PC Repair Shop - Are they messing me around? (water damage)

[GrantRamsay82]

I put my PC in for diagnosis nearly 3 weeks ago.
The problem was, I spilt some water/gel from a dehumidifier onto the motherboard. (It never completely drenched it, just some splashes) between my GPU and the CPU.
The PC was plugged in but not powered on. I immediately unplugged it and used some paper towels to soak up the spillage, I dried it off, tried again later, but it would not power on.

So... I took it in for diagnosis and was told they'd have a look and it would be ready by Monday (three days). I went back on Monday and was told "we've been really busy with other repairs, it should be ready by Friday". They've since delayed the collection 6 times since then and told me it's still not ready with no details other than "we've been running some tests on it, we thought we had something from it and then it just shut back down again".
Finally, I went back on Monday there and he said a lot, but basically:
it's been really hard to diagnose what's faulty;
none of the components should be salvaged (as they could damage any new motherboard they're installed into/paired with);
there would be an issue of reliability;
and I should claim home insurance (he'll write it's a £1/2k PC for a claim)

I really don't want to have to claim home insurance. The point of me putting the PC into the shop in the first place was to see what I could salvage from it for another build. Nearly a month later and they still can't even tell me if the RAM, CPU, or most importantly, my (Strix 1070) GPU is fried or salvageable...

Any advice? I'm really poor, stuck, and dumb.
Thanks in advance.

 

[bmockeg]

I would take it somewhere else

 

[hotaru251]

above post.

getting a second opinion is best bet.

especially after they took so long i woulodnt trust them.

 

[jimmysmitty]

When I ran a repair shop we had a queue. Yours went into it and we would give an estimate based on how many we had. So if we had 30 waiting for repair we would estimate 5-7 business days to diagnose it then repairs, if approved, would take its own set time depending on the repairs and if parts needed to be ordered.

I would talk to the manager. Just diagnostics should not take 3 weeks. The other components are easy, setup a test board and pull the other parts out and test them to verify they don't cause a no POST.

 

[GrantRamsay82]

Thank you for the info and advice!

One last question;
Is it true that the (possibly) water damaged hardware could damage any other working hardware it's paired with?

 

[mdd1963]

If it was not powered on, I'd be suspicious of anything other than motherboard diagnosis, frankly.....

 

[jimmysmitty]

Thank you for the info and advice!

One last question;
Is it true that the (possibly) water damaged hardware could damage any other working hardware it's paired with?

With no power I would doubt it. Had a few that spilt water on the motherboard when on and the rest were fine.

I would assume, without having the system to look at myself and based on experience, that the motherboard is the only faulty part.

 

[CountMike]

Even with it not being powered on (not running but plugged in) there's power in many parts of MB and a short may occur. Given the place it was splashed on I would immediately suspect motherboard with very low chance of some other part damaged. Without changing suspect MB, only way to ascertain what parts are eventually damaged is to plug them in a known good configuration.