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H100i leak, GPU damage


TBlaar

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Hi there,

 

I got home 2 days ago to notice that my PC was turned off. As I turned it on, I heard a loud noise sounding like a fan, but as I opened the case to see which fan it was, I noticed that the entire PC inside was full of liquid, which turned out to be coolant.

 

I immediately turned the computer off and started to clean up the liquid, and at this time I noticed that the pipes going into both the CPU waterblock and radiator, had cracks in the rubber casing. It was leaking water from the waterblock, and running down the pipe, and therefor dripping the coolant straight onto my 3 month old RX 580 GPU.

 

Now I have a big problem... I immediately took out my GPU and had to remove the coolers to clear the coolant, which voided my warranty. The Serial number on the sticker was also "eaten" off by the coolant.

 

The liquid also leaked through my GPU and landed on my Corsair AX750 PSU which is sealed at the top but the sticker has been "eaten" off by the coolant. This messes with my OCD.....

 

 

The H100i Cooler was installed correctly and very carefully by myself (I am qualified to do this) and it's not been removed or tampered with in any way. I have never run an overclocked CPU as I have never needed to. The unit is around 4 -5 years which means it's past it's 3 year warranty here in South Africa.

 

I would like to hear what I should do next? I am too afraid to turn on the GPU, it may work and it may not. Regardless of whether it does or not though, the warranty is void and I have this feeling that the GPU is going to die at some point soon if it DOES happen to work. And also to top this all off, I am now out of a CPU cooler that I have to replace.....

 

Any ideas of what I can do about this?

Edited by TBlaar
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Hi there,

 

I got home 2 days ago to notice that my PC was turned off. As I turned it on, I heard a loud noise sounding like a fan, but as I opened the case to see which fan it was, I noticed that the entire PC inside was full of liquid, which turned out to be coolant.

 

I immediately turned the computer off and started to clean up the liquid, and at this time I noticed that the pipes going into both the CPU waterblock and radiator, had cracks in the rubber casing. It was leaking water from the waterblock, and running down the pipe, and therefor dripping the coolant straight onto my 3 month old RX 580 GPU.

 

Now I have a big problem... I immediately took out my GPU and had to remove the coolers to clear the coolant, which voided my warranty. The Serial number on the sticker was also "eaten" off by the coolant.

 

The liquid also leaked through my GPU and landed on my Corsair AX750 PSU which is sealed at the top but the sticker has been "eaten" off by the coolant. This messes with my OCD.....

 

 

The H100i Cooler was installed correctly and very carefully by myself (I am qualified to do this) and it's not been removed or tampered with in any way. I have never run an overclocked CPU as I have never needed to. The unit is around 4 -5 years which means it's past it's 3 year warranty here in South Africa.

 

I would like to hear what I should do next? I am too afraid to turn on the GPU, it may work and it may not. Regardless of whether it does or not though, the warranty is void and I have this feeling that the GPU is going to die at some point soon if it DOES happen to work. And also to top this all off, I am now out of a CPU cooler that I have to replace.....

 

Any ideas of what I can do about this?

 

Ouch! Sorry to hear that man, AIO leaks are extremely rare and I have seen threads where Corsair replaces hardware damaged by AIO. In those cases I think people have to send in the AIO as well as the faulty hardware for testing. I guess they do some type of investigation to see if there is a problem with the AIO. The last thing that a company wants is to have a part that will fail and cause catastrophic failure. This could impact their reputation if there is a flaw in it.

 

I can't say if the replacement extends to the past the warranty or not. Take lots of pictures! It doesn't hurt to ask, though it might be a better idea to first clean any residue off your GPU with some 99% Isopropyl alcohol. There are some guides and threads for cleaning up a GPU from a leak as this is more common in open/custom loops than AIO. Just curious, nothing got into the PSU? In any case never open up a PSU.

 

With back plates and PCB coatings, your GPU might have been spared, unless you saw some blue smoke or smelled burning electronics. What brand GPU is it?

 

Granted I use an open/custom loop. Though for AIOs, I would keep it as long as the system it is attached to still works. Though I would buy a new one for a new system if I went that route.

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Hey Solarity, thank you for your reply.

 

After I found the box last night, I noticed that the cooler has a 5 year guarantee, so I think it MAY still be covered (I bought it in either June or July 5 years ago ). I need to phone my supplier now to get the invoice again as I could not find the original. If I get it, I will try and get a replacement from my supplier ASAP.

 

Will a guarantee cover something like this though?

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DO NOT swap it with your supplier. You will need to contact Corsair, using the "Support Ticket System" link at the top of the page (you will need to register again for that) and tell them what you have posted here, along with a copy of your invoice for the cooler, plus any photos that you have. You will probably need to send any damaged parts to Corsair for them to examine. They deal with situations like this on a case by case basis.
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Hi there, yes thanks for the reply.

 

MY problem is that I am in South Africa, and that I would need to pay DOUBLE the cost of the H100i to get the items to and from Corsair. In addition to this, it will probably take 3-6 months to get and receive the items back, if they do decide to replace it.

 

If my supplier does replace the H100i, I will at least have that replaced in a very short time. Then if the RX580 breaks, I suppose I will just have to carry that cost myself....

 

It seems like it would still work out much faster and almost the same price, to just accept that the RX580 is MY loss and just get the cooler replaced?

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You may still want to contact Corsair. It will probably be a bit of hassle and you will need to photographically document everything, but then this is already a hassle and unfortunate at best. The solution may not be parts replacement per se and there may be a more appropriate arrangement given your location.
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I am still waiting for the supplier to let me know about my warranty, I will need to see if this is still under warranty with them here, and if they will replace the item.

