Why did a massive cooling leak not kill my PC?

[DavidVioMC]

This post will be long so I apologise, it's about a water leak that soaked almost every component in my PC and I want to find out why it did not kill it. So if you don't know a lot about water cooling, please don't waste your time

Yesterday I was playing a game of CS:GO when suddenly my graphics card showed a bunch of artifacts and purple lines and multi-coloured square boxes, I assumed it was my GPU having a fit since it does that sometimes but mostly I get a black screen because the card is old so I just restarted my system normally as I do.

I pressed restart button and when my system restarted, I could already see the multi-coloured square boxes on my post screen again and there was some sort of error on Windows saying that there was a hardware failure or such so I assumed it was a dead graphics card and then system went into repair. This is when I looked on my PC to find out that there was leak so first thing I did was reach for the PSU switch.

It turned out that a CPU block hose popped off half way and started squrting coolen onto the motherboard and it would leak down onto the PCIe slot and onto the card, then it would drip from the card on top of the power supply and onto the bottom of the case. (later turned out after checking my temp logs, my temps reached 102c on CPU and GPU because my pump failed, which caused the hoes to get hot and expand and start sliding off.)

I was sure the PC was completly dead but I started drying it out anyway, I had to take of heatsinks for things such as south bridge because the coolent got even behind it. I took out the CPU and luckly the coolent did not get into the socket but there was ton of coolent behind the water block so I fell luckly.

I was running SLI setup and the top card got completely soaked while the second had very little so I decided to take out the top card, drying it out as much as I can and then leave it for a week to dry out so I switched my second card into my main spot. I had to blow dry the PCIe express socket since it was completely soaked. The water leak happened at 5pm and I ended up drying everything and putting everything together at around 9pm, this is when I tried to boot the PC and it would turn on for split of a second and it carried on doing this. I assumed I placed the CPU wrongly when I took it out and since I was really annoyed at the time I just went to bed to chill out but I fell asleep anyway.

I woke up at around 3am and started working back on the PC, I first tested the PSU which did excatly same thing so something was shorting out, turned out it was my hardrive which I'm aware of it, it has a bad power connector, so I unplugged it and turned on the PC and vola, it booted perfectly fine without issues.

I have no idea how the PC survived since the PCIe slot was completely soaked, I had to plug in my GPU, then unplug it, wipe the contact, put it back in and repeat so I can dry the slot. I had to do that about 20 times. Everything does work and to make sure the dry everything I can, I will run the PC at full load and lower the speed fans on rads so it can get a bit toasty, make around 75c so any coolent left such as on the GPU can evaporate.

I am running 60% anti-freeze with 40% distilled water which left me wondering, if anti-freeze saved the PC?

 

[Xenone]

I think luck is the answer. Unless someone has a different theory. I'm not sure if anti-freeze is conductive. Glycol does have this gelly feel to it which I would assume should have higher chances of causing a short than water.

But then again, you don't know if your main card is dead or not, you did say you saw artifacts before you started drying it out. Could be just because something was shorting out which could resolve after drying it out.

 

[Froberg]

I think luck is the answer. Unless someone has a different theory. I'm not sure if anti-freeze is conductive. Glycol does have this gelly feel to it which I would assume should have higher chances of causing a short than water.

But then again, you don't know if your main card is dead or not, you did say you saw artifacts before you started drying it out. Could be just because something was shorting out which could resolve after drying it out.

I'm with you on this one. Electronics are weird sometimes. Unless something actually shorted, it's possible to dry it and it'll work.

 

[Karadjgne]

Nope, anti-freeze didn't save the pc. It's still a water based solution with 40% water, so still electrically conductive. If anything, the anti-freeze was the root cause of the issue unless you have 100% aluminium free design and glycol proof plastics/rubbers etc

Personally, I'd play the lottery asap, because the only thing that did save the pc after that kind of soaking was pure dumb luck.

I'd not suggest running anti-freeze again, pure distilled water is fine. I would however, give everything a bath in isopropyl alcohol as anti-freeze is corrosive.

 

[mrmez]

Good coolant should reduce electrical conductivity.
I had a similar issue years back, left my PC on and went on holiday. Came back to a pool of coolant on my gpu also from a cpu hose leak.

Cleaned it up, went on with no issues for years until I upgraded.

Generally, circuits aren't close enough to short out from deionised water. It's the minerals in the water that increase conductivity (ie, salt water). Pure H20 is a very poor conductor.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I wouldn't be too sure about issues being resolved yet. If it works now, doesn't mean it won't die in a week.
Coolant leak on motherboard may cause corrosion.

