My cousin accidentally spilled cola on my gaming laptop a few months back. Ever since then, it hasn't given me too many problems; it turns on fine, charges without issues, and I can still play games. However, last week I started hearing some odd noises, so I decided to have it cleaned by the place I bought it from since they offer free cleaning. About an hour later, they contacted me saying they found liquid contact on the device and asked if they could inspect it further. I've agreed, and now I'm just waiting for their callback. Given this situation, do you think I'll need to replace the motherboard? A while ago, during gaming, I experienced a sudden FPS drop down to 5, forcing me to shut it down with the power button, and after that, Windows crashed and I had to reinstall it. Last week, I encountered a similar FPS drop along with the noise problem. I have an i5-12450H processor, an RTX 4050 graphics card, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.
2 Answers
Sounds like your cousin turned your laptop into a little science experiment! Corrosion is no joke. Just know that even if it was a sugar-free drink, the acid can still cause issues. If replacing the board isn't an option, you could salvage your RAM when looking for a new laptop. Best of luck!
It's highly likely you'll need a new motherboard. When liquid spills on a motherboard, it's usually advised not to power it up again until it's properly cleaned. The FPS drops and crashes you're experiencing are classic symptoms indicating that corrosion might be disrupting power delivery. At least you're catching this early rather than waiting for total failure later on!
So, do you think it will be the whole board that needs replacement? The cola was sugar-free, so maybe that helps a little?
Yeah, it might just be parts of the board that need replacing, but usually it's safer to replace the whole thing.