Agreed, but it seems like a somewhat better starting place than anything else I've seen.
Right in theory, although THIS survey doesn't bear that out necessarily.
Somewhat agreed, although defining 'cheap & nasty' can be a challenge at times. I can think of at least one brand that some users describe as a total POS, and others swear by and describe it as the great WC cooling bargain. (and this brand is sold by at least one major WC specialty vendor as well) The two total failures I've seen described in the survey were in a commercial WC case, and were selected by the case vendor (who was charging a high premium for the case, and should have known what he was doing.) I think I've seen something rude said about every brand that people commonly use, with the possible exception of Iwaki. (and some say those make to much noise...)
Perhaps, though I've heard some persons arguing that pump life is shortened by powercycling, and that it is better for long term pump health to keep it running 24/7. (Or that a relay adds another possible point of failure...)
IMHO about the same as leaving any other appliance w/ similiar power consumption unnattended, IOW, negligible. PC's are probably better about this in some ways, since the flamable bits are enclosed in a metal case (or cases), and all of which have been designed to be very fire resistant / self extinguishing.
Actually NONE... Electrical generation capability has to be built to handle PEAK loads, and significant %ages are left idling during off peak hours. By and large, the times when peak loads are being encountered are also the times the computers would be on anyhow. Leaving them on the rest of the time at worst keeps the off peak demand from dropping as much.

OTOH, there is a significant amount of evidence that suggests leaving a PC on 24/7 significantly increases it's lifespan and reduces the odds of hardware failure. This is due to the fact that most failures appear to be caused by thermal cycling and inrush current induced power surges, both of which are eliminated by leaving the system on. I find this evidence convincing in terms of hardware life expectancy.

The question ultimately comes down to whether the costs of operating 24/7 (Which I calculate to be roughly U$7-10/mo/PC at current rates, or about the same as a refrigerator) are greater than the replacement cost (including 'hassle factor') of prematurely failed parts.
This is TOTALLY due to the governmental interference in free market operations. There are a great many factors, but among the largest is the refusal of many gov't. entities (espec. California) to permit construction of new generation plants, and the regulation of prices causing artificially low electricity rates which encourage overconsumption and discourage new plant construction. (Again, CA is a textbook example of this...)

However this is getting away from the subject of watercooling failures so if you want to discuss the economics of power systems, we should probably take it to a new thread...

Gooserider

Ooohhhh, let's see.

I had the poly-top on my D-Tek spiral crack between the two barbs. After coming back from vacation I peeped in through my window and saw something. Luckily the dripping was so slow it evaporated before it dripped off the block and left a water stain on the lexan. Needless to say, I was very lucky. I put my old maze2 on temporarily while I contacted D-Tek. Their customer service was great and they sent me a free aluminum top once they were finished with manufacturing. Very nice.

Most of my other leaks have been during testing. I was trying a new rubbermaid resivoir that leaked because the goop around the barbs wasn't fully dry (user error :D). Another leak was from a 90-degree elbow I ordered from dangerden. The seam down the middle of the fitting caused the tubing to not fit uniformly -> leak. I suppose that was a sign that 90-degree elbows are evil :cool:

My best story is when I was fiddling around in the case and forgot to plug all my case/rad fans back in. I started playing some ZSNES for a half hour then checked my temps and they were in the low 50s. So I felt the radiator which was warm, heard no fans, and turned the comp off. Yeah -> user error :D

I loosened a clamp to move it out of the way of the mounting screws and didn't tighten it all the way again. Got water in the CPU socket. Definatly user error....

1. The tubing pushed the waterblock off the die, and when I powered on, it would crash during POST. Tightened the mounting, and everything was fine.

2. Hose clamp was so tight it was grabbing the hose, putting a little gap in it. Caught the error just before the water was going to drip onto the mobo.

I suggest mounting the motherboard upside down, so all slow leaks drip away. (desktop case upside down)

Interesting idea kibbles, but I'm not sure it would work well...

It would make drippy leaks have less of an impact on the mobo, but as Bladerunner and others have pointed out, if the plumbing is done right you won't HAVE drippy leaks :dome:

1. While WC'ing the CPU helps, there are lots of other heat makers in a PC. Putting the mobo at the top of the case means it's now in the hottest possible area.

