Computers and Home Owners Insurance

[Kwisatz Haderach]

I recently had a house fire, and my main rig took pretty bad heat and smoke damage. The top of my Haf X has a couple of melted places. After doing a little clean up, It would only fire up on stock settings with no overclock. The Rampage IIIE would not boot when overclocked at all. Also, I have some sata ports on the blink, it freezes sometimes when booting. If I unplug all the hd's except my boot ssd, it will boot up. When I get in Windows, I can plug the hd's in, and they are recognized, and work. There is also massive amounts of stuff on the fans and heat sinks inside my video cards. They are running much hotter now than before the fire. I hit 90C my 5870's while trying to game with the fan at 50% when before, the fan would be at 25% and only 68C. It was running at the time of the fire and sucked in smoke everywhere.

What I am worried about, is they want to try to clean it, and take stuff apart and void a warranty. I know its probably already void from the fire, but with replacement insurance, should I not push for a new rig? I am running a Asus Rampage III with 2 Asus EAH5870's V2, HX1000 power supply, a Corsair 64 Extreme ssd, two WD hd's, an H50 with GT fans, inside a HAF X case, and Logitech G930 headphones, and Logitech Z2300 speakers, Intel 980X processor, Dell U3011 Monitor, and a LG 24" monitor. The U3011 casing warped from the fire. The LG took in a ton of smoke.

Is there any common documentation on smoke damage to electronics I can sight? It has been over two months since the fire, and my insurance company is just getting around too it.

I had some random computer service leave a message for me this evening. I am worried they will want me to ship it off, and they jack leg something together and say its fixed. I have about 6,000 in this rig since I built it last year. It could run at 4.5ghz without breaking a sweat.

I also have an AMD 1055T rig that took less smoke damage in another room, but again I am worried about the effects later.


I have read that smoke acts as an acid on electronic parts. Is there any professional documentation to back this up? I don't want some bozo working for the insurance company feeding me a line of crap and nothing I can do about it. There is no local place I can take it to because it is a high end rig, they don't even stock the parts, or order some things that expensive, let alone attempt to repair it.

 

[limitedaccess]

Not sure if this helps much, but when I asked my broker about it when purchasing insurance I was told that you can claim it for the value at the time of purchase if your computer and electronics are damaged/lost from fire or theft or etc.

 

[Kwisatz Haderach]

thanks

I am sure they have a hard time when someone says 1 rig is worth about 6 thousand with all the goodies that went with it. When I repriced it at todays prices, I only loose about 500.00 for the replacements. My video cards were selling at 429.99 a pop last July when I got them from newegg.

 

[tonytnnt]

I got replacement cost on an original Xbox after they'd been discontinued... turns out replacement cost is an Xbox360. Anyways, you'll have to talk to your agent, but it shouldn't be too hard for them to figure out that computers can be $6000 (or more.) Since you bought at Newegg, just print out your receipts and hand them over.