 

[mrmez]

It's the dissolved minerals and gasses in tap water that cause corrosion.
Those are all removed in deionised water, which should be the base for good quality coolant.
From there, the main additives are: anti-corrosives, anti-fungal and possibly anti-freeze (and a bit of water wetter to break the surface tension).

Blocks and hoses wouldn't last long if coolant was corrosive/oxidative. The worst you get is a slow galvanic reaction when you mix metals.

 

[Karadjgne]

True, but op was using 60%, which is far too much. 10% at most. As vicious as antifreeze is, it basically burned up the pump prematurely. Antifreeze itself is just that, an anti-freezing agent with enough silicate to be considered a partial lubricant, but for thermal conductivity it sucks. Plain deionized water is far superior. Antifreeze by itself isn't really corrosive, it has included corrosion resistors, but they only affect iron based metals. Introduce galvanic corrosion and now there's quite a bit of dissolved aluminium in the liquid, as well as all the other junk that's in antifreeze that is electrically conductive. Even all-aluminum loops suffer because the fittings are brass,and therefore contain copper.

Not saying antifreeze is a bad idea, but 60% was.

 

[DavidVioMC]

Thank you for all your replies, I did not expect so many replies on this topic.

I have used so much anti-freeze because I'm mixing metals. I have EK copper waterblocks with Alphacool aluminum rads. I know anti-freeze does not prevent corrosion but I ran 50/50 in my retro gaming rig that I build in 2009 and it also has mixed metals in it. The loop was only drained twice since 2009 and its works perfectly fine, except the copper been stained like it does over time from air, theres nothing wrong with the loop.

The pump failure was due to circur failure. I see very clear one of the chips burned up and it wasen't due to a leak, the o-rings are in perfect condition and the board was dry.

Just like SkyNetRising said. I have already ran into issues, I'm hoping someone knows what's wrong.

When I got the PC to boot, I ran AIDA on the system to get a bit toasty so any extra liquid can evaporate but my temps were getting very high for my loop so I knew there were air pockets inside, but I just put my fans on 100% and the cpu and gpu were both at 70c which were fine for the system to warm up.

I ran it like this for about 3 hours then decided to get rid of the air pockets so I turned off AIDA and topped up the reservoir and started moving the computer side to side and forwards and backwards to move the air pockets so they can escape, when there we no more coming out I just opened the reservoir to release the pressure and then closed it back up.

I then had to go for 5 minutes so I left the PC at idle, when I came back it was still at idle and started tweaking with SpeedFan controls since the temps dropped when the PC suddently turned off and immediately started to boot back up but it was booting up for split second after and after again so I reached for the PSU button.

I went thru the motherboard to check for any drops or wet spots that I may have missed and could be shorting something out, my theory is because this happened staight after I was moving the PC, I must have shaken a drop or something to short out on contacts, but I couden't find any. So I attempted to boot the PC back up and nothing was happening, it wouden't even flicker on and off and no lights on the motherboard so I though maybe it's a PSU issue so I plugged in a jumper and the PSU started and left it for 10 minutes and it had no issues.

I then plugged it into the mobo and booted for about two minutes and then did the booting up by itself and flickering on and off thing so I just reached for the PSU switch. It's very strange that it will boot for a minute or two, the shut off and attempt to re-boot by itself but is unable and when your turn the PSU button off and on, there will be no life unless you leave the PSU off for 10 minutes.

I'm going try to take a video of this and post it on here. If you have any theorys please let me know.

 

[DavidVioMC]

So an update, the PC will not even boot for those two minutes now. I think the cause is something shorting out on the motherboard which trips the short circut in the PSU because when I switch on the PSU, nothing happens, not even mobo indication light, but when I switch off the PSU, after about a second, the mobo indiciation light blinks very quickly and very dim for slip a second, propably when the capacitors are dis-charging and the short circur disengage. It does this every time I flick on the PSU and then switch it off.

I'm flying to see my family on 30th for a week and a half so I really want to get this PC to atleast boot so when I come back, I have less stuff to deal with. I tried to eliminate as many things possible to atleast get a boot or the mobo indication light to stay on, I don't even want a post. These are the things I tried:
- Jumping the PSU (Powers on and stays on without an issue)
- Clearing CMOS (For good measures)
- Unpluging GPU and all of my RAM plus all my hardrives, leaving only CPU and PSU connected.

I haven't tried se-seating CPU since I don't think it would cause the issue espically when the PC ran fine for 3 hours with load. I have a spare case with only LGA 1155 mobo in it with intel stock heatsink which I plan to just move everything in there except my loop and mobo to atleast have a working PC since I'm only left with a laptop.