2. While mounting upside down would keep drippy leaks from going onto the mobo, it might or might not help the rarer but more problematic 'sprayer' leaks. Also if the mobo is at the top, this implies that everything else is under it, so where do the drips go???:eek:

3. Remember that guy Isaac and his apples? Think about what hanging upside down is going to do to keeping cards in their sockets, stress on WB mounts (remember that many WB's and HSF's exceed AMD and Intel weight specs) etc.

4. This would make the WB the highest point in the system, which could make bleeding the system very difficult, and leave any air bubbles sitting between the CPU die side of the WB and the coolant - not a good thing for heat transfer.

Gooserider

You have come up with many valid points. The suggestion of changing case orientation is really only for leak testing, but your response was so lengthy that I feel I should address all of your points. Also, since you don't speak from experience, I have returned your disrespectful sarcasm with some more.

1. I think some case fans solve the heatbuildup problem. You test it with a fully watercooled pc (CPU,GPU,North) and then get back to me. I want hard data, not your opinion.

2. We agree on the spraying water being catastrophic. OK.
2a. Everything is NOT below the mobo. Water will go straight down in the case of drips, and there is nothing directly over my sockets except for the case lid.

3. Your sarcasm is unappreciated. I am well aware of gravity. I have not only thought about mounting things upside down, but I have also done it. I see in your signature you WANT to have a watercooled system, so I don't respect your opinion.

4. Put your pump-res-rad in a separate case ABOVE the PC, and the CPU blocks are no longer the highest point. Case closed (pun intended).
4a. Will the heat transfer suffer because the block's weight and the water within pulls it away from the die? I have definitely thought about the mounting system, and my waterblocks are going nowhere.

First off, I would like to start by apologizing for coming accross as sarcastic. That was not my intention, as I don't normally go out of my way to upset others. I will admit to a sometimes caustic sense of humour, sorry if it rubbed you the wrong way.

You did NOT make clear in your original post that you intended the upside down operation for leak testing only. I thought that your suggestion was for permanent operation, which seemed to me like a very bad idea for the reasons I mentioned. If you are suggesting just flipping the system for leak testing, then I have far fewer problems with it. My biggest concern would be whether the plumbing was designed for upside down operation (especially if the plumbing was all in the case). For instance a res that fed the pump from the bottom normally would be feeding from the top when flipped; if the res wasn't totally full, then the pump would be sucking air which isn't good... Also was all the hardware secured enough to handle a flip. Some builders put pumps, HDD's, and other such things in the case setting on a layer of foam without much securing - if the case were flipped they might dangle and do damage.

If those concerns (which I think you'd agree make sense) aren't a problem, then the flip isn't a bad idea. However, all reports suggest that for a non-conductive coolant, a spill onto a non-powered board is not a big issue as long as it's dried completely.

My objections were mostly targeted at the idea of running a flipped PC on a continuing basis.
I don't have hard data, however I do know the conventional heat flows in a case, and that it is FAR better from a noise standpoint to design a system to avoid thermal issues to begin with rather than trying to solve them by adding fans. I also haven't seen many setups that address the layer of stagnant air between the board and the case. On a vertical layout, that air gets changed by convection flow at least. In an upside down case it would be trapped unless extra work was done to remove it.
I'll buy that, especially since I haven't seen your case, but if there is any accumulation can it run to somewheres that it could be a problem? Is ALL the plumbing only above the lid, including the pump, rad, hoses, etc.? (a drip might run down a hose and along it before falling...) I also wasn't replying just to you, but to anyone else that might read the thread and consider your idea as well.
I have seldom done it long term in any system that I have designed, but I have had to work on many a setup designed by others that had things mounted upside down. One of the things I've learned from long experience is that upside down socketed parts are a frequent cause of problems. A standard PC card is a particularly bad potential problem because the only things holding it in are the spring tension of the contacts and the single screw in the mounting bracket. Cards (especially the old 8 and 16 bit ISA cards) have a tendency to come loose even in regularly positioned systems. One of the things you'll see long time techs do as a first step when setting up a new box is take the cover off and push on all the boards to make sure the seating is still tight. It has always amazed me that so few people do this considering the number of times I've found problems that way before I've even powered up a system. The tendency of many people to hang big heavy heatsinks and waterblocks off their video cars doesn't help either.
Yup, and I'm using 20+ years experience in the PC business, (including 5 years working in systems for the telecom business where 99.999% uptime is a contractual requirement) to design and build my box, mostly from scratch, including component selection, machining my own blocks, etc. Right now I WANT to have a system. When I'm done, I WILL have one that is as rock solidly reliable and bullet proof as I can make it. I am also quite respectful of those who have gone before me in this area, and who share their knowledge. I started this poll as the result of a discussion of failure detection and handling where I realized there wasn't a real good accounting of the actual problems people had. My goal was to find out what sort of problems were found in the real world so that I could focus my design efforts back on preventing them. I respect you as a person, regardless of what I may think of your ideas (which as I said weren't all that bad, just perhaps a bit problematic). While I would appreciate your respect in return, I don't require it, and won't loose any sleep if I don't get it. I might ask you to consider that if I thought you were a fool I wouldn't be spending the time it takes to make this reply...
Not so fast... You are correct in an absolute sense, but there is still a problem. I make the assumption that your blocks follow the fairly standard design of barbs sticking out of the side opposite the die surface. (I'd normally say the 'top' but since this discussion is dealing with an upside down case, I wanted to be clearer) If so, then the hoses coming to and from your pump/res box HAVE to go at least some distance below the block, make a bend and then come back up in order to make the connection. This means that the die side of the block is still the high point in that section of the loop. Any bubbles going into that section will stay trapped in the block unless the flow pressure and volume is high enough to push them down the exit hose and around the bend going back up.
While that is a possibility (especially long term) it was not the primary issue I was concerned about - I assume that a well designed mount can handle being upside down w/o major problems.

