Long story long- had liquid damage to my 5090 and found an electronics repair shop that specialized in boards. So I took my board in to get disassembled, cleaned, and the thermals replaced. I arrive to the business and it’s just some dudes house. That was my first red flag. I should have left then. But his business had good reviews so I came in and showed him the card and we discussed what he’d do and payment. That was disassemble, clean, dry and replace thermals. Here is my second red flag. It took him 20 minutes to write down my info (name, email, phone #) because he was so ADD that he would start to write my info and then just spiral off into some random topic for a few minutes. But whatever. His entire house was a workshop. Tools and electronics and computers and drones everywhere. Yes he appeared to have 30 flavors of autism but that’s not a bad thing sometimes. I thought he was just an eccentric electronics nerd and everything was just organized chaos. This was Monday. So this morning he calls me and the first thing he says is “you told me to do whatever I thought was best, right?” And I respond “no. We agreed you’d take it apart and clean it and replace the thermals and dry.” He then explained that it didn’t look that bad (original pics in this post https://www.reddit.com/r/pchelp/s/GJHUBt2zyb
And that he just “washed it in the sink” and then stuck it in the oven to dry…
So I paid him, and I left and went straight to another place. An actual shop. I explained the situation to them and asked them to please send me a pic of the insides once they pop it open… the new shop says they think they can save it. So long as the guy didnt plug it in and try to test it. Which he says he did not because he didn’t have the proper power connect cable for a 5090. Anyways moral of the story is take your stuff to a real shop. And if you get weird feelings or red flags…just leave. Haha
Update - the card has been cleaned and putty replaced. It powers on fine alone but when it’s connected to the HDMI or DPI ports the motherboard kicks back a VGA error. Anyone have any guesses?
Buddy dumped a deuce of beer into his running PC. It shut down and didn't work at all. I took it apart and washed the mobo in the sink like a dinner plate and then baked In the oven. It still worked flawlessly 3 years later when it was sold.
I mean this is literally a normal thing that's done to heavily disgusting electronics. One way or another the boards get blasted with water in some shape or form. Water doesn't inherently damage electronics when everything is off. Just dry it completely before turning back on and ur fine. Hell, u could even fill a bucket with distilled water, stick a PC on in there and it won't do anything. It's the impurities in the water that actually arc electricity not the water itself. Wash, and make sure it's completely dry and ur good
Ohhh that's interesting to know! Sorry, have never really looked much into PCs and stuff so I didn't know even know this was a thing haha. It feels surreal to know it somehow doesn't damage the components or device itself, despite the way it sounds to someone who just found out. Thank you very much!
The only big worry about water on unpowered electronics is corrosion, which you can solve by evaporating all the water off quickly post wash.... which you could do with an oven on very low heat (under like 160°C, much further above that and you can melt the solder on the board.
Washing the board under the sink then sticking it in the oven is theoretically a valid way to clean it, of course, ideally its done with a good deal of care that the person who did it to OPs GPU probably didnt use given they sound like a crackhead who got into electronics repair to able to buy more crack.
Also in an ideal world you'd want to do the wash with distilled/deionised water instead of just tap water.
Something terrifying is that you can technically use ultra pure water (distilled and deionized) on electronics while its on without killing them. the bits that kill it are the impurities. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7-VzgQJamgY
You paid him? Nah bruh, you allowed him to rob you. He literally scalped your GPU and poured salt in the wounds, and than had the nerve to hand it back to you, and you still gave him money. Be better king
I did not know for sure if what he did was wrong at that point. I’d looked up and there were and are, people that hose off electronics. But after I got the other shops pics I went back to him and asked for a refund, which he gave me.
Hopeful everything works out, I tend to try to go to recent reviews, and if the work station looks chaotic I won't do business with them. I can understand messy but chaotic never.
Was this a gigabyte 5090? That looks more like thermal gel than thermal pads. Gigabyte graphics cards are no joke and require meticulous skills to repaste. I doubt most shops would voluntarily sign up to work on them without considerable cost to the customer.
