Question Mac won't turn on or charge - apparently water damage (with pics)

[WildCard321]

Hi

My girlfriends Macbook air (early 2015 Intel i5) won't charge. I delivered it to an licenced Apple Service Center in Norway, where they told me water damage was found.

They wanted around $1200 to fix it - apparently they had to change "The motherboard, the keyboard and one cable".

She says she can't remember doing anything particular - one morning the Macbook would not turn on.

After opening it I can't really find hard evidence on water damage - please see attached pictures. There are some miscoloration on the first pick in the far upper left color though.

So I was wondering - can you guys see any signs of water damage, and what can I do to start troubleshooting it?

All I've done after opening it is to visually inspect it and and detaching and attaching the cable to the battery.

Thanks so much for help - it's really appriciated!

Specs:

• 13.3-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen
• 128GB PCIe-based flash storage
• 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz) with 3MB shared L3 cache
• 4GB or 8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory (8GB maximum)
• Built-in 54‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery
  • 45W MagSafe 2 Power Adapter with cable management; MagSafe 2 power portt
• Intel HD Graphics 6000

 

[CamperJoe18]

I don't know if it's water damage, but the inside of that Mac if pretty dirty. It is possible that the dirt allowed for conductivity between two parts, and the system zapped itself. At this point, your best option would be to just have it repaired.

 

[jsmithepa]

I vote for water damage. Normal dust don't crumple like that. This puppy looks like it was used in a very dusty environment and at one time opened and left lying out.

 

[hang-the-9]

For 1200 I would get a new computer. If you want to try fixing it, get a replacement motherboard.