My main concern was bubbles getting caught in the block. (see above) since the block is upside down, any trapped bubbles will form a layer of air between the block's die contact surface and the water. This would be a major barrier to heat transfer. Think about the following ascii diagrams, and you'll see why...
As should be obvious, in the top case, the air isn't going anywhere unless either the system is tipped, or there is enough flow volume to force the air out. OTOH, in the bottom case, the air will naturally exit.

However if one assumes that the air does stay in the block for some reason, the bottom situation is still better, as the coolant which has better heat capacity is in contact with the cooling surface of the block. In the top case the air acts as a high thermal resistance insulator and will block most direct heat transfer to the coolant. Instead the heat must travel across the block and up the sides in order to reach the coolant. This increased thermal resistance could easily be enough to fry the chip.

Hope this clarifies things, and again, I apologize for the unintended upset.

Respectfully,
Gooserider

It's OK.

I'll take the air in the block more seriously too, and give you some performance differences in about a week.

well, lets see. i had 2 misses. the first was self inflicted pump failure. i was getting the small bubbles out of my loop, my rig was valved at the time and i was shutting the flow on and off while tilting the case to get the bubbles out, i had to leave the area to do something and forgo to turn the flow back on. came back and the comp crashed, i realized my goof and turned the rig off immediately, i opened the case and took a look, nothing looked wrong so touch the copper toped maze3 and OUCH, got a nice burn on my fingers! after all that i let the system cool off for a few hour and turned back on, it worked fine. the second goof i related to the first; the water block got so hot the tubing on the outlet got loose from the heat and suddenly started dripping, so went to home depot ad got a few hose clamps

With my first watercooling setup, coincidentally also a dual 120w peltier setup ... condensation killed my motherboard and processor. Took a LONG time though. I did everything perfectly, including insulating around the back of the motherboard, around the waterblock, etc ... but although I applied dielectric grease to the socket, I didn't fill it up and flush out all the air that was in there entirely, as I didn't know it needed that much at the time. Over time, the pins rot and messed with the stability. I eventually took it apart (months after first assembly) and when I took the processor out, some of thepins stayed in the socket. D'oh!

The processor was a stubborn overclocker, and the motherboard had cold boot issues long before I ever went to watercooling anyways, so it wasn't a huge loss.

with my bong setup, I've had some close calls with running out of liquid, but never had it overheat and shut down, thankfully. I'm more careful now.

I did have a MAJOR catastrophy though with it. I added an extension to the top of the bong ... and the tubing I had cut was cut for the old setup, which was about 8" shorter. It caused the hose to pull sideways on the bong, and although I had it duct taped to the windowsill as a temporary stabilizer, it pulled it over the next day while I was at work.

Gallons and gallons of water spewed over the carpet ... pushed up hardwood floorboards, but thankfully they settled down in a few months. No damage to the carpet ... water was clean, no additives because it was a bong.

The whole assembly now sits inside a plastic tub-thingie and the bong is tied to the wall with a few fisheye hooks or whatever you call them. No possible way for it to tip over ... and its highly doubtful that any water would make it over lips of the bottom unit even if the entire reservoir emptied.

