water on everything! :(

E

eoreality-robby

End of Reality Game Servers
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Sep 18, 2005
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tonight, i have had a watercooling disaster, when trying to add two radiators and a fillport t-line. one of the tubes came loose on one of the radiators, and got water everywhere, mobo, graphics card, hard drives, sound card, wireless card. my qeustion is, since everything is completely drenched in water/anti-freeze is will it be ok? I left my psu on, w/ only the fans plugged in, so it cold dry out overnight. plus i have my comp tipped on its side, so the water can drain out of it. Any suggestions are appreciated.
 
Let those components air dry for a LONG time. Try to mop up as much water as you can, cause if it makes rust, your screwed. Rust = not good.
 
I would scrub everything down with distilled water, followed by 99% pure Isopropyl alcohol, and then use a can of compressed air to get liquid out of all the cracks. Then I would put it in a cupboard with a small electric heater for a few days. Then pray to the watercooling God and hope your not screwed when you flip the power back on.
 
There are lots of people here who would say "If you do it right...." yada yada but I tell you if you had spent the money on this DangerDen MTC-5 All that would be your issue was to clean up. Color me crazy but I like having a safety net when Im on the trapeze! Wish you best of luck on the recovery, hope its not a total lost.
 
Distilled water, alcahol or Artic Cleaner (forget who makes Artic Cleaner, its the stuff for cleaning gunk oof gpu's and cpu's and generally cleaning hardware without shorting it out) and then compressed air to get water out of cracks, and then let it air dir on an anti static sheet for about a week, and you should be good :)

Chilly (Remember water only usually ruins when its plugged in ;) )
 
remember when you are drying everything out to take the memory out of the DIMMS and all of your expansion cards out of their slots. Then do what TN said and try to blow some water out of the slots if there is any. Then let it all dry out for quite some time. I would say when you think it is dry and ready to go let it sit for another day :)

As for the comment earlier about MCT-5....if wouldn't really have mattered in this case. The leak occured while changing the loop/leak testing it sounds like. Probably with the PSU jumped so no current was flowing through any of the parts. With no current flowing through any of the parts they could care less whether it was MCT-5, distilled water + antifreeze, or a vodka tonic that was spilled on them. And the cleanup process would be about the same between MCT-5 and distilled water. I agree with you that added security is nice, however this is the whole point why you leak test...
 
All of the suggestions above are very good. Follow it. Be very patient with it. Like Top Nurse said, I would spend time and put the parts in a dry oven if you can (not too hot). Leave it there for a few days to make sure there are no moisture left behind especially the dimm slots.
Fortunately the same thing happened to me with distilled water mixed with UV dye and some sort of antibacterial stuff frozencpu sold. I spent the whole day taking the system apart, drying everything with paper towels, cleaned the parts with cotton Q-tips dipped in alcohol then hair dry and left the parts next to a portable heater (this was the summer so it sucked). It was all dry in a day. Plugged everything back in and despite the distilled water having the additives, everything was OK. Once these things dry out, there is not much in term of conductance so short circuiting things was no a fear factor.
The dimm slots and the pci slots and spaces underneath the capacitors, etc.. are a pain though. That is why you should use cotton tips, dip them in alcohol and wipe every inch of the affected components as you can, then dry. Patience is the key. You should be OK.
Good luck...
 
a lot of good suggestions in the thread. electronics can get wet as fuck, just as long as there is no power going through it. So be patient, dry everything thoroughly, and you should be good to go again. good luck
 
Thankyou all for the suggestions! im shure I can probably get all of it working gain(hopefully). I will be shure to let it a dry out. Since i dont have school today, that is exactly wat i will devote my day to. Hopefully i can get it all drying by tonight.. thx for all the help, ill keep you posted! (luckily not too much water on the dimm slots, but the graphics card took a beating.)
 
You could seal everything up in a box (cooler?) with some silica crystals (cat litter type works good.) That should assist in pulling the moisture out.
 
Or go to a harware store, they have chemicals used to dry paint in enclosed spaces, Not sure what it's called but just stick a bowl of that next to your hardware in a small cabinet or closet and a few days later the there shouldn't even be any moisture in the air (in the closet). It works great, I used it for drying out plants quickly.
 
Take your time, waiting an extra 2-3 days is worth saving all your equipment. I would do as Top Nurse said. Make sure to blow dry it for a long time, there are plenty of places where liquid can seep into.
 
Depending on the temps in your area, you can take each piece out individually, and place them on the porch, or somewhere safe outside to allow the sun to dry them out. Second, do as they said, clean it with Isopropyl (sp?). And then again let it try.

But be sure to remove you CPU, and all you cards and cables, as those areas allow water molecules to be trapped, and could be very damaging when power is reapplied. So treat it like a new system, pull it all apart, clean it, and put it all back together one at a time.
 
Better drying option than heat, IMO anyway. :)

Go to the hardware store and get some desiccant - aka "Damp Rid".

Place your wet components in a plastic bag with a dish full of desiccant and seal it shut.
Everything should be bone dry in no time. :)

Which is what BarneyGumble was referring to above I believe.
 
ok, as of now, I have all of the components out of the case, dissasebmbled, with lots of green sticky antifreeze/water/uv dye covering parts of the mobo, as well as my GPU. Now, I am searching my house for some distilled water, to clean it off with. any suggestions on what type of cleaning tool i should use for this operation?
 
Susquehannock said:
Yeah, I was wondering about that too. :D
Click to expand...

lol, I was just about to reply to this when I saw your two replies...