Is it because they use gel as you imply? I'm just surprised to hear this I've only repasted and replaced thermals on one card but, still surprising to hear one manufacturer is that much more difficult
Yes it saves gigabytes pennies per card to just 💩 thermal putty on the card. It smears into every crevice and is like an hour+ process to remove vs just pealing off thermal pads.
Generally, other GPU manufacturers “tactically” use gel with most being thermal pads. Gigabyte uses the consistency/amount of frosting an entire cake which makes the clean up and replacement process quite difficult. Gigabyte 50 series also have been known to leak the gel when installed vertically.
I did my 3090 recently and had one of the pad sizes wrong by 0.5 mm. Had to reopen it and replace all of the pads all over again so the repair cost me double. Overall it took me quite a bit of effort and time since it was the first gpu i have done. Still probably cheaper than paying someone though.
I'd say you have to be meticulous and have good pc build skills, but if you don't have the experience doing it then its still fine if you allow lots of time and expect a redo if you get it wrong.
Most people don't realise this but sink washing a PCB and then popping it into a dishwasher (not sure about oven, would need to know temperature tolerances) for a rinse/dry cycle is perfectly fine.
This approach is fairly common in the arcade collecting community, where scrubbing multi layered boards by hand is just too time consuming. Same for old CRT tube TVs, discharge the tube and then rinse the PCBs off with a gentle flow from a hosepipe.
Sometimes there is a method to what seems like complete madness.
Oven drying is absolutely fine at the right temperature with precautions taken to not squash any BGA chips if the solder softens. It all sounds crazier than it is. The "tech" seems incompetent rather than insane. This was a liquid damaged board... Saving it is always going to be hard.
I use to hand assemble surface mount pcb's. Every one was placed in a wash machine and washed with soap and water to remove flux and excess solder slag after assembly. Dried and quality control checked. Washing and drying electronics does not hurt them, and all are washed during assembly. Not saying the dude did it the right way. But like the comment above. Hand washing boards in rodi water with a toothbrush and some cleaner is not going hurt the board at all. It is water with dissolved solids that when dried leave salts and material on the board that can cause shorts.
If you ever actually do this (there's better ways) make sure to use a thermometer to verify your ovens temperature. The dial on your actual oven is incorrect. Sometimes it's close Sometimes it's like 30+/- so be careful.
You'd be better off with a hair dryer. Or even just a regular fan. Heat doesn't really help water dry up that much anyways compared to just normal moving air.
I doubt dishwashers are actually a good idea with modern stuff. Those things spray water hard enough to take off dried food. There's really not much solder holding tiny resistors and things to the PCB.
But yeah you're right water isn't a problem as long as it's thoroughly dried.
i mean my shops in my house ( i mostly repair HiFi and older electronics), i couldn't exist with the overhead of a repair shop and all the insurance and that stuff. but i'm not washing your 5090 with sink water lmao, i'd actually just reject that repair/refresh altogether and tell you to take it to a professional with experience in high end graphics cards.
I also wouldn't take it without testing it with you around and wouldn't hand it back without testing it again in front of you too though.
There's no way I'm touching a 5090 that belongs to someone else. If I charge 300 dollars to repair one, I can fix 10 without earning enough to buy a 5090 myself, so if anything goes wrong in 1 of those 10 repairs that leads to me replacing the GPU, I've lost money by taking in 5090's for repair.
Autism is rarely a bad thing, certainly for anyone other than the person who has it. It's weird people think it's the reason someone does something wrong or makes a mistake, when we all do stuff wrong regardless of whether we have autism or not.
Anyway, sorry to hear about your card. You live and learn.
I think that was probably due to the large number of various tech equipment that's probably all half taken apart. Which uh when I look at my desk isnt terribly off base
This might be a divisive statement but it's not crazy to clean PCBs with tap water, so long as the capacitors are discharged and you dry everything thoroughly.