Picture of current setup:

http://www.gotkarma.net/uploads/IMG_1865.jpg
http://www.gotkarma.net/uploads/IMG_1874.jpg

I've never had a waterblock or connection of any sort leak on me with the PC running at all (this is of course excluding the obvious leaktesting phase).

Nice setup. I'm no bong expert, but I'm suprised that you don't incorporate some sort of liquid level switch in the bong bucket to give an alarm if the level gets low, and shut down if it gets dangerously low.

I've been thinking about how to do that on my rad cooled system, which is a challenge because most switches won't fit in my res. I would think your bucket is big enough to make that much easier.

Of course the ultimate might be to plumb the bucket into the house plumbing using some version of a toilet tank fill valve so that the level maintainance would be automated.

Gooserider

That will be one of the many projects ahead. I've got a new pump coming (MD20RZT) to help increase flow. I also need to clean out the lines with cleanser since they're starting to gunk up.

I intend to put a flowmeter in the loop as well, which I can affix an alarm to in case of any blockage, but yes, if I can figure out a way to have an alarm go off when the reservoir reaches a critical state, I will. If you come up with the means to do so, let me know!

I have an optical liquid level sensor, (that I haven't had time to set-up yet), but it could be ideal for a bong system, especially as it is solid state, (no moving parts).

I'll dig out a URL if you want to know more

Got KarmA?

As said in the PM reply to you, others asked me so I've put details here. Can't give you a direct link as you need to start a session, so go to www.rswww.com

On the front page top left search box paste in this code 183-559

there are a few to choose from but they all do the same thing.

It could simply be set up using a system fan with rotational detection on the CPU header to shutdown the system on low level, in exactly the same way as my no-flow detection detailed in this article HERE

I'll do a simple circuit diagram if you need.......

1. cracked inlet on my 1250 sorted using enough ptfe to mummify a small child.

2. forgot to plug in fan, nothing happened worked fine as long as i didnt run it at load for more than a couple of hours cpu never got above 60oC

3. rad leaked (screw holding fan on and punctured it) no idea why as ive used the same fans and screws since i got it. fixed with solder and radweld, pc not on at time so i dried everything before i turned it on.

4. res constantly leaks but it is so small than theres no noticable drop over long periods of time and the water just evaporates.

nothing killed.

Off topic for this thread, but two simple / cheap approaches come to mind.

1. The sump pump approach - a microswitch mounted on the top of the bucket, with a float hanging off it. If the water drops to far, the float comes out of the water and the weight of it trips the microswitch.

2. The reed switch approach - similar to the above, but put a magnetic reed switch on the side of the bucket, with a float that will pass by it carrying a magnet. The advantage is that it would be very simple to have a series of switches giving a cheap form of level guage and / or graduated alarm (first switch operates a noisemaker, second shuts down the system...)

Gooserider

Back on topic:

I had a nice little disaster today :*(

I have finally decided to go with the hose barbs on all my fittings to stop these but of course it found a way round it. I hadn't tightened my clamp on the inlet to my nice new maze4 GPU cooler and a steady drip started.

Now I have had the drip drip before but this time I didn't know where it was coming from... it just found the puddle at the bottom of the case when I went away (always in a differnce place). and I could hear air entering the system (i.e. water is leave it somewhere else)

I did notice that the system would act up freeze and sometmes refuse t boot up but I had just upgraded my motherboard and was having a few prob with earnign the BIOS I ignored it.

It wasn't untill I was reinstalling windows and I noticed that windows kept asking for 20 PCI devices (I had 3 out of 5 in??) I realised that somethign was up.

Found the problem in the shaoe of a very damp sound card LAN card and modem. found also the only wet barb. I hope the cards are OK, gonna leave them to dry for about a week. now fixed but it just shows how resillent the PC is to a water attack :D. - working fine now

~ Boli

I've had one home made rez have a slow leak onto my hard drives (hard drive water cooling :D ).

I've had a swiftech pump start to fail when It was mounted on its side and turned all my stuff brown, took the blocks and heatorcore to carwash to clean, trashed the hoses, RMA'ed the pump.

Besides that its just been stupid stuff like spilling a little on the motherboard or video card when filling the system, or condesasion. Just proves that most of the time a little water wont hurt a computer.

It's fascinating seeing all these problems people have had with watercooling. I must have the luck of the Irish since I've NEVER had a watercooling issue, although I've only done H20 on three systems.