Either way i think you guys are going overboard on the whole two day dry time...
My first watercooling setup I didnt connect a fitting properly and the pump just sprayed water all over my MB and PEG slots (as the fitting was on my primary gpu).
I took out the components used a towel to sop up most of the moisture then I put a couple 120mm (150cfm) fans over the area for about 2 hours and I was good to go.
 
^^^^^^ - paper towel, cotton swab, whatever it takes. Be creative.

J-Mag said:
>>>>
I took out the components used a towel to sop up most of the moisture then I put a couple 120mm (150cfm) fans over the area for about 2 hours and I was good to go.
Click to expand...
I think that really depends on how humid your environment is. Using desiccant in a sealed bag after
flushing with distilled water is a good bet IMhO.
 
ok, im currently cleaning out everything with distilled water, then alcohol, then the drying process begins :rolleyes: damn.. and i really wanted to go to lan-i-am tomorrow :( looks like ill have to cancel
 
Um, I don't see any clamps on that tubing unless you took them off while disassembling your PC. That's a big no-no and could have prevented this if you had some clamps. But if you do and they were just off to disassemble sorry about that.
 
yeah.. i really should have gotten clamps. but i was monkeying w/ the length of the tubes, so nothing was permanent. besides, tygon holds pretty well to those fittings
 
With watercooling, also clamp...the tighter the better. I make sure that my tubes will not go free even if I jank on them. I get so paranoid that I even use aquarium silicone and seal the ends of each tube after they are on the barbs. Never a leak in 7 years.
 
magnuspah said:
With watercooling, also clamp...the tighter the better. I make sure that my tubes will not go free even if I jank on them. I get so paranoid that I even use aquarium silicone and seal the ends of each tube after they are on the barbs. Never a leak in 7 years.
Click to expand...

A bit of an overkill, but I will definently put some clamps on! ...Learn from your mistakes right, and in my case, this is quite a big mistake.
 
SignalSoldier said:
There are lots of people here who would say "If you do it right...." yada yada but I tell you if you had spent the money on this DangerDen MTC-5 All that would be your issue was to clean up. Color me crazy but I like having a safety net when Im on the trapeze! Wish you best of luck on the recovery, hope its not a total lost.
Click to expand...
Bah! Much easier to just laquer all your PCB, so that it will be completely insulated.
unrealized said:
yeah.. i really should have gotten clamps. but i was monkeying w/ the length of the tubes, so nothing was permanent. besides, tygon holds pretty well to those fittings
Click to expand...
You didn't have clamps? :eek: I once did a test loop in the bathtub with no clams, and it kept springing leaks 'cause of the pressure my pump put out. Never even considered skimping on tthe clamps.
 
BarneyGumble said:
Or go to a harware store, they have chemicals used to dry paint in enclosed spaces, Not sure what it's called but just stick a bowl of that next to your hardware in a small cabinet or closet and a few days later the there shouldn't even be any moisture in the air (in the closet). It works great, I used it for drying out plants quickly.
Click to expand...

What type of plants :D
 
In your case (with nasty sticky anti-freeze) I think I would be inclined to head to the bathroom and use a shower head to clean off the mess on the circuit boards. Then I would spray it down with alcohol (windex bottle type sprayer) as the alchol will displace the water that is left. Then get out the compressed air and have at it. Remember that the big problem here is corrosion so this needs to be done sequentially with no waiting around.

I used to do underwater photography and occasionally I would get a flooded camera. First thing you do is drop the camera in a bucket of fresh water till you can start the above process.
 
If you've got an oven that will go down to 150* you could set the oven to that and place your parts in it AFTER pulling all the fans and plastic brackets off the board.

When these parts are made they use a solder bath on the board with all the parts in place to solder the parts in place so that means the parts are capable of withstanding 700* for a short period of time, a couple of hours in a 150* oven won't hurt anything.

Just make sure to get all the screwed on plasitc off the boards and I'd really keep any drives out of the oven.

You might consider using a meat thermometer by touching it to the rack to make certain the oven's thermostat is correct.
 
Take off your northbridge heatsink and dry under there too. Thats what I forgot to do, lol. Take out your motherboards battery too, cause I am willing to bet there is water under there.

Try Top Nurses idea with the distilled water, then the isopropanol. Then, if your still paranoid, do the oven technique at 150*.
 
Thanks Top Nurse and everybody for the suggestions, hopefully, I will have everything cleaned and drying by tonight. Oh, and i did go to a hardware store and bought their heavy duty clamps, that'll do the trick, and definently no more tubes comming loose now.
 
So, in result of putting my computer back together (excluding the watercooling), my graphics card didn’t seem to be working, so I took it out, and re-plugged it in and bang! It worked!

BUT

In putting the water back in, I found out that the fittings were now leaking (the o-rings didn't allow me to tighten them enough), but luckily, water only got on a little part of my graphics card and a little drips on my HD. Now I have decided that I am going to get the entire watercooling system full of water, and working before I even put it into my computer. Wish me luck!
 
unrealized said:
So, in result of putting my computer back together (excluding the watercooling), my graphics card didn’t seem to be working, so I took it out, and re-plugged it in and bang! It worked!

In putting the water back in, I found out that the fittings were now leaking (the o-rings didn't allow me to tighten them enough).
Click to expand...

Congratulations! What O-rings are you talking about? Next time always do a leak test before applying power and always recheck everything several times in a sequential manner to eliminate misteaks. ;)
 
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