Question Clean up tips/tricks for dog urine on computer ?

[raknor]

Earlier this week, my cousin's dog urinated all over her desktop tower. She quickly unplugged and removed and side panels to allow the components to air dry.

Last night I managed to pick up the computer and brought it home with me to see if I could fix it.

Today I tried and booted up the computer. I boot up fine. I get to the windows 10 login screen. The only downside is that the GPU might need replacing since the monitor did not display an image.

I switched from the HDMI slot on the GPU to the HDMI slot on the motherboard to get an image to display.

So that's was a long rumbly way of saying the computer works-ish, and I would like to know how I could remove the smell of dog urine from the computer ?

Thank you,

 

[velocityg4]

Completely disassemble it including heatsink removal. Clean it with rubbing alcohol and flush it. As long as you disconnect all power including the CMOS battery. You may flush the circuit boards with alcohol. Just put everything disassembled in front of a fan for a few days to fully dry.

You may use 90% alcohol on the boards and metal. On plastic/rubber/paint I wouldn't go higher than 70%.

I actually wash filthy circuit boards with some alcohol and gently scrub with a toothbrush. Rinse with water. Then flush with alcohol again to speed up drying. Then set in front of a fan. The only danger these liquids pose is short circuits. That's why you want all power removed and plenty of drying time with moving air. Corrosion is secondary but highly unlikely with the alcohol rinses and rapid drying.

Wear rubber gloves to protect your hands from all that alcohol. I typically do this outdoors.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I agree washing the contaminated motherboard and GPU with alcohol after disassembly...also remove any removeable heatsinks as well as memory and NVME modules from the motherboard before cleaning.

But I'm not sure if the urine dissolves readily in alcohol. So I'd also get a couple gallons of distilled water, add a couple drops of Dawn dish washing liquid in the initial washing gallon, wash in that. The second gallon is used for the rinse only.

To accelerate drying it's OK to place boards in a warm oven (set to lowest temp, maybe 170F/80C, for a half hour or so.