My only problem was with my first waterblock design trying to use a tranny oil cooler. It just didn't cool well enough, and I was watching the CPU temps to shut things down in time.


*knock on wood*

A few days ago I got a new desk. I put my computer on it rather than on the floor like it used to be. I woke up to a loud crash the next morning. The computer had rolled off my desk and taken a nice 3ft drop onto the floor. Results: Caster brackets shattered, fbottom and corner of case severely dented, dead NF7S, HD dead(there goes the RAID0), yet the pump kept pumpin and I didn't have a leak.

My replacement parts should arrive in a few days and while I'm waiting for the deveilery guy I'm going to make some chocks so this won't happen again.

I voted for block slow drip.

That was on my first block, that was a heatsink on which I bonded a fiberglass cage. The adhesive used was quick epoxy, and it didn't hold the long term water exposure, becoming very soft. One of the barbs loosened and a slow drip developed over the back of the gpu. It was so slow that every drop always evaporated completely after the next. That caused intermitent annoying graphics behaivor only when wet.

This was more a manufacturer mistake than an user error, even if in this case both were the same :p

My lesson was not to trust on a product marketed properties; every material deserves a proper test on the specific aplication before being accepted.

Sort of true, although it's a fairly safe bet that unless you signed up to be a beta tester, material failures would have been eliminated...

However your failure does illustrate an important point, namely the need to ensure that any adhesives or sealants are suitable for the application. It isn't enough to just say 'Water Resistant' or even 'Water Proof', the product needs to either specifically mention the application or at least say 'suitable for constant immersion'. There are lots of 'Water Proof' glues that are intended only for intermittent exposure, and will fail if left to soak for extended periods.

Gooserider

Hi Guys:

These are not strictly on topic but I think you will get a laugh out of them. Between 1965 and 1980 I worked as a stagehand both on Broadway and on the road, I also worked in the various shops building the shows so I got to witness and or hear about many funny “disasters”.

While moving a show from The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC to Toronto, miscommunication among the Carpenter on the deck, the Flyman on the Flyfloor and the Loading Bridge resulted in the wrong arbor being unloaded. When the load was removed from the pipe that was supposed to have had its counter weights removed, the pipe sped to the grid at the top of the stage house and snapped of some fire sprinkler heads. We had a two hour rain storm until someone could find the shut off valve.

While setting up a show in Los Angeles an error by a contractor who was installing a tennis court on the roof of the stage house (he pushed the gravel into mounds that blocked the rain drains) caused a lake to form on the roof. When the water rose high enough, it came cascading down through the emergency smoke vents and rolled into the orchestra pit. It was a mad scramble to remove the musical instruments, the microphones and the wiring before they were submerged.

The mixing console for the musical “The Wiz” was placed in a spot out of audience traffic flow but directly under a fire sprinkler head. The sprinkler gave way and filled the chassis of the console with rusty water. Back at the shop (after swapping in a replacement console) we revived the console by washing the chassis and all the boards in distilled water, drying it slowly and spraying it lightly with WD40 to drive out the last of the moisture.

One series of consoles exhibited an intermittent low level noise on random outputs. The shop, the manufacture and the various operators using these consoles were stumped until an examination under magnification revealed small growths of fungus on the boards. That was when we made the connection between the humidity in the venues where the board was used or transported and the noise problem. The solution was to wash all the PCBs in a trisodium phosphate solution and the rinse in distilled water and long slow drying.

I hope these have brought some smiles to your faces

Grayson

1. my res is a jam jar; it's connected with 18mm tubing to my pump and it is NOT with hose clamps (only using them on my hose adaptors). as I moved my res up and down when i was filling the loop the tubing must have gotten off the pump's barb but not completely. it ran fine, I went away. when I got back after several hours the pump was very LOUD, air everywhere in my loop and the res more or less empty.

quite weird, as it got loose but because the tubing was very stiff it was still pressed agains the pump's barb. so I lost half a liter of water in my pump's wooden case.

2.
leaking CPU block. prolly a leakin the taps for the allen bolts. my machine often hung after a while, when I was about to get my new mb/cpu I removed the block... :eek:

a small leak, but water got on the CPU and evaporated. the CPU was rusty and there was lime/dirt everyhwere (evaporated water!). there was even dirt IN the socket, one pin broke off because of that. sold the MB/CPU in an entire machine to a computer shop for waay to much $$$. and the MB was completely modded/trashed too: glue/white paste on the mosfets, it got vmodded and I just cut off the wires, a huge scratch on the bottom of the northbridge, black goo because it's been in a prommie,... :D :D :D

My johnson pump from surplus center burned.
Fortunately it was the only thing.

