Can I safely reuse a previously wet UPS?

[Dave]

TL;DR version: My UPS for my desktop gaming computer got water in it. Previously it was showing faults when I plugged it into the wall, but now that I let it sit and dry for a few days, it seems ok. Is it safe to run my rig off of it again, or should I buy a new one?

Link to product: APC UPS, ~$60 USD

Long story:

Alright, so a few days ago, I get back after a long day to have my roommate come up to me and say "There's frost on our air conditioner!"



I go check it out and, what do you know, he's right -- the front of the AC unit looks like the frost coated racks in your freezer. It's also getting a fine mist of water everywhere, including on my UPS that powers my main gaming rig. I stab the off switch for the UPS (the computer was off at the time), pull the UPS cord out of the wall, and yank all the power cords out of the UPS. I pick the UPS up and find that the whole unit has been soaked through by this mist; the exterior is coated with water, and I can hear some water sloshing inside the unit as I move it.

I turned off the AC, put a towel under it, and waited. Later that day I could wipe off some of the frost to find reasonably pure ice between the plastic grill fins that make up the front of my AC. Eventually that melted too.

For the next hours I could rotate the unit and have a small trickle of water come out of it, which I wiped up. The next day I plugged it in experimentally, and it beeped the "Building Line Fault" light and refused to turn on. Today (this is about two or three days later), I plugged it in, and it seems to work fine.

My question is, is this safe to use again to power my gaming rig, or should I buy another ~$50 UPS? (Something that I can do, I just would prefer not to spend the money if I don't need to.) I'm currently running my netbook off of it with no visible issues.

Also, as a side note, does anyone know why I would see frost on the building side of my air conditioner? I've never seen that happen before. How would I fix that?

[ShadowDragon8685]

I would say you need to weigh the risk of using a potentially-bad UPS on your gaming rig versus the benefit of saving $60 to not replace it.

The absolute worst-case scenario is that it fries out, starts a fire, and incinerates everything you and your roommate own, starting a fire which might possibly incinerate the entire building. If you're in a college dorm, this could kill a lot of people and/or almost certainly get you heaved out if they ever discover you knowingly plugged in a $60 piece of electronics that had taken a deep drink of A/C Water.

More likely than that is that the UPS fries out, your PC's power supply is insufficiently hardened to take it, and it fries out components on your gaming rig. You could lose all your data, fry out the mobo and other parts, such as the GPU.

More likely than that is that the UPS fries out, your PC's power supply is sufficiently hardened to take it and you only lose the power supply or nothing at all, and you have to replace the $60 UPS anyway.

More likely than that is that the damn thing works perfectly.


Honestly, I'd say if you have the $60 to spare, just replace the damn thing. It's not that expensive as computer hardware goes, and peace of mind will be well worth it. If you don't, cut the UPS out of the loop altogether, stone up and plug the PC straight into the wall outlet or some kind of barely-surge-protected power bar.

[Starglider]

If it was a motherboard, I would say clean it with an alcohol-based cleaner, dry it carefully then reuse it. For a cheap and nasty UPS it probably isn't worth the hassle. You should be ok, they all use sealed batteries, and if it does fail it will probably just blow the fuse. Out of curiosity why did you bother with a UPS with 9 minutes of battery lifetime on a gaming PC? Is the power there so unreliable that you were losing documents on a regular basis?

[Dave]

I would say you need to weigh the risk of using a potentially-bad UPS on your gaming rig versus the benefit of saving $60 to not replace it.

Exactly, that's why I was asking.

The absolute worst-case scenario is that it fries out, starts a fire, and incinerates everything you and your roommate own, starting a fire which might possibly incinerate the entire building. If you're in a college dorm, this could kill a lot of people and/or almost certainly get you heaved out if they ever discover you knowingly plugged in a $60 piece of electronics that had taken a deep drink of A/C Water.

I live in a fraternity made entirely of cinderblock, with a concrete roof over my head and steel doors in steel frames. The running joke is that we could remodel our rooms with a Molotov cocktail and no one would notice.

More likely than that is that the UPS fries out, your PC's power supply is insufficiently hardened to take it, and it fries out components on your gaming rig. You could lose all your data, fry out the mobo and other parts, such as the GPU.

More likely than that is that the UPS fries out, your PC's power supply is sufficiently hardened to take it and you only lose the power supply or nothing at all, and you have to replace the $60 UPS anyway.

More likely than that is that the damn thing works perfectly.


Honestly, I'd say if you have the $60 to spare, just replace the damn thing. It's not that expensive as computer hardware goes, and peace of mind will be well worth it. If you don't, cut the UPS out of the loop altogether, stone up and plug the PC straight into the wall outlet or some kind of barely-surge-protected power bar.

And this is why I was asking. I was wondering if it's safe (or, more precisely, how safe it probably is) to play the cheapskate route or not.