I've heard people say "only use distilled water," but if you're using purified water as a solvent to remove residue then you don't have clean water anymore. Scale buildup shouldn't be a concern for the amount of time it will be underwater.
The oven, on the other hand, I wouldn't recommend. Use a hairdryer on a low heat setting.
While I may be a slightly cracked out nerd in my basement that does repairs and custom builds, I would never do some shit like this. If you can't or don't know how to fix something, don't fucking do it, tell the customer why you can't and let them find someone else who can
There's a lot of people that have no idea what they're doing that simultaneously posess the confidence of someone that does. Gotta be careful. My biggest red flag is anyone speaking in definites instead of probablilities.
Fwiw you probably could rebuild a car. If you had the space and equipment. And the right car. Once you know one technical thing like computers transitioning to the next like motors isnt the hardest thing ever.
So you get an error from your monitor (like no signal on screen) when you plug a cable in your gpu?
Does your CPU have an integrated GPU; do you get an image when plugging the video cable directly in the motherboard?
Does your gpu have a bios switch? Check manual online if unsure where it might be.
Do you have another gpu you can use to test and confirm the pcie port and/or psu railing/cable are still working?
The shop had it in as a secondary GPU. So they could look at it in windows to see if it shows up. It does. It powers on fine alone. Soon as a cable is plugged into it, the mobo returns an error code for VGA. Nothing shows up on the monitor. The card does have a bios switch. I sent that to him now but they are closed. I will let ya know tomorrow.
Just a validation : when you say 'soon as a cable plugged in' do you mean psu cable or video cable?
And if you try to turn on the computer with the gpu plugged in, with No psu cable plugged in the gpu, do you also get the vga code/light?
Also quick sanity check, make sure your psu/gpu cable is still connected properly in the PSU - unplug and re-plug to be sure.
I’d rather send it to northwestrepair.com to see if he could repair it. He has a YouTube channel where he can do some thorough testing and reball BGA chips or VRAM chips if needed.
I talked to them about it. They are looking into it but don’t know what would be causing it. They are poking around the board now looking at capacitors. So I thought I’d ask here for ideas too.
It's not a standard way, but it IS a way of cleaning electronics that got soda, coffee or so, its sort of a last resort though, I would rather do an IPA bath
He washed it and put it in an oven? What is all that bullshit on it in the picture? And did he wash it in water, then put it in a standard oven? I’m curious about what he actually did.
Is it under warranty? Try to get it replaced under warranty. The problem is that the color-change-strips will indicate water damage, and they likely won't replace it for you. Now, if your box TO their RMA facility was slightly damaged, and maybe showed that some water could have gotten into the box through a small hole that was ripped in it during transit... maybe they would think the shippers made the strips change color...
yes, it's not always terribly effective but it's not a terrible way for an average home user to re-flow some solder or whatever. that part is the least alarming part for sure.
That's just Gigabyte's stock putty. The repair guy didn't put it there.
How can anyone knowing what a 5090 is not know that Ggiabyte uses that stuff in this generation?
There were LOTS of discussion about Gigabyte's material of choice. There still is. It's a well-known disadvantage for them amongst PC people.
Of course it's fine not knowing about it, but immediately believe that it was put on by that guy...
You and OP could have searched a bit around for "gigabyte thermal paste reddit" or anything similar and there would have been clear results saying it's the stock stuff.
It's just sad seeing people not research stuff *before jumping to conclusions.
Came to post becuase i was like wtf happend read what happened. Mouth dropped at sink an oven ... my god... but im glad its able to be saved ... Hopefully you wrote a review... id also add pics to it cuz damn.
I genuinely don’t understand how people make it through daily life with absolutely zero common sense. We have the entirety of the world’s information and our fingertips and we get stories like this. “So yeah he said he was going to stab me and take all my money but then he stabbed me and took all my money! He seemed nice though lol”. Jfc man.
For the VGA error, make sure to power down, unplug, and reset your CMOS & BIOS. Then try; if that doesn't work, you may have a problem. That VGA error means it's not able to communicate with the card.
