View Full Version : did a spill ruin my rig?
ObiwanShinobi
10-02-06, 06:55 PM
So the other night I had a leak that went all over my mobo and my video card. I wiped everything clean with alchohol and put a fan on it overnight. So today I put everything in and connect it. It works fine for a few hours and then it just turns off. It starts up now and then just turns back off after a moment. Is my mobo messed up or my PSU or somthing?
SiGfever
10-02-06, 07:04 PM
Oh Grasshopper, you did not listen to the wise ones.:shrug:
ObiwanShinobi
10-02-06, 07:07 PM
Alien and kraver said to just wait a day. Like I said it powers up, it just turns back off after that.
ObiwanShinobi
10-02-06, 07:13 PM
I just plugged my psu into a diff mobo and everything is working fine. I think my mobo is fubbered :(
crfracer290
10-02-06, 07:16 PM
Try totally soaking the mobo with 70%...
Its either a $2 bottle was mentioned or your $100+ motherboard, take you pick. You can't wipe inside of slots and have to make sure all antifreeze is gone.
Cmon man, listen to the advice you get. You probably have antifreeze somewhere in the contacts because you didn't soak your MB down like we all suggested. Just wiping it down with alcohol wipes ain't gonna cut it.
Alien1099
10-03-06, 12:04 AM
Cmon man, listen to the advice you get. You probably have antifreeze somewhere in the contacts because you didn't soak your MB down like we all suggested. Just wiping it down with alcohol wipes ain't gonna cut it.
Yep. I may have suggested wiping it up with alcohol soaked papertowels at first thinking it was a light spill. But I also added.
Like somebody else mentioned, use the HIGHEST concentration you can get. 90% or better should be fine. 90% means it's 90% alcohol and 10% water. You don't want more water. Like voigts mentioned, you can literally pour the alcohol on there and it will be fine. You just need to displace/get rid of the coolant that got on there.
To in agreement with Voigts to second what he said. Basically I was meaning to get all of that crap out. Obviously papertowels soaked in alcohol won't help you if it get into PCI slots and stuff. :confused:
Dragoon42
10-03-06, 12:08 AM
whoa, so you can just pour straight like rubbing alcohol on a mobo?
Alien1099
10-03-06, 12:14 AM
Yes. Acetone should be fine too. Somebody else referenced another user here soaking a motherboard in acetone and it working completely fine. I've also used acetone to clean up my 7900GT when doing a pencil circuit voltage mod on it. I've used alcohol to also wipe off a little bit of coolant that I carelessly got on my card too. They both work fine.
Dragoon42
10-03-06, 12:19 AM
hrm...that's good to know. I hope i never have to do it.
whoa, so you can just pour straight like rubbing alcohol on a mobo?
Repair shops take motherboards that are tar covered or such (you should see the inside of a chain smoker's computer sometime) and literally wash them in soapy water. Water isn't going to hurt a motherboard. It is having it wet or with antifreeze residue that allows power to go where it shouldn't and short it out.
Rubbing alcohol works great in that is cleans antifreeze quickly, and evaporates completely and takes water with it. So yes, if you have a leak, literally pour the rubbing alcohol on the effected area, blow it out with compressed air, and let it sit in front of the fan overnight.
ObiwanShinobi
10-03-06, 08:15 AM
Ok ill wash the affected area in rubbing alcohol. Ill post the results in a week or so probably.
Immortal_Hero
10-03-06, 08:22 AM
Yes. Acetone should be fine too. Somebody else referenced another user here soaking a motherboard in acetone and it working completely fine. I've also used acetone to clean up my 7900GT when doing a pencil circuit voltage mod on it. I've used alcohol to also wipe off a little bit of coolant that I carelessly got on my card too. They both work fine.
Won't Acetone have potential to melt the PCB?
demonR6
10-03-06, 08:46 AM
Ditto on the alcohol.. I had a leak onto my video card that got into the slot as well and it behaved exactly like yours did. I poured the alcohol right on the board and cleaned up as much as I could with a q-tip in the slot, blow off what I could with compressed air and left it out to air dry overnight and problem solved.
Alien1099
10-03-06, 10:29 AM
Won't Acetone have potential to melt the PCB?
No, it will not. I can personally attest to this. There were no adverse results from wiping my 7900GT KO clean with an acetone soaked papertowel to remove the conductive paint from the circuit pen I used.
