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Water cooling sprung a leak, need help!

ChizzY

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Last night I bought a new r9 290 graphics card. While installing it I sprung a small leak from my watercooling without noticing, I tried to turn it on and got nothing. I noticed a small amount of coolant had leaked down my board and also may have got in the gpu slot. I took out the power cleaned up what I could and wiped away all residue I dried it with a hairdryer aswell. This morning I attached the power supply again and the light on the mb come on but when I press the power button on the case and on the mb nothing happens. I love my pc and am an avid gamer so please help if you can! Thanks!
 
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Have you tried it with your on-board (or on cpu) graphics? Also, what psu do you have? Fill out your full system specs.
 

brandonwh64

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I would start by testing each piece by themselves if you can. Do you have another PC you can test in? This is one reason I kinda steered away from watercooling.
 

ChizzY

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Hi there I don't have another pc to test stuff on, my full specs are,

i7 950 cpu
asus p6t deluxe mobo
6gb corsair vengeance triple channel ram
1tb hdd
I don't have onboard graphics

thanks
 
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This is one reason I kinda steered away from watercooling.

This is why you leak test with mountains of paper towels before you put expensive hardware to the test with water ;)

I had a bad leak, luckily I was testing at the time, and luckily I used non conductive coolant.
 

ChizzY

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Ive had it running for a couple of years fine I don't understand where the coolant came from I assumed it was sealed but I may have knocked a connector or something but none has leaked since im just completely stumped as to what to do
 
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Ive had it running for a couple of years fine I don't understand where the coolant came from I assumed it was sealed but I may have knocked a connector or something but none has leaked since im just completely stumped as to what to do

Clean your board with distilled water (it's non conductive, and it's cheaper than fancy coolant, use that next time), individual components. Leave them all to dry seperately in an airing cupboard, surrounded by silica gel. If you're lucky, you shorted your motherboard and nothing else. If you're unlucky, things got fried, but I'd expect to hear motherboard beeps at least if memory or CPU errors were found.

Clean and dry first.

If you can, try a different GPU in your PC, or try your 290 in a different machine, just to see what's gelato'd and what isn't.
 

ChizzY

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If I have shorted my motherboard does that mean its broken or will it be ok once cleaned and dryed?
 
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If I have shorted my motherboard does that mean its broken or will it be ok once cleaned and dryed?

If you shorted it, badly, especially across the PCI-E slot (fair amount of power there), it's probably dead.

In addition test RAM in a different PC too, just test everything individually that you can.
 
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Hi there I don't have another pc to test stuff on, my full specs are,

i7 950 cpu
asus p6t deluxe mobo
6gb corsair vengeance triple channel ram
1tb hdd
I don't have onboard graphics

thanks
What PSU?
 

brandonwh64

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This is why you leak test with mountains of paper towels before you put expensive hardware to the test with water ;)

I had a bad leak, luckily I was testing at the time, and luckily I used non conductive coolant.

Yea true, I had watercooling for about a year on my first I7-920 and it was OK in terms of cooling but I just didn't see the benefit from keeping it.
 

ChizzY

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its a 1000w 80 plus gold psu OCZ and I never actually turned it on after the leak it just had the standby power running through the mobo
 
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Yea true, I had watercooling for about a year on my first I7-920 and it was OK in terms of cooling but I just didn't see the benefit from keeping it.

Me neither, hence the jump back to compact air cooling :laugh:

I never actually turned it on after the leak
Well, you did technically, because you dried it and then tried turning it on again, right?
 
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yeah I tried to but it wouldn't turn on

Like I said earlier, take everything to bits, clean and airdry it all, then test it individually in any system you can get your hands on.
 
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its a 1000w 80 plus gold psu OCZ and I never actually turned it on after the leak it just had the standby power running through the mobo
Turn off power, take out the CMOS battery and wipe it, reset CMOS, RE-check connectors - particularly the front panel headers.
 

ChizzY

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Ok will do how do I reset the cmos? and what are front panel headers?
 
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Ok will do how do I reset the cmos? and what are front panel headers?
Check your motherboard manual. Usually with the Asus boards there's a switck/button to do that, but in general you take out the battery and take out the jumper from two of the 3 CMOS-reset pins and put on the other 2 pins for a few seconds and revert and put back the battery.
FP headers are pins where you connect your cabinet's front panel switch cables - power, reset, hdd led, power led etc.
But honestly, if you don't know these then you should have somebody else do these for you.
 
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ChizzY

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Thanks a lot someone else said I should try taking the battery out aswell so I will try that and let you know thanks again
 

ChizzY

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Um is the battery under that purple block? if so I have a waterblock over it : \
 
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Um is the battery under that purple block? if so I have a waterblock over it : \

No, look at the picture I posted, it's at the bottom right, it's plugged in sideways, near the RAM slots.
 

ChizzY

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Thanks and if I take it out for 1 minute the cmos will reset? im sorry if I sound stupid lol
 
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Um is the battery under that purple block? if so I have a waterblock over it : \
No, it's on the bottom right on the above image. It's placed vertically on a slot parallel to the RAM slots.
 

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I didn't see this answer. What coolant were you using
 
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