I spilled a small amount of beer on my tower. Now it won't power up

[snoopyd]

I spilled a small amount of beer on my tower. I unplugged it right away, I washed motherboard with rubbing alchohol and let it dry for over a day. I put everything back together and now the pc power button flashes for split second but pc wont power on. Do you think it would be a motherboard problem or possibly a PSU failure?

Thanks,
John

 

[Taylor422]

I hate to say it, but you probably fried something.

 

[mavroxur]

Did the beer get into the PSU or on the motherboard? Chances are, if it didn't get into the PSU, but got on the motherboard, the PSU is okay but the motherboard is toast. Breadboarding it and testing the board+cpu+ram (and either onboard video, or a known good card) with a known good power supply (from a different computer possibly) would be the first step.

 

[mavroxur]

And also, just because you left the board sitting out for a day, don't think that the alcohol is all gone. If it gets trapped in a small space (like beneath a surface mount IC around the bga balls, under the cpu socket, in a ram/pcie socket) it won't evaporate very fast, and powering it on with conductive fluids trapped on it could have killed it. You might try using a hairdryer and gently (don't get too close) go over the board for a while, blowing at different angles and try to force air into odd areas of the board, and dry it out. I'd bet money you have alcohol trapped under a surface mount IC somewhere. But i'm not having much faith in it working if you powered it on like that.

 

[TheoB]

dont drink as much?

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Was a day when case manufacturers would not accept the "heat rises" argument and put exhaust fans in top of case for exactly that reason.

Tried the paperclip trick" ?

http://aphnetworks.com/tutorials/psu_paperclip_trick

Id guess your as likely to have "forgot to plug something in" problem as a shorted circuit problem.

 

[EnderWiggin]

Which beer?

 

[snoopyd]

Best answer selected by snoopyd.