Spillage on cards!

[benikens]

So I literally cannot believe what happened over the weekend, firstly my friends came over for a LAN, my mate managed to spill a berroca (needed us some energy!) right in the top fan mount of his case and all over his 6950. At first we just unplugged it as fast as possible and started mopping it up with one of my anti-static cloths i use when removing thermal paste, we got all the visible drops off the card and mobo, thankfully barely any hit the mobo. So we then decided to remove everything for a proper clean before we turned it on again, however it turns out his case was to small for the 6950 and he'd just 'wedged' it in, I can't remember the model of case but it was a cheapish one that had thermal sensors built in and looks like a flux capacitor on the front. the pcb pf the card at the very end overlapped into the optical bays whereas the rest of the hsf section was sitting below, literally wedged a piece of metal 1~2 cms into the card.

At this point we gave up on removing the card as nothing we did seemed to be able to get it back out of the drive bay and he was unwilling to cut the bay open with all the components still in the case. So we plugged it all back in and hit the power button, fully expecting to see smoke, but amazingly it seems to have lived through it's ordeal. Though i do wonder if berroca will cause lasting damage to his GPU.

This seemed to be one of those worst case scenarios I'm always paranoid about at LANs but would you believe it the next day another friend manages to pour melted butter through the top vent on his case straight onto his pair of 6850's! I haven't heard back from him but I believe at least one of the cards is dead.

Anyways i thought I'd start a horror stories thread to find out if other people have done equally as dumb things and the likelyhood that my friends 6950 lives.

 

[Wamphryi]

Well lets see. I had one dude who had bolted his motherboard directly to the case minus the mounts which resulted in the death of his board and CPU (AMD). Both were brand new but of course no warranty due to the installation method. Later that week another one came in with the same circumstances but the CPU survived (Intel).

A technician (of poor quality) plugged a laptop power cable into the LAN port and that ended that laptop.

I think one of the strangest I ever dealt with was back in the day of Baby AT and the Serial Mouse. My mission was to remotely direct a user to move a CPU (which meant the case in the day) to another room to test a COAX network connection. Here is how it went. I had this user on speaker phone.

"Ok take the CPU to the next room"

"Ok done that"

"Right you have the mouse and everything?"

"yes got that"

"OK plug the mouse in to the CPU"

"Ok done that"

"Right plug the network cable on to the CPU."

"There is nowhere to put it"

"Yes there is, there will be a silver plug on the back."

"No there is no silver plug."

Entire IT department gravitates to my desk to ponder this mystery.

"Look there has to a silver plug on the back it cant have just evaporated" (User support skills coming out there.)

"No Im telling you there is no silver plug."

"Ok describe to me what the CPU looks like."

"CPU I thought you said VDU!"

"You mean you moved the screen and not the box?"

"Yes!"

"Um I meant the box not the screen."

"Ah how silly of me."

This leads to a new mystery.

"Um where did you plug in the mouse?"

"I plugged it into the end of the screens cable"

Whole IT department bursts out laughing.

"Am I on speaker phone?!!!!!"

"Um yes"

Click

 

[jj1979]

Well lets see. I had one dude who had bolted his motherboard directly to the case minus the mounts which resulted in the death of his board and CPU (AMD). Both were brand new but of course no warranty due to the installation method. Later that week another one came in with the same circumstances but the CPU survived (Intel).

A technician (of poor quality) plugged a laptop power cable into the LAN port and that ended that laptop.

I think one of the strangest I ever dealt with was back in the day of Baby AT and the Serial Mouse. My mission was to remotely direct a user to move a CPU (which meant the case in the day) to another room to test a COAX network connection. Here is how it went. I had this user on speaker phone.

"Ok take the CPU to the next room"

"Ok done that"

"Right you have the mouse and everything?"

"yes got that"

"OK plug the mouse in to the CPU"

"Ok done that"

"Right plug the network cable on to the CPU."

"There is nowhere to put it"

"Yes there is, there will be a silver plug on the back."

"No there is no silver plug."

Entire IT department gravitates to my desk to ponder this mystery.

"Look there has to a silver plug on the back it cant have just evaporated" (User support skills coming out there.)

"No Im telling you there is no silver plug."

"Ok describe to me what the CPU looks like."

"CPU I thought you said VDU!"

"You mean you moved the screen and not the box?"

"Yes!"

"Um I meant the box not the screen."

"Ah how silly of me."

This leads to a new mystery.

"Um where did you plug in the mouse?"

"I plugged it into the end of the screens cable"

Whole IT department bursts out laughing.

"Am I on speaker phone?!!!!!"

"Um yes"

Click

ROFLMAO!

 

[benikens]

Well lets see. I had one dude who had bolted his motherboard directly to the case minus the mounts which resulted in the death of his board and CPU (AMD). Both were brand new but of course no warranty due to the installation method. Later that week another one came in with the same circumstances but the CPU survived (Intel).

A technician (of poor quality) plugged a laptop power cable into the LAN port and that ended that laptop.

I think one of the strangest I ever dealt with was back in the day of Baby AT and the Serial Mouse. My mission was to remotely direct a user to move a CPU (which meant the case in the day) to another room to test a COAX network connection. Here is how it went. I had this user on speaker phone.

"Ok take the CPU to the next room"

"Ok done that"

"Right you have the mouse and everything?"

"yes got that"

"OK plug the mouse in to the CPU"

"Ok done that"

"Right plug the network cable on to the CPU."

"There is nowhere to put it"

"Yes there is, there will be a silver plug on the back."

"No there is no silver plug."

Entire IT department gravitates to my desk to ponder this mystery.

"Look there has to a silver plug on the back it cant have just evaporated" (User support skills coming out there.)

"No Im telling you there is no silver plug."

"Ok describe to me what the CPU looks like."

"CPU I thought you said VDU!"

"You mean you moved the screen and not the box?"

"Yes!"

"Um I meant the box not the screen."

"Ah how silly of me."

This leads to a new mystery.

"Um where did you plug in the mouse?"

"I plugged it into the end of the screens cable"

Whole IT department bursts out laughing.

"Am I on speaker phone?!!!!!"

"Um yes"

Click

LOL that's mint.

The other day I got sent to Newcastle from Epping (I'm in aus) ~1 1/2 hr drive each way to fix their "server" which turned out to be an external hard drive which needed to be shared on the network, the IT illiterate do make me laugh sometimes. I didn't mind a paid day of driving in the bosses car for 5 mins work.

 

[nforce4max]

When something spills on anything like this you need to remove and clean it right away. Mopping it up won't be enough as the liquid gets under many vital components. Washing the pcb in distilled water is the best and then quickly blasting it with compressed air.

 

[benikens]

When something spills on anything like this you need to remove and clean it right away. Mopping it up won't be enough as the liquid gets under many vital components. Washing the pcb in distilled water is the best and then quickly blasting it with compressed air.

Distilled water is non-conductive yeah? I might give that a go next chance i get.