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nboy22

nboy22

Diamond Member
Ok.. I want to know if I'm just extremely lucky, or something else was going on..... Anyways, last night my friend and I were drinking by my computer and he swung his arm out and knocked a beer over and about the whole bottleneck of liquid got into my computer case from the top fan hole. Anyways, as I heard and saw it happen, I quickly rushed over and did a hard shut down by hitting the switch in the back.

I opened the case up pretty fast, got a clean and dry rag, and pulled the video card out (9800 pro). I felt the mobo with my finger and found that some of it had gotten on there, too. So I wiped it all down, and put the card back in. Keep in mind that the output from the video card on the monitor was all scrambled by the time I did the hard shutdown. So I ploped the video card back in and turned it on, and the video was scrambled again, at this I thought, Sh!t. So I pulled the card out again, then brought my dad's nvidia 4200 in and put it in the case, turned it on, and everything goes fine....

Not about to give up on my video card, I picked it up and waved it around in the air, as to air-dry it.. after a good 10 seconds of doing that, I put it back in, turned on the machine, and bam!, back to brand new, it actually worked.... and my question is simply, why did it not fry? there was a good amount of alcohol all over it.
 
The way I see it, youre amazingly lucky.

Edit: Or if you happened to be drinking 70+% isoprophyl alcohol, that would evaporate quickly enough.
 
well it wasn't really high quality, it's decently expensive stuff, I guess you can't really call it a true beer, but it was bacardi green apple 5%
 
"Make a chart showing the concentration changes of 1/2 ounce to 1 ounce of each added to the gallon of H2O When using alcohol or alcohol substitutes make a note of any changes in conductivity. Alcohol and most alcohol substitutes are non-conductors and will cause a drop in conductivity."

source

didn't know this
 
Seems to me like a form of alcohol abuse -

Maybe a high resistance short that evaporated with the your air dying the board. Regardless, congratulations on your good luck!
Do not spill steroids on that board - can you imagine? 🙂
 
They usually use a bottle of champagne on the maiden voyage of ships...I guess beer works just as well on video cards.
 
technically speaking alcohol has a really low boiling point so most of it could have evaporated in 10 minutes in a warm room if it was really thinly spread- but i'd say you just plain dodged a bullet
 
Hi, Beer is mostly water. Water is not as good a conductor as you have been led to believe. As it dried the conductivity decreased. Sometimes you have to wash the board in water and let it dry. Especially if it was coffee or worse. Jim
 
Beer of the Fates
Gives +1 on a d20 roll to save your motherboard from catastrophic failure when you spill beer into it.
 
Originally posted by: nboy22
Ok.. I want to know if I'm just extremely lucky, or something else was going on..... Anyways, last night my friend and I were drinking by my computer and he swung his arm out and knocked a beer over and about the whole bottleneck of liquid got into my computer case from the top fan hole. Anyways, as I heard and saw it happen, I quickly rushed over and did a hard shut down by hitting the switch in the back.

I opened the case up pretty fast, got a clean and dry rag, and pulled the video card out (9800 pro). I felt the mobo with my finger and found that some of it had gotten on there, too. So I wiped it all down, and put the card back in. Keep in mind that the output from the video card on the monitor was all scrambled by the time I did the hard shutdown. So I ploped the video card back in and turned it on, and the video was scrambled again, at this I thought, Sh!t. So I pulled the card out again, then brought my dad's nvidia 4200 in and put it in the case, turned it on, and everything goes fine....

Not about to give up on my video card, I picked it up and waved it around in the air, as to air-dry it.. after a good 10 seconds of doing that, I put it back in, turned on the machine, and bam!, back to brand new, it actually worked.... and my question is simply, why did it not fry? there was a good amount of alcohol all over it.
Click to expand...
I hope you punched the sh*t out of your friend.
 
Originally posted by: JimPhelpsMI
Hi, Beer is mostly water. Water is not as good a conductor as you have been led to believe. As it dried the conductivity decreased. Sometimes you have to wash the board in water and let it dry. Especially if it was coffee or worse. Jim
Click to expand...


correction: water does not conduct. try using distilled water to conduct electricity. it won't happen.

the ions dissolved in normal tapwater are what gives it its conductive properties 🙂
 
Originally posted by: fishmonger12
Originally posted by: JimPhelpsMI
Hi, Beer is mostly water. Water is not as good a conductor as you have been led to believe. As it dried the conductivity decreased. Sometimes you have to wash the board in water and let it dry. Especially if it was coffee or worse. Jim
Click to expand...


correction: water does not conduct. try using distilled water to conduct electricity. it won't happen.

the ions dissolved in normal tapwater are what gives it its conductive properties 🙂
Click to expand...

Distilled water mixed with a bit of everclear was always my favorite and best performing coolant in my old watercooled Socket A setup.
 
Originally posted by: fishmonger12
Originally posted by: JimPhelpsMI
Hi, Beer is mostly water. Water is not as good a conductor as you have been led to believe. As it dried the conductivity decreased. Sometimes you have to wash the board in water and let it dry. Especially if it was coffee or worse. Jim
Click to expand...


correction: water does not conduct. try using distilled water to conduct electricity. it won't happen.

the ions dissolved in normal tapwater are what gives it its conductive properties 🙂
Click to expand...

So... beer companies used distilled water to make beer or something?

 
No, the nutrients found in standard drinking water (the ions of sodium, calcium, phosphates, magnesium, chlorides, etc) are fairly important for the yeast to get a good start in fermentation, and the levels of these nutrients have a fairly marked impact on the final flavor and other qualities of the beer. So much so that its not uncommon for brewers to ADD salts of various types, such as gypsum or even standard table salt. Coors for instance, even plays up the fact that they use "fresh rocky mountian water" which is chock full of ions from filtering down through the mountian streams. (Ironically, I use the same water in my homebrew, as I live 5 minutes from the Coors brewery, but i make one hell of a better beer than Coors).
 
I dont think he was, I think his computer is/was on the floor next to his desk and the spilled beer landed right on top of it.
 
i would have given A LOT more time for things to dry off than you did. A LOT. (however, cool that it worked for you).
 
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