CoolIt Systems ECO ALC leak

The Motivation

Reputable
Aug 11, 2014
4
0
4,510
Hey guys,

Two weekends ago I went to boot up my PC in the morning. It powered up, but didn't boot and I was left with blank monitors before it shut itself off. I decided to try and open it up and dust it, and picked it up to move it to the floor to do so. As I did, I hear liquid hit the desk, then felt it on my leg and saw it on the floor. I knew it wasn't water as it had a yellow/green/blueish tint to it. I opened up the case and saw the same liquid dripping down the mother board, onto my graphics card and onto my power supply before pooling in the bottom of the case. I took out the cooling system and I did my best to soak up what I could with a towel and wiped what I could off with a damp one. I started researching and sent CoolIt Systems an e-mail. They responded with "Blah blah out of warranty" bull, then told me to dunk it all in distilled water. I didn't feel comfortable doing that so I brought it in to my local shop.

After a few days I got a call saying my computer was ready. They took out my video card and put in a new one, replaced the liquid cooling with a heat sink and some fans and seemed to have it up and running again. I came home with it yesterday, hooked it up and everything seemed fine. Today it worked fine, did my normal stuff, listened to music etc. This evening I decided to catch up on some shows I hadn't watched since being without my PC, which I stream from my PC to my TV. In the middle of watching, suddenly it froze, then I lost the connection to the PC. I went over to check and it had froze. I reset it and I was back to the old problem, blank screens, though it didn't shut itself down this time. I removed all the RAM and booted, as I saw that was a typical test, but got no beeps that I'm apparently supposed to get by doing that. With my motherboard, there's a VGA switch card I'm supposed to keep in if I'm not running multiple video cards, It sits right under where the liquid cooling was and when I pulled it out it was covered in a white powder and there was some blue/greenish dust on the connectors that looked like corrosion, but it wiped clean pretty easily. So I'm thinking it could have gotten into a lot more on my board and that could be the issue, but I have no idea.

I'm not sure what else to try here, but this is pretty frustrating. As of now I'm out a $500 video card, a $333.35 bill at the shop and all I've got is some bull from CoolIt Systems and they kindly linked me to where I can buy another of their products. I'm probably going to bring my computer in to the shop again tomorrow, but I imagine some of you might have info on this kind of thing and I'm open to suggestions, they'd be greatly appreciated. Any info you guys need from me, just let me know. Thanks in advance.
 
Solution

The Motivation

Reputable
Aug 11, 2014
4
0
4,510


On my home? Yes, I do have insurance.

I guess I should mention a bit of an update for this morning. I took my RAM out last night and re-sat it this morning, along with the CMOS battery. I booted up with no luck. I then decided to remove my video card and try plugging my monitor into the onboard VGA slot. Oddly enough, it booted up. I should have paid attention more, but there was some sort of "error" and I had an F1 and F2 option, F2 being default settings, which I chose and it booted to windows (with the Windows was not shut down properly error message due to I guess me thinking it was frozen and then just powering it off before). Once in windows, I came here on my laptop to post the update, but as I was, there was a blue screen on my desktop. It didn't last long but there was something about dumping memory at the bottom and it was counting up, it was at 75 or so before the PC rebooted itself. One thing I neglected to mention initially was that when I first booted it up after taking it home from the shop, I got the CPU fan error press F1 message. I'm not sure how significant that is, but I figured I'd try and share every detail I could remember. I also got the CPU fan error again after the blue screen reset. It's currently back in Windows (7, I never mentioned that) and is loading everything up. It popped up with a "Windows has recovered from an unexpected shutdown" message. I won't type everything but the event name was BlueScreen, Locale ID 4105 and BCCode 1000007e, not sure if that offers much.

And another update. I've gone ahead and plugged my video card back in, plugged my monitors into them and started up and aside from the CPU fan error still, it works... I am totally at a loss for what's going on. I was planning on bringing it to the shop in a bit, but now I'm not sure if I need to or what.

Minor edit, but trying to keep adding info. I noticed when I started everything up, the date was set back to December 31st 2001. Again, not sure if that adds anything of usefulness, but I mentioned it just in case. I also had to adjust the date when I first got it back, I don't recall the date it was then, but it wasn't the same as this time.

Update again. Went out for a bit, and came home to my computer in sleep mode, which it puts itself into after a bit of idling. Turned it back on and it's back to powering up but no display on the monitor. I noticed however that the little red power light that normally is solid when it turns on, is now blinking.
 


I would talk to your agent. Depending on how much your deductable is, you might actually make a ton of money on a claim. They don't care that your PC is custom. They go by what the shop estimates for damage/repair/replacement and you know the shop will charge like 3X what stuff costs on newegg. I had a similar thing when my house got struck by lightning in 2009 and my motherboard got nuked though the ethernet. Even after a $1000 deductible I think I made like $3000 since they write a blank check.
 
Solution

The Motivation

Reputable
Aug 11, 2014
4
0
4,510


And this would work for a liquid cooling system coolant leak as well? The problem there is, I just had a claim this past summer due to a flood in my basement. I'm already paying $1000+ a year and I think I have a deductible of $1-2000, so I'm not sure it's worth it to put a claim in.