PC water damage..

[Rhys_C]

Hello guys
So... I'm am idiot and managed to spill about half a glass of water onto my desk and into the top of my computer through the top fans/vents.
The computer was shut down at the time and I imidiately removed all power and other cables.
I then opened both sides of my case and frantically tried to dry as much of the visable water as I could with tissue paper. I also used a hair dryer (on low heat) few a few minutes in between drying with the tissue paper.

So now my computer is sitting in front of my fan with the side panels off.

Any ideas or advice for me?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Barty1884]

If it was off, you should be ok. You're going to have to leave it to dry out for a while though - if you have a fan, plug it in & direct it at your desktop, that'll help remove the water. Personally, I'd remove each component (at least the GPU etc) and inspect. See if the water spill is limited to the motherboard. I'd suspect motherboard/CPU cooler, maybe RAM would be all it'll hit. GPU/PSU etc *should* be safe as is.

I'd definitely leave it a few days, minimum with a fan running all the time. If there's water on the components and you try to turn it on, it'll likely short out & damage components (at minimum, the motherboard). Inspect carefully before you turn it on, if there's any sign of water, leave it longer.

 

[tsnor]

+1 above answer. If water pooled into any of the empty slots it would be bad to power up with things still wet. Opening the side and having a house fan blow into it for a day would likely dry it out.

A power strip with a circuit breaker would be a good idea so you can turn it off fast if the PC blows smoke when you turn it on. The power button on a PC does nothing -- it's just a signal to the MB. The actual power does not go through the switch so you cannot stop putting electricity into a PC by pressing that button. (some PSUs have a real switch on theback, but I'm not sure I'd want to touch anything on the case if smoke came out).

p.s. Barty1884 -- that is a TOTALLY SICK download speed. I'm sitting at 4.6 mb/sec on a good day with longer ping.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

On standby the 5VSB rail is operating still, so some things could have possibly been harmed (if anything maybe the motherboard). We will see

 

[Rhys_C]

If it was off, you should be ok. You're going to have to leave it to dry out for a while though - if you have a fan, plug it in & direct it at your desktop, that'll help remove the water. Personally, I'd remove each component (at least the GPU etc) and inspect. See if the water spill is limited to the motherboard. I'd suspect motherboard/CPU cooler, maybe RAM would be all it'll hit. GPU/PSU etc *should* be safe as is.

I'd definitely leave it a few days, minimum with a fan running all the time. If there's water on the components and you try to turn it on, it'll likely short out & damage components (at minimum, the motherboard). Inspect carefully before you turn it on, if there's any sign of water, leave it longer.

Okay thanks for your reply, i will leave it at least a few days.
Do you think i should remove all of the components and leave them out separately?

Also i know this sounds stupid but i've seen it a lot online, I've heard people pouring rice into the case to help suck up any moisture.
This does sound ridiculous but i did this myself when i dropped my iPhone in the bath. (It did work after two days submerged in a bowl of rice).

Thanks

UPDATE: I've just bought a load of Silica Gel pouches and i will be placing them inside my computer later tonight.

 

[Barty1884]

The premise is good & solid, but rice is a little small. The gel pouches should be a good plan.

 

[Rhys_C]

The premise is good & solid, but rice is a little small. The gel pouches should be a good plan.

Right as of tonight it would have been 4 whole days drying. Do you think I should leave it longer? (Two days with silica gel pouches inside)

 

[turkey3_scratch]

It should have evaporated by now I would think. Unless it formed pools in some deep crevices.

 

[Barty1884]

About half a glass of water you originally spilled? Since you mopped up what you could initially, I doubt there was too, too much left behind. 4 days total, 2 with the pouches inside.............

Inspect it thoroughly before you switch it on. If there's ANY sign of moisture, leave it longer. If you can't see anything at all, it's got as good a chance as it's ever likely to have.

Post back & let us know how it goes.

 

[Rhys_C]

Okay thanks I will take the plunge tonight when I get home from work! - Fingers crossed.
I will be back with an update.
Thanks

 

[Rhys_C]

About half a glass of water you originally spilled? Since you mopped up what you could initially, I doubt there was too, too much left behind. 4 days total, 2 with the pouches inside.............

Inspect it thoroughly before you switch it on. If there's ANY sign of moisture, leave it longer. If you can't see anything at all, it's got as good a chance as it's ever likely to have.

Post back & let us know how it goes.

Okay so i have good new and bad news.
The good new is my computer isnt totally dead. As i am typing from that same machine now.

However the bad news is that it just took me about 5-8 minutes to open Chrome, go to google,, then tomshardware, log in, and start typing this message..
After it turned on and i logged in for the first time i left it running for 15 minutes then decided to reboot the machine. It then failed to boot about 3-4 times. But on the sixth time it booted so i decided to cut my losses for tonight and make do...

Everything is A LOT slower. but the funny thing is, my boot seems to be normal speed. and when i turned the machine off it took way longer than it should normally.

Do you know what could possibly be causing this? Is there any info i can give you guys to help determine the cause?

Thank you

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I would check your temperatures in particular, make sure they are all good.

 

[tsnor]

At a guess, all the normal "do this once a week" stuff is firing now. Let it sit powered on with internet access overnight, all the routine maintenance, fix updates, disk defrag, security scan stuff will go away. Then you can see if it is slow.

(Temps as above in Turkey's post is a good thing to check -- you are looking for thermal throttle temps up around 100+C. Anything lower is not great, but will not slow you down).

 

[Rhys_C]

So I checked my CPU temp
All 4 cores running between 96-98C

So after hours of troubleshooting myself I have now taken it to the computer repair shop.. Unfortunately I don't have the equipment to test more thoroughly.