Now i need to find a seller of mcp600 at portugal.... and it isnt being easy.

just had a water pump leak and take my mb with it . Although i just instaled my rotor block and my temps droped 8c over my old maze 2 block

About a week and a 1/2 ago I suffered a pump failure of my little ViaAqua. The computer was off at the time, but I didn't know the pump had died and I turned it on. Windows booted, I logged in, started up IE, and started surfing around. After about a minute of time in windows MBM popped up saying my CPU was at ~60 C so I closed IE and shut down windows - it did finish shutting down and everything before it locked up. There was no damage at all to any hardware (not even a dirty windows shutdown). The CPU is a barton core running at 2300Mhz at I think 1.8V and had nothing more than a Maze-2 full of water but no flow at all to dump heat into for the entire time it was running.

On the bright side, it gave me a very good excuse to upgrade :) Sitting on my desk at home waiting for assembly is now a Maze-4, a danger-den z-chip cooler for my northbridge, a MCW-50, a Hydor L30, a dtek rad/shroud combo, and various tubing, hose-clamps, etc.

A couple of months ago, I would've voted "No failure despite 2 years of water cooling". But when I designed my new cooling system, bad luck struck more than once.

Failure #1: Mr. Murphy decided to pay a visit. When reattaching my Maze2, I accidently put the springs on the wrong side of the block, pushing it away from the core instead of towards it. Result: One extra crispy T-bird 1000 and total motherboard failure (probably due to extreme overloading of the voltage regulators when the CPU failed). It was probably time to upgrade anyway. ;)

Failure #2: The reservoir (a plastic box of the type you would build electronics into) had a manufacturing flaw, causing a slow dripping leak. The drips reached my new NF7-S motherboard causing random lockups. After letting everything dry out, it worked perfectly.

NEVER HAD A PROBLEM. BEEN A YEAR NOW.

KEEPING MY FINGERS CROSSED.
:)

Thought I'd share my late night dilemma with you all! :cry:

After tinkering with my watercooled dual Xeon system I turned the power button on only to have the fans spin up, no video signal display and the cold, hard knot in the pit of my stomach form as the words 'uh-oh' ran through my mind.

Thing would not turn off, so I had to yank the cord and after several minutes inspecting the machine I could see a few droplets at the bottom of the case. Looking at the bayres I noticed the CD drives were a little wet, no biggie I figured, it's happened once or twice before, unplug them and try the PC again.

Nothing.

An hour later of desperately trying to coax my expensive toy back to life by intermittently pressing the unresponsive power button I decided to get off my ass and reinspect the PC.

To my horror it dawned upon me that if the bayres had dripped water onto the CD drive beneath it and this had dripped down onto the drive beneath that, it didn't take much for the water to drip down the IDE cable to its logical conclusion. My brand new workstation mainboard!

No hairdryer to hand (sister's nicked the thing and taken it with her to uni :mad: ) I had to find a quick substitute and since toilet paper was all I could find at a moments notice I employed that. Let me tell you, toilet paper is useless for getting into tiny crevices (no pun intended ;) so I borrowed my dad's bath spa thing:

http://www.aotw28.dsl.pipex.com/balsan.jpg

This thing blows hard enough to tear a case fan from its housing, and employed on its lowest setting dried my machine out quickly. (is it my coolant mixture or do additives make the coolant a complete pain to dry out since the stuff is almost oily in its consistency and evaporates incredibly slowly?) After spraying the mainboard liberally with ispropyl, and then drying it out again I pressed the power button....

YEA-ESS! the ****er came on!!!!

with a 'too much to hope' grin I checked the bios, the hard disk post, and then after praying for XP to load the system device manager and event viewer. All's good, so far.

Fantastic eh? THE RELIEF! :D

It's 3am and I would have been lonelier had this damned thing left me high and dry.

Not quite out of the woods yet however, since the mainboard components around the wet area developed a whitish deposit fairly quick. I washed as much off as I could with isopropyl, but it was a pain rubbing it off all the SM components.

Any ideas as to what this residue might be, some corrosion or water residue?

*ahem* to stay on topic, yes, I have had a watercooling disaster, the problem was my own clumsiness in spilling water out the reservoir.