ObiwanShinobi
10-03-06, 11:08 PM
So I just poured 91% alcohol on my mobo and tried to clean the PCI slots but couldnt get anything thin enough down in there. I dont have an air compressor to dry it off, all I can do is air dry. I didnt douse my video card with alcohol because im not sure if its good for it but I did wipe it down with some alcohol pads. If these methods dont work, could I send them back to the manufacturer? Just tell them that they mysteriously stopped working?
The rubbing alcohol will do the trick in getting out the antifreeze from the slots as long as you gave it a good dousing. Get a can of compressed air (about $4) to blow them out. If you don't have that, then just take some deep breaths and blow it out the best you can.
As far as sending them back to the manufacturer, you really shouldn't need to as once everything is clean and dry, it should work just fine.
ObiwanShinobi
10-04-06, 10:28 PM
Yay, I have liftoff! I ended up resetting my bios earlier with jumpers and now I have to get everything back to the way it was. At least I have access to the bios now!
ObiwanShinobi
10-05-06, 02:59 PM
as of right now Im getting an error message right after post: "Boot disk failure, insert system disk and press enter." I'm thinking that maybe putting in the winxp disk might help, I dont have the time right now to fubber with it. Any suggestions would be nice.
Daddyjaxx
10-05-06, 06:40 PM
When you reset the BIOS, did you change it for your normal boot disk to be the first HD if you have more than one.
darkcow
10-05-06, 07:50 PM
sounds like a format is in hand.
or reset the bios again. and then make sure your IDE set-up is nice.
also.. check the cpu temerpatures. when setting up my friends computer i thought the cpu was a dud to the max (couldn't run at rated voltage for its life). untill i checked the temperatures and figured out it was running at 100c. (the problem was that the intel stock thermal grease was the poorest stuff ever created by man. i think a peice of wood would of conducted the heat better)
hitbyaprkedcar7
10-05-06, 07:57 PM
Check your boot priotirty setup, and check your IDE/Sata setup. If you reset your bios it will put it back to default and is probably trying to boot from the wrong disk.
ObiwanShinobi
10-05-06, 08:45 PM
So, I think I need to flash my bios because im trying to boot from my windows disk to reformat my raptor because my boot order is right, But when i try to reinstall windwos i get a machine check error. Last time I got an error like that I just had to reflash my bios and that fixxed it.
If you are getting a boot disk error, your computer does not see anything on the partition on the hard drive you have listed in the BIOS to boot to. Check to make sure your cables are seated properly, that they don't have any antifreeze or the like on the connectors, and that the BIOS is recognizing all of your hard drives properly. The only other thing that would cause this is a dead hard drive, which is probably not the case. Unless for some really weird reason you have a BIOS corruption, which is very highly unlikely, flashing the BIOS should make no difference at all.
ObiwanShinobi
10-05-06, 10:25 PM
It turned out that when I sleeved my SATA power cables I fubbered up the molex and one pin was loose. So I had to push it in and thats why I was having a hard drive detection problem. Everything is fine now. Thanks for your help.
Good. Glad to hear you have everything working fine now.
At least if you ever do have a leak again, you will know what to do, and I'll bet that next time you will make sure to not forget to tighten those clamps down! Don't feel bad however, it can happen to anyone.
ObiwanShinobi
10-06-06, 08:31 AM
Good. Glad to hear you have everything working fine now.
At least if you ever do have a leak again, you will know what to do, and I'll bet that next time you will make sure to not forget to tighten those clamps down! Don't feel bad however, it can happen to anyone.
Actually they were new metal clamps that you tighten with a screw and I had never used them. Previously I had used cheap plastic ones and I knew I wasnt going to do anything like break the bard with them. I was afraid I would break the barb with the metal one and didnt tighten the inlet one on my cpu block enough.
Immortal_Hero
10-06-06, 10:09 AM
Actually they were new metal clamps that you tighten with a screw and I had never used them. Previously I had used cheap plastic ones and I knew I wasnt going to do anything like break the bard with them. I was afraid I would break the barb with the metal one and didnt tighten the inlet one on my cpu block enough.
If you have the right size you can hone down on worm drives pretty hard w/o breaking plastic barbs...
ObiwanShinobi
10-06-06, 04:02 PM
If you have the right size you can hone down on worm drives pretty hard w/o breaking plastic barbs...
I bought 1/2" size
I use the smooth lined metal clamps from Mcmaster as they don't cut into the tubing, and literally use a ratchet to tighten them with. You aren't going to crush a plastic barb with a hose clamp.
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