If it was a motherboard, I would say clean it with an alcohol-based cleaner, dry it carefully then reuse it. For a cheap and nasty UPS it probably isn't worth the hassle. You should be ok, they all use sealed batteries, and if it does fail it will probably just blow the fuse.

Hopefully this is the case. However, it's a sealed UPS -- the only thing that opens is the battery cover, and the lead-acid battery, is, of course, completely sealed. So I can't open it up and check easily. I could pour alcohol into the outlet slots in the UPS (which sounds like a bad idea on the surface), but I can't really open it up to air dry it afterward.

Out of curiosity why did you bother with a UPS with 9 minutes of battery lifetime on a gaming PC? Is the power there so unreliable that you were losing documents on a regular basis?

Frankly, yes. I live in a fraternity with shitty wiring. (I should probably get a power conditioner or something, rather than a UPS, now that I think about it.) I wasn't losing documents, but there have been at least half a dozen times I can think off off the top of my head where we lost power for some random reason, usually for under ten seconds. I've already had it save me from a power blink once.

We have stupid (but "cost effective"!) practices, like switching the main hallway lights on and off using the circuit breaker (opening the possibility for someone to throw the wrong breaker in the dark). I swear each personal room is on up to three different breakers, and we're usually not entirely sure which breaker any particular outlet is wired to, so we'll cut power to 4 or 5 different circuits in the vicinity of where we want to do some, ah, custom wiring, and then break out the multimeters to double check. (Don't worry! We're engineers! ) If your computer was plugged into the outlet nearest the room where you want to re-do the wiring, well, there's a good chance you just got switched off. At which point, you come flying out of your room bellowing curses at whatever idiot is standing by the circuit breaker box.

[Starglider]

Frankly, yes. I live in a fraternity with shitty wiring. (I should probably get a power conditioner or something, rather than a UPS, now that I think about it.) I wasn't losing documents, but there have been at least half a dozen times I can think off off the top of my head where we lost power for some random reason, usually for under ten seconds. I've already had it save me from a power blink once.

Oh, understandable then, I lived in some places like that when I was a student. Particularly annoying when I had a whole pile of ancient second hand computers running experimental cluster computing software, restarting and syncing them all took half an hour. These days I have a rack-mount UPS rated for 90 minutes run-time, but that's to keep my home server / switch / router up through a typical power cut (we get a half-hour blackout every other year or so, and brownouts bad enough to reset computers every six months or so).

[ShadowDragon8685]

The absolute worst-case scenario is that it fries out, starts a fire, and incinerates everything you and your roommate own, starting a fire which might possibly incinerate the entire building. If you're in a college dorm, this could kill a lot of people and/or almost certainly get you heaved out if they ever discover you knowingly plugged in a $60 piece of electronics that had taken a deep drink of A/C Water.

I live in a fraternity made entirely of cinderblock, with a concrete roof over my head and steel doors in steel frames. The running joke is that we could remodel our rooms with a Molotov cocktail and no one would notice.

I would pay good money to see that attempted.

And this is why I was asking. I was wondering if it's safe (or, more precisely, how safe it probably is) to play the cheapskate route or not.

The problem with statistics is that they're only that - statistics. If we came up with statistics stating that 99% of UPSes that take a drink will explode with enough concussive force to bring down a building, you could say fuck it, keep on trucking in apparent suicidal apathy, and fall into that 1% that chugs along just fine.

More realistically, even if, say, 89.9% of the ones that drink and get dried off work fine ever after, you could be in that 10.1% that don't. The price of absolute peace of mind is $60 here. You may be able to recoup some of that by hocking the old one, even. Only you can make the decision. Me? I'd buy the UPS if I were as worried about it as you are, but then, I have my $2000 PC plugged into a power bar.

(Come to think of it, a $60 UPS doesn't sound like a bad idea, given how annoying "ARGH FUCK!" power blips are when they wipe you out...)

We have stupid (but "cost effective"!) practices, like switching the main hallway lights on and off using the circuit breaker (opening the possibility for someone to throw the wrong breaker in the dark). I swear each personal room is on up to three different breakers, and we're usually not entirely sure which breaker any particular outlet is wired to, so we'll cut power to 4 or 5 different circuits in the vicinity of where we want to do some, ah, custom wiring, and then break out the multimeters to double check. (Don't worry! We're engineers! ) If your computer was plugged into the outlet nearest the room where you want to re-do the wiring, well, there's a good chance you just got switched off. At which point, you come flying out of your room bellowing curses at whatever idiot is standing by the circuit breaker box.

That sounds like someone is going to get killed.

[Dave]

I would pay good money to see that attempted.

I'm sure I'll have a video on hand if we ever do that.

The problem with statistics is that they're only that - statistics. <snip>

I'm well aware of that. I was looking for a second opinion and/or an idiot check. Sounds like I got it -- I'll probably end up buying a new UPS and using the old one for less critical tasks, like keeping the bitchbox going through power blips.

That sounds like someone is going to get killed.

That's what multimeters (and pledges) are for.