

leave it for a day to dry.

 

test the PSU prior to installing anything, use the 24 pin jump method. if its going to pop its best it does it when not plugged into anything else.

[Mick Naughty]

I’ve had all of my components soaked. Even the cpu pins. Got into windows several times to before I took it apart to find that out. 

 

I just put a space heater on it for an hour or so and went back about my day. 

[SolarNova]

So long as no power is going through the components, its fine to get them wet, hell you can stick things like your motherboard and GPU into a dishwasher to clean then if you want, just gotta make sure they are dry afterwards.

[MCDELTAT]

I’ll post in this thread as well just to avoid duplicates. I always use a water bottle with a lock on the top around my PC but my daughter put a cup on the desk and I should have known Murphys Law was bound to manifest itself.

 

the case is a Meshify C, so has huge grates at the top. Lots of water got in, maybe 50-100mL. Power was on, but on lock screen. I noticed it syslicked (no mouse movement) so I flicked off the power supply switch quickly and unplugged everything within 10 seconds.

 

Ive taken literally everything out, which was wise because there was water everywhere. In my Air Cooler, behind the motherboard, on the VRMs, etc. I vacuumed up some with my wet vac, and then used an anti-static cloth for the rest. It looks fairly dry but I’m going to give it a once over and put a fan on it.

 

my question though is, should I technically just consider the motherboard dead? It’s a Z-370A with an 8700K and a Gigabyte G1 1070. Worst case if I have no luck is obviously that a short causes damage to the CPU/GPU. So replacing just te MoBo would be $130 ish, but it could get much worse if something is invisibly bad. Thoughts?

[Neo-revo]

 

10 hours ago, MCDELTAT said:

Thoughts?

its all up to you,   i have a friend who did something similar but the cup was much larger...  never the less he was lucky and only fried the first pcie16 lane and not every thing.

 

i would inspect the connection points as look for short damage.   but  since you were so fast you may have saved the board as well.  hard to say with out seeing in person/sniff testing for magic smoke.

 

 

worst thing that could happen is the mobo is compromised like you fear worst. and it fries more.  or you saved it all..

[MCDELTAT]

Well, follow up, I spent maybe 6 hours total tearing apart my rig, drying it, with anti-static rag, q-tips in tight crevices etc. I even took off my GPU backplate just to make sure. Surprisingly, almost nothing got into the back of the PCB, so maybe this is an unsung feature.

 

I used the highest zoom lens I have for my camera to check out solder joints and everything seemed fine, so I just went for it, I knew there was nothing in the power supply because the Meshify’s shroud had me covered there. To my luck, the CPU booted up just fine, so after checking CPU voltages in CPU-Z, and seeing that they looked fairly regular, I decided to pop in my GPU as well. That spun up and has normal voltage/current levels as well.

 

For now I feel pretty confident that I lucked out and saved it, but since I planning on buying a lab microscope for my EE lab soon anyways, I’ll probably check out the board in a few months and see if there’s anything I can touch up later.

[Sineater]

Update several weeks later cuz im lazy and forgot to update, Everything has been working fine, I cleaned everything with q-tips and microfiber cloths, then let it air dry. 

[MCDELTAT]

My computer is still running fine as well. Will let you know under a microscope in a few months. Just adding data so that the internet has the information.

[Neo-revo]

3 hours ago, MCDELTAT said:

so that the internet has the information.

the Info was there, really that Electrical devices don't just destroy on contact with water,   Power running through it is a bigger factor to shorts/ severe and catastrophic dysfunction causing permanent failure.

 

Not to say that every device can just be turned off. or that it wont cause any damage if it is simply turned off.   I await your microscope inspection  to see if on the micro level to the surface if any residual difference may occur over time even with adequate drying to 'save' the item.   

On 10/31/2018 at 11:02 AM, Rev Games said:

Update several weeks later cuz im lazy and forgot to update, Everything has been working fine, I cleaned everything with q-tips and microfiber cloths, then let it air dry. 

Nice, Glad to hear that it all worked out in the end. 

 

My system has never leaked, with catastrophic results. so i can say i am quite lucky there.  Part of the reason why i run my pumps jumped (mostly likely time for myself to spill is at filling, if i glug in to much and it becomes air locked, and i have to burp the air in order to start down flow again thats where i have split the most water. So i just prepare with paper towels.