Water on laptop. Is it dead? - need help

Hello all,

I came home today to find that my ASUS G50V was not booting up. After looking over it and finding nothing obvious, I cycled the power strip it is plugged in to. I then heard the sound of burning and sparks and looked up to see smoke coming from the back of the laptop.

Still unsure of the problem, I followed a disassembly guide to break the laptop down, and it was only then that I noticed the water under the keyboard - water had leaked from the ceiling on the the keyboard overnight...The only visible damage - where the smoke came from - is something labeled "FVC G50V_FLY" which is near the battery and LCD hinge where the board pretty much melted. I also saw visible water around the power switch, and its possible it has gotten elsewhere, but no visible burns.

Is this salvageable? This isn't something I know how to fix but if the damaged part(s) are available I would be willing to try to repair it if it is cheap. I hoping someone here with a little more hardware knowledge could give me an idea what I am looking at here.

fyi the laptop is sitting in a case along with a bowl of rice which I placed next to our dehumidifier

If it's dead, I guess I'll be reading through the forums for my next laptop

 

chances are even if you did get a new motherboard / parts you don't know what else could have been damaged and it may end up costing more to get it fixed than buying a new one (with the peace of mind that everything works).
problem with water damaged electronics is there's no sure fire way to know which parts are actually damaged until tested (which means you need replacement parts to test it against).

unless of course you bring it to a professional repair shop, given the age of the laptop as well replacement parts will be harder to find.

 

Unfortunately I had a similar thing happen to me. I also wasnt lucky : ( water and laptops just dont mix. Your best bet is going to be to part that lappy out or sell it as is. Good luck!

 

Geekz makes a good point. Should you manage to find the replacement parts and do the work yourself, there's no telling how much the parts and time cost is. You might have a cure all on your hands with a motherboard replacement, or you could have other components damaged as well. And in the end, if you replaced every component outright + shipping, you're most likely looking at spending more than the laptop is worth (and if you brought it to a repair shop, their markup + their charge for service would really send the cost over the edge).

If you're lucky, and any removable components are good, you can recoup your loss to some extent by pulling them and selling them.

 

If you have either homeowners or renters insurace, it should be covered for this. You probably will only get market value for the laptop, but it still is a good start towards a replacement. You just need to take pix of the ceiling and the laptop. Call your agent, collect. Good luck.

 

Aaahhh the old "something got split on the laptop" the tech i used to work with and i did a few different jobs of a few we fixed. we start by cleaning the mother board with a simple setup. With soda we used a flux (not just any flux) to aid in the sugar removal from BGAs.

 

You can check, but most renter's insurance won't cover this, or there's usually a deductible anyhow which is more than what you will probably get for the laptop, not to mention what making a claim does to your insurance bill.

In any case, sound advice already given. Sell it "as-is" and recoup some costs and buy a new laptop. Altough considering the age of the laptop you'll be lucky to get $100 for it especially as a dead unit.

The good thing is pretty much any newer laptop, will outperform that thing (it's a Core 2 duo + 9700 GT right?)