Knocked a drink over my PC

Soldato
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21 Jun 2005
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I knocked some lemonade and fresh juice over my PC two days ago. I turned the PC off staight away and opened it up, it appears that it had only gone on the case and nothing else. So I cleaned the case, plugged the power back, the mobo lights where on but nothing happened. I had a closer inspection and noticed that some of the liquid had gone on to where the power from the PSU goes in to the mobo and where the case goes in to power on the unit. I can't see any other liquid anywhere.

Is there anything I can do to try and salvage my machine?
 
There may be better ideas but I'd try I'd and borrow or hire a good dehumidifier and stick it and the computer in the smallest room available. Then leave it on 24 hours and try again.
 
Ok guys thanks for that, I've let it stand for 3 days and did try again and nothing. I'll try and take it apart and go from there, might also go with the dehumidifier option.
 
I did a similar thing about a year ago except the juice hit everything. I pooped.

I ripped every cable out of the back as quick as I could and stripped the machine, touch drying everything with paper towels and then stored the components in the airing cupboard for 24 hours and hey presto, it still works now.
 
The bad thing here is that the juice contains sugar. If it were just a glass of water, I'd say let it evaporate - but if you let juice evaporate, it leaves sugar residue on the components and it is this what makes your components sticky and erodes them.

If it were me, I'd buy a bottle of either pure alcohol or distilled water (or even both). Completely saturate the motherboard and rub with a soft brush to try and get the sugar residue off. Then allow to dry for at least 24 hours, somewhere warm and dry. If you do use both water and alcohol, use the alcohol last as it will help to disperse any water.
 
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The bad thing here is that the juice contains sugar. If it were just a glass of water, I'd say let it evaporate - but if you let juice evaporate, it leaves sugar residue on the components and it is this what makes your components sticky and erodes them.

If it were me, I'd buy a bottle of either pure alcohol or distilled water (or even both). Completely saturate the motherboard and rub with a soft brush to try and get the sugar residue off. Then allow to dry for at least 24 hours, somewhere warm and dry. If you do use both water and alcohol, use the alcohol last as it will help to disperse any water.

Alright mate, thanks for that. Will have a google and see if I can find some and try and get it ordered :)
 
I spilt a mere splash of water onto my keyboard last week and several keys stopped working. If any liquid touched your rig while it was on you've got no hope :(

MW
 
Was the case opened slightly or was the case completely off?

Computer was on, case was open.

I spilt a mere splash of water onto my keyboard last week and several keys stopped working. If any liquid touched your rig while it was on you've got no hope :(

MW
I spilt diet coke on my machine before and it worked so I'm hoping this does but I'm bnot holding much hope
 
never mind ignore what I put. Seen the hardware repair guy at work and he has given me some stuff :D
 
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Computer was on, case was open.


I spilt diet coke on my machine before and it worked so I'm hoping this does but I'm bnot holding much hope

My keyboard 10 years ago survived a whole glass of blackcurrant poured over it so I was rather surprised so little killed it.

MW
 
I spilt coffee onto some RAM sticks before. They werent in my PC, they were just on the desk (I have clutter everywhere!).

I've used them fine since in another build. When gaming there is a faint smell of coffee inside the case too. :):)
 
Couple of nights ago my 2.5yr old poured half a glass of red over my Logitech G510 Keyboard, i literally poured the wine out of it into the sink, like a river. Have stripped all the keys off and given it a good clean but there are a few keys sticking. Everythings working fine though, im tempted to strip it down and put the rubber on the keyboard through a dishwasher to give it a proper clean lol
 
if you ever need to dry anything, rice works a treat.

but defo get some alcohol or distilled water!

and give it a good drying off.
 
I worked in an Apple repair place for a while, we had a Macbook come in which was completely swimming in orange juice and apparently had been for about a week (the lady who brought in said it stopped working after her son had used it, turns out he spilled his juice on it then wiped it off of the top, she didn't know what the problem was until after we serviced it)

Parts of the logic board were corroded from the sugars and such, but we stripped it down, soaked the board in de-ionised water overnight, took it out the next morning, gave it a once over with some alcohol, rinsed it with the DI water again, and left it to dry for several days.

When we turned the machine back on again, much to our surprise it worked.

There is always hope. Especially if you turned the machine off, rather than letting the liquid do it.
 
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Well I tried some alcholic spray from the repair guy at work but that didn't work so I'm thinking the distilled water soaking might be in order. The mobo gets light to it, I can press some of the buttons on the mobo to switch the lights to different things but when I try to power it on nothing (fans don't spin)
 
Couple of nights ago my 2.5yr old poured half a glass of red over my Logitech G510 Keyboard, i literally poured the wine out of it into the sink, like a river. Have stripped all the keys off and given it a good clean but there are a few keys sticking. Everythings working fine though, im tempted to strip it down and put the rubber on the keyboard through a dishwasher to give it a proper clean lol

lucky! i literally once got 'less than a splash' onto my Razer blackwidow ult and my U and S keys both broke, interestingly the liquid that got in was nowhere near either of those keys, id say maybe two or three milliliters of fluid spilled at the very most

to add insult to injury, all that happened was i was taking a sip when my girlfriend's parents' parrot flew onto me and made my hand shake a little :( £120 down the drain!
 
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