Enough current to fry components?

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  1. #1
    Sushi
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    Enough current to fry components?

    I'm looking into Water Cooling, and I read that I'm supposed to use distilled water. I found out that the resistance of distilled water is supposed to be 1,000,000 ohms. If I got a drop of distilled water (from a leak) onto my motherboard, would it fry? In other words, how much of a current is needed to fry the motherboard? I don't know how much energy would be going through the motherboard, but if there were 3 volts going through it, then V=IR, so only .000003 amps would be able to pass through the water (just an example).

    PS: Does anyone know how much power would be going through a motherboard (ASUS A7N8X) at stock specifications?

    Thanks a lot.

  2. #2
    Not Wurm Isezumi's Avatar
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    you are here asking questions about an occerence that was avoiding by using distilled water.


    With a resisttence of 1 million, electrons are going to be hard pressed to find a reason to travel across the drop of water as opposed to where ever that nice copper trace is taking them.


    As for the rest of your question...your motherboard handles quite a bit of current on a daily basis, depending on your processor it can get to be upwards of 50 amps and for your Vidcard (assuming a beast) around 20-25 amps. But its all VERY LOW Voltage. To kill your motheboard with current alone would probably require you to fry most PSUs in the process. What you want to look out for are disproportionatily high voltages.

  3. #3
    Great White Shark Moridin's Avatar
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    The problem is that if you spill distilled water on you motherboard it will pick up or dissolve dust, dirt, oils, and other chemicals that have accumulated on the motherboard. Distilled water has a high resistance, but water with stuff dissolved in it does not. Even after the water is gone, it will leave deposits in, under and around the circuitry that can affect its long-term reliability.

    Since much of this is random, there is no definite way to figure out if the board will fry outright. It probably will not, but any electronics exposed to water tend to have a reduced lifespan and a motherboard is no exception. A drop or two, however, is not likely to cause much damage.

  4. #4
    Hammerhead Shark
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    it wouldn't fry but it might cause problems.
    the current needed to drive a single logic gate is really not that much and if you're unlucky enough to drop it in the right place, you might permanently tie a gate to a logic 1 or 0 for a short while.
    boo! bah!

  5. #5
    Master of the obvious Adisharr's Avatar
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    Stop it from happening in the first place by doing it right. Test the hell out of it and you'll be fine.
    ...WAIT FOR IT

  6. #6
    Hammerhead Shark adslegend's Avatar
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    Another thing to remember; if you're talking about a substance or material in general you can't quote a resistance but the resistivity. There is a subtle difference, it would take me too long to explain here and it isn't really relevant but think of the resistivity as the resistance per unit of substance, as in a drop of distilled water has a much different resistance to a bucketfull. That is too simplistic though, since the volume and dimensions of the substance can affect the resistance which is why the resisitivity unit, the mho (ohm backwards ) is used.
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