Water leak Bad news, happy ending

Tell you a story about WC'ing and the risks involved. I have a 6800Ultra AGP card
I had always wanted one of these VC's. So last year I grabed one off ebay for for a reasonable price and installed it in my NF3 Ultrad D rig. It was great, awesome AGP card. Well after a few months I started up the computer and I got the beep for VC problem.
I looked very closely at it and it looked fine, tried everything no go. I pulled the VC and when I pulled it out and was handling the card to my horror my finger was wet. upon further inspection I found a tiny, tiny leak on the tubing going into the cpu block. I mean like one drip a week leak. I cleaned the card and did everything possiable and nothing, fried VC. my 6800Ultra was dead. So I picked up a ATI X800XL another fantastic AGP card. So i'm putting togather a spare rig for myself and I needed to buy a AGP VC. I decided to get the dead 6800Ultra out and take one last look at it. Wow the signs of the water damage was all over the one side of the card. So what could I loose with one more attempt at salvaging the 6800Ultra. I got the magnifying glass out and alcahol, Qtips and air can and spent almost 2 hours cleaning the corrosion off the card. slapped a cooler on it and installed it. holding my breath and laughing at the fact I had just wasted 2 hours on this thing I powered up the rig and Working great ran it through some benchtest and no problems.
My 6800Ultra lives again...

wow thats sweet!, and how the hell!!! ahahaha

lucky butt

thats very lucky man lol.


this is why i'm strongly considering putting peices of kitchen paper or foam or something between my cpu block and my vid-card. and then one between my vid-card and the card below it. ill probably make up some mounting system for the foam so it doesn't miss a drop.

Jeebus! Great luck man! Glad you were able to resuscitate your card. Hopefully you won't get any more leaks.

Cheers

Excellent job, and you did the best thing in the scenario.

I'm thinking about watercooling first aid thread

7

Yep 6800s are beasts when it comes to things like that.

I had a 6800NU AGP card that when I first got it running had some water drip on it and I thought it was a gonner. Cleaned it up and it worked fine. Then I never really insulated it for the pelt(I did put fingernail polish on it though) and came home one day and found the back of the card had ice on it. Thought it was a goner again. shut down the PC cleaned it off and it booted right back up, turns out it was just the cold bug happening after it got below 25°c.

Anytime you have a leak, a good bath in rubbing alcohol is the FIRST thing to do as it removes residue and takes water with it when it evaporates. Glad your VC is still in business.

And that is why I'd rather use 20 fans and a vaccume instead of a water cooling system. I don't trust myself to put it together, nor do I trust those metal latch thingies.

0o

Very lucky. I'm gonna now open my comp when i get home and check if I have any leaks

archangelgabe said:

And that is why I'd rather use 20 fans and a vaccume instead of a water cooling system. I don't trust myself to put it together, nor do I trust those metal latch thingies.

0o

Click to expand...

I trust hose clamps a while lot more than the plastic and such that are used to hold down Heatsinks especially big ones.

myndlessdayz sig said:

wtb a cool sig!!!!!

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Read here and here to create your own cool sig.

you got back, what you put into it. I had a leak on my gpu block recently, luckily it dripped downward and no water splashed onto it.