How do you clean a motherboard?

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ChRoNo16

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This is sort of an odd case, This machine was laying on its side with an open case at my dads, it was a system my brother was going to put up for working on cars.

long story short, dad spilled a large cup of coffee that was just right with creamer and sugar all over the motherboard. Nobody cleaned it up, the system just sat like that for about a year.

I want to clean up the board and build an older nostalgia machine since this has a nice Hypethreaded Pentium 4 in it.

But how do I clean the board? I can see some of this stuff has gotten into the ram slots and the power connector on the board, as well as the board itself having a decent coating of crud.


Any thought? Besides the thought to junk it.
 
I Have CLEANED MANY OF BOARD WITH non-chlorined BrakeClean and blown off with compressed air (dust,glue,muddydustjunk) then sprayed with lot of WD-40 let sit then wash with WD-40 again and blown off with air again!!!
My Shop PC is old Abit IP35-pro with Q9450 overclocked to 3.4 running 24/7 in dusty shop 9-10 years (I clean it about once a year)
My wife left a Vicks Humidifier running next to my home server one night. Woke up to a dead WET Server... Washed like that! Has been Video/DVD server 24/7 for 6-7 years!

The trick is to get crystallized suger from under the North/South Bridge Chips and most other chip on the board...

YMMV
 
An old toothbrush, a teaspoon of dawn, and a sinkful of warm water works great too. Just don't get crazy and start knocking SMDs off the board, and dont touch the socket.

Rinse it off, blow the water out of the slots and socket, and let it sit for a day or two in front of a fan.
 
actually, a dishwasher on gentle cycle will work great. The key is ... LET IT DRY THOROUGHLY before applying power to the board. At HP we used a pressure wand that shot a water/soap mixture then did a water rinse and put it into an oven set to low temp (oven was used because in business ... time is $$$). The stuff I was washing cost $40K so I'm confident your motherboard will survive a dishwasher cycle :cool:
 
HAL_404 said:
actually, a dishwasher on gentle cycle will work great. The key is ... LET IT DRY THOROUGHLY before applying power to the board. At HP we used a pressure wand that shot a water/soap mixture then did a water rinse and put it into an oven set to low temp (oven was used because in business ... time is $$$). The stuff I was washing cost $40K so I'm confident your motherboard will survive a dishwasher cycle :cool:
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No wonder RMA rate of HP is higher than other brands.
 
Chip brush, scrub with distilled water in tub. Then let dry for 24 hours hanging with air blowing towards it.
 
ryan_975 said:
Does working there and seeing 3/4 of the 100+ people in the office replace their laptops more than twice (some more than 5 times) in two years count? These were there supposed elite products.
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An experience is not an epidemic, its just your personal brand opinion based off the models you used.
I haven't had that great of an experience with their user equipment either (the proliant servers are solid), but nothing that I would say is higher than any other without peer reviewed statistics to back it up.

Environmental conditions and individual users have so much variance in their treatment of equipment its not even funny.
 
Edit: Didn't read his full post, sorry. Assumed he was talking about general dust build up.

Good question that I have a great answer to.

This experience was gained from nearly 30 years of not only building PC's but cleaning them as well.

This is all you need. Trust me. It's better than anything else.

In order to effectively remove dust you have to interrupt it's very slight charge that allows it to adhere to the surface ( inside your PC )

Dust gains this charge thru frictional forces via the airflow that occurs inside your case. A good example of the science is how dust is able to adhere to the leading edges of your ceilings fan blades. Same difference.

Get you a $3 med paint brush from Walmart or Harbor Freight and keep it on hand. I'm not a painter or I could probably give you a # for the paint brush but I can't. You want one that's about 1/3 the size of a brush you would use to paint your home or something like that.

Note: exercise caution with the metal banding of this brush. Never use a brush to loosen dust with the PC on. In fact, discharge the PSU after the PC is off before cleaning. You don't want that metal band on the brush to short out a video card or motherboard, etc.

Once the dust is loosened you can blow it out further with canned air or even a box fan if you're cheap. If you're pockets are deep, then blow out the loosened dust with a "Electronic Dust Blower." And no, those fancy electronic dust blowers cannot do this job alone. I have two and they are still a bit under powered in my opinion. Avoid the "datavac" brand as it's a two piece design and you can easily damage the seal between the two pieces when you drop it or bang it around and trust me, you will as it's a bit heavy. There are other brands that have a one piece design. That's the one you want. Expect to pay around $50 to $60 for one of these.

There is even a commercial grade spray, a bit oily so I don't use it but it's used in heavy industry that keeps dust build up out of critical area's of heavy manufacturing equipment. Meaning, dust can never settle but I would not recommend this stuff for a home PC / Workstation. It's very hard to clean out and has a slight chemical smell to it. The brand / name escapes me but I think it's a 3M product or from one of those chemical companies. Somewhere I still have a can of this stuff.

51Gu8oF+KBL._SY355_.jpg IMG_20190127_202630.jpg
 
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I have that same Xpower air duster. Highly recommended.

I fix a ton of electronics so I buy this at harbor freight - https://www.harborfreight.com/catal...AFeatured+Weight,f,Sale+Rank,f&q=chip+brushes Pack of 36 chip brushes. You can cut them at an angle and it gives you different firmness to really scrub the dirt out.

I have used simple green, scrubbed and then rinsed with tap and then the final rinse with distilled. I normally only use a cleaner if its been housed by a smoker normally.
 
ryan_975 said:
Does working there and seeing 3/4 of the 100+ people in the office replace their laptops more than twice (some more than 5 times) in two years count? These were there supposed elite products.

Most of the money I made fixing peoples computers during college was from replacing HP/Compaq laptop motherboards.

I'll buy an HP printer any day, but I will never buy or recommend anyone to buy an HP computer.
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I probably sell about 3500 elitebooks a year, no different than a Lenovo from a initial quality stand point. The design however is NOT friendly AT ALL for liquid spills. The keyboard gets wasted real fast too and does not drain the liquid out the bottom. They look sleek like the apples though, guess that was the goal. I rather have the chunkier Lenovo design any day.
 
ryan_975 said:
Does working there and seeing 3/4 of the 100+ people in the office replace their laptops more than twice (some more than 5 times) in two years count? These were there supposed elite products.

Most of the money I made fixing peoples computers during college was from replacing HP/Compaq laptop motherboards.

I'll buy an HP printer any day, but I will never buy or recommend anyone to buy an HP computer.
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Anecdotal. Nothing to bravo up your statement.
 
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