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  1. #1
    Chram
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    Spilled coffee on my tower

    This morning I knocked half a cup of coffee onto my tower when it was turned on. The coffee got into the top vents and the computer immediately turned off. Stupidly, I tried to turn it back on(I have no idea why I tried to do this) and the fans/lights came on and then immediately turned off.

    I then opened it up and took it apart. I soaked the motherboard and vid card in isopropyl alcohol for about 10 minutes and then let the parts sit out to air dry for about 6 hours. I cleaned the outside of the PSU. The HDD seemed untouched.

    After everything dried off, I used some canned air and put everything back together. I turned it on, and again the lights/fans came on and stayed on. However, the monitors were blank, so as far as I could tell, the computer wasn't booting up. I then tried taking the video card out and having the computer use its onboard video, but got the same results.

    Is there anything else I can do to try to fix the problem?

  2. #2
    Ranger
    9900klub

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    very likely the PSU is what died, I would test it with a different PSU and check it out

  3. #3
    Sandworm Swallows
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    If the lights and fans came on and stayed on the PSU isn't completely dead, right? Can it be partially dead? I'd put more bet on the mobo being damaged.

  4. #4
    Piece of shit Bruins fan

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    Quote Originally Posted by Silenka View Post
    If the lights and fans came on and stayed on the PSU isn't completely dead, right? Can it be partially dead? I'd put more bet on the mobo being damaged.
    Could supply power on some rails but not all. Depending on how the fans are connected, might be the 12V or 5V rails are dead.

    For the record (the reason I clicked into this topic) - I resurrected a Radeon (a 4650 IIRC) from a PC where this happened. This was in a government office and the chassis on this Dell was left ajar intentionally because the PC had two full-length PCI data acquisition cards inserted that prevented the case from closing. The woman who operated this PC routinely set her coffee mug on top of the PC, and one day she rolled a 1.

    My supervisor threw the video card in the trash, I took it home and cleaned it up nice and that sucker ran XI like a champ. Most of the surface traces are coated in enamel so you're not going to get a short except in the vicinity of the SMD contacts, and those are so low voltage that it's more likely to just cause the devices to behave completely randomly than to "fry" it.

    Disclaimer - I am not an EE and I'm sure having made this post that an EE will magically manifest and tell me I'm wrong.

  5. #5
    Chram
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    Just to follow up, I took everything apart one last time and put it back together and it was able to boot up. I must have had a loose/missing connection when I put it back together the first time. Hopefully there's no permanent damage, and thanks for the suggestions.

  6. #6

    An incident like this would lead me to spend a couple of hours to a day taking apart, and dismantling every piece and analyze with a magnifier for anything before I even considered putting it back together and powering up.

  7. #7
    Leader of the Brain Eating Space Monkeys
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    I hope you don't take sugar in your coffee

  8. #8

    What sort of coffee are we talking? If it was Starbucks and you didn't spill it on an Mac you're hosed, otherwise it will just empower it with street cred and you'll get an extra mp3 for the week.

  9. #9
    D. Ring
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    Also spilled tea (with sugar) on my Vaio a couple of days ago. Went crazy the moment, wasn't even able to boot it up.

    I let it dry for a day, opened it up and cleaned every bit of stains. Just when I thought that it was gone for good, it started working with absolutely no problems even after a nightlong stress test. Near miss!

    Also On Mac's defense, I dropped it plenty of times, the last one being in a moving train to the solid ground (in train of course not out of window), from about 1.2/1.3 meters. On top of these I've also spilled drinks on it, works quite fine.

    To be honest after the train incident (where every other passenger gave a "oh fuck..." face) I thought at least the screen would get damaged. Absolutely nothing apart of a couple of minor cosmetic damage. Unibody Macs are really well built.

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