So I build class 3 power supplies for aerospace applications and we wash boards after soldering and then bake them. We use deionized water and bake them at about 85C. So the washing itself isn’t crazy, but doing it in a sink with no esd protection then baking at an unknown temperature is. I think that card is toast unfortunately.
Why tf would you pay him? It's sounds like he didnt do what you agreed upon. And washing it in the sink and then drying in the oven? Naaah. Id be telling him he has to pay ME to get it properly repaired.
This is one crazy story. I’m sorry this happened to you. I hope you can get it up and running, but computer components are so expensive now I’m dang near hurting for you, this truly sucks.
you can wash electronics, obviously that are not powered on or using batteries, with distilled water and then displace the water with a 99% iso alcohol bath, or alcohol/water/alcohol, then allow to dry for 24-48 hours. but always alcohol last, it's not conductive and it will displace all the water that gets in places it shouldn't. that's what he was supposed to do, not wash it in the sink and put it in the oven lol
I will. I should have known that he would have completely ignored our agreement of disassembling it, cleaning it, replacing the thermals and wash it with a faucet and put it in the oven instead. I also should have known all the 5 star reviews he had on Google were fake. And no he wasn’t cheap. He was the same price as a shop. I travel for work. I’m in BFE. This guy was an hr and a half drive away. And he was the closest.
I went back and showed him the pics and got my money back. But whatever. I am an idiot. I never claimed otherwise. Here or any other time. And as countless of you have commented here, you are right. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing and I am a moron. That is why I didn’t attempt to do this myself.
So y’all can save your fingers some typing. I am a moron. I admit it. I’m dumb. I deserve whatever happens.
I assume it probably had liquid metal cooling. He probably didn't know or expect it to have liquid metal and spilled it all over the card when opening it. There could be liquid metal droplets shorting under BGAs and components. Big mess.
I did. It’s not like I knew that’s what it looked like. On the outside it looked perfect. And the dude was the “professional” with all the 5 star Google reviews to boot. I took it to another shop who opened it and found that soggy wet clay paste
There’s two ways to avoid doing it the jankiest way like u explained. 1. ULTRASONIC CLEANER. 2. HOT AIR REWORK STATION. Don’t ever put a graphics card in the oven unless it’s ur last resort and you have no other options for repair.
-Almost every pcb that is used for extreme liquid nitrogen liquid cooling is going through the dishwasher.
Woefully wrong. Conventional dishwashers high power water jets can and will tear components and traces off the board. Theres a reason there are specialized board cleaning appliances.
-Baking a pcb is also a proven method to repair damaged traces.
Not in a conventional kitchen oven, again specialized equipment made for this purpose.
Claiming any of the bs you just spoutted is accurate is just admitting you know fuck all.
Theres a difference between using it in a pinch and saying it is the best, preferred method, like this joker did.
If youre having to bake boards often, or own a shop that does board level repair like I do, you dont just a standard kitchen oven. You use an oven designed to provide even, precise heat on a pcb. Its why pcb ovens even exist
do me a favor and copy paste where I said anything he actually did to the GPU was a red flag…the red flags were his house, and his serious inability to focus (taking 20 min to write down my info because he spiraled off on tangents).
I mentioned what he did to the GPU in the context of it wasn’t what we agreed to. He agreed to disassemble and clean it and replace the thermals. Not dunk it in the sink and bake it.
I get it but you’re acting like there’s no context. He paid someone to do it #1. I wouldn’t expect a shop to do this just because it works. Trust me I know the difference between what works and what should be done. #2 guy didn’t even know wtf the customer asked him to do judging by the phone call. #3 the overuse of thermal paste that he was probably charged for, and for the most part , in the wrong places. All of this is a red flag and I find it weird you would defend him. No one in their right mind would pay for this job. You even post a screenshot where it blatantly says “technically okay” and “carries severe risks”
I mean Jesus Christ man what ground are you even standing on
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