 

If they do replace it, I will make sure that their RMA states that this was due to the H100i breaking with a coolant leak. Then along with this I will create a ticket to Corsair Support with all my photos and see if they will somehow do something about my RX580... (I don't have photos of the leak inside my case, I immediately cleaned it up to try and avoid damage, but I do have photos of both damaged parts....).

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I wouldn't bother contacting the supplier/retailer about the GPU, unless consumer law in SA covers accidental damage and covers 5+ years. Same goes for the GPU manufacturer, the moment that coolant hit the card any warranty was null and void.

 

Contacting Corsair is the best bet. Don't make any assumptions about how they'll deal with it, time scales or shipping costs, just talk to them and see what options they may have (I work tech support for one of the world's largest PC companies and I know exactly how they would deal with this sort of thing).

 

Failing all that, does your home insurance include accidental damage cover (I know mine doesn't)?

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No my home insurance does not cover this, I've been meaning to move insurance for years but I have never gotten around to doing this :)

 

I understand that my GPU will only get replaced by Corsair international, but my H100i's warranty is out in about a week so my first priority is to get that replaced or at least to my supplier so that the RMA process date is BEFORE my warranty expired.

 

I am still waiting on them as my serial num,ber cannot be found on their system.... :(

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OK just heard back from the supplier, and the H100i is out of warranty by 2 months..... DAMN!!!!

 

Will still open a ticket with Corsair to see what they say about the actual breakage and the damage it did to my GPU....

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OK just heard back from the supplier, and the H100i is out of warranty by 2 months..... DAMN!!!!

 

Will still open a ticket with Corsair to see what they say about the actual breakage and the damage it did to my GPU....

 

Yeah, I would still open a case, that is barely out of warranty. I think Corsair might want to inspect it to see what failed. Even it it is a .01% failure rate on 10000s of AIO, they might want to inspect to to see what exactly failed. If they see something consistent that might help them make improvements and limit problems other people could potentially have. Did you clean your GPU and test it?

 

It doesn't hurt to try to contact Corsair.

 

 

Also, thank you for being very polite on this forum :)

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Yep, thank you to everyone for their input.

 

I did clean the GPU and tested it last night, but it just does not display anything. I then went on to notice that my one PCI Express slot was drenched in coolant, so I tried to clean this out using some isopropyl alcohol. I also then noticed that the motherboard was full of coolant around the CPU, I only noticed this now when I tried to refit the stock cooler to do the tests I will explain below. After a proper cleaning of both PCI Express slots as well as all around the CPU, I was able to:

- Run a GT210 in the secondary slot successfully

- Run a Radeon 7950 in the secondary slot successfully

- For both of the above working states, the PC still seems to reboot from time to time

- The RX 580 does not work in the secondary slot

- None of the cards work in the primary slot. The Hard drives do not even spin up when a GPU is inserted in this primary slot.

 

My next step would be to test the GPU in another PC but I have not had the time to do so yet.

 

So from this it seems like not just the GPU has been damaged, but my motherboard has seen damage too. Even cleaning out all slots using Isopropyl Alcohol has not really helped, and this is after a PROPER clean and drying out afterwards.

 

Then after this all happened, I tried to put the H100i back into the box, and take some photos of how and where it leaked. When I did so, I noticed that the one connection going into the CPU water block was so loose, that when I straightened the water hoses to fit it back into the box, it spewed coolant and then the connection came straight off. Seems this was even more damaged than I thought, could have just been years of warm water running through a plastic / rubber fitting that caused this?

 

I will submit a ticket to Corsair today to see what they can do. I surely hope they will realise that this has just cost me:

- My H100i

- My ASUS Gaming Motherboard

- My brand new RX580 (4-5 months old)

- My Corsair PSU looks water damaged from the coolant... Not a pretty sight in a windowed case...

 

 

Again, thank you to everyone for your help. I will keep you updated if I hear anything from Corsair!

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  • 2 years later...
I see this is turning out to be a common issue . my cooler has started leaking was noticing performance dropping and system running a bit warm .decided to take it apart to re do thermal paste and as i took the cooler off the board i discovered alot of liquid damage on my board and the cooper plate has signs of corrosion. not sure if anyone else has any issue like this
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I see this is turning out to be a common issue...

 

One genuine user from 30 months ago and a crank who makes internet threats rather than contact Corsair directly do not really make a pattern. Do what that person should have done and contact Corsair. This is the user's forums where we can give you advice or provide general recommendations, but if you have a warranty or damage claim you need to go through official channels. There is a link at the top of this page (Support Ticket System) or visit the main Corsair.com site.

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A lot of people don't realise that they only get to see the bad experiences on forums and form the opinion that a few isolated occurences are the 'norm'

 

How many units have Corsair sold over the years compared to how many of them have actually failed. This is what people need to consider. No product has a 100% none-failure record and a few will inevitably fail.

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A lot of people don't realise that they only get to see the bad experiences on forums and form the opinion that a few isolated occurences are the 'norm'

 

How many units have Corsair sold over the years compared to how many of them have actually failed. This is what people need to consider. No product has a 100% none-failure record and a few will inevitably fail.

flip sorry man didnt mean to piss anyone off . but to be far they should then put a life span on the products then saying that o rings or whatever is possible to fail. not just imply it or hope that everyone upgrades every few years. im just trying to find other peoples experiences as it now means i need to spend money i dont have to buy a new pc as i cant get a new mobo for my possessor.

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