Repairing my water damaged Dell XPS 9530 (Part two)
Now to see if we can bring this Dell laptop back to life!
If you haven’t already, you should go ahead and read part one, where I’ve assessed and diagnosed the potential damage that occurred to my Dell XPS 9530 after a water spill. Now it’s time to see if this Dell laptop will ever boot again!
Date published note: I realised I never actually posted the part two of this even though it happened way back in 2020 (how the world was different then!). I never like a cliffhanger, so here’s the follow up several years late! Whoops!
Recap
- Several components have water corrosion and are going to be replaced entirely, because they look nasty.
- The mSATA SSD and Intel AC 7260 WiFi card are potentially salvageable
- The logic board itself may have survived but I can’t be sure yet and I don’t have the electronic skills/tools to start probing power/data lines.
- The last power on attempt before opening it up was two beep codes, which indicates a RAM issue according to official documentation from Dell for this model of laptop.
- One or both RAM modules may be fried or the RAM slots on the logic board could be in trouble.
Salvaging some components
From part one, I showed all the components that have suffered varying levels of water corrosion/potential damage. Some could be potentially still usable after isopropyl alcohol cleaning but I needed to test them outside of the logic board on known good hardware, given I can’t use the Dell XPS 9530 logic board itself currently until other replacement parts had arrived. These were:
- Intel 7260 AC WiFi card
- Samsung mSATA SSD
I purchased an mSATA to USB3 adapter so I could test the mSATA SSD on another machine. Upon testing it, it was immediately getting power and was recognised by Windows, which the mSATA SSD itself is a Windows 10 install. The filesystem is in tact and I was able to read and write data. I ran a couple of CrystalDiskMark read/write tests at it and it seems to be fine, with power going through it for a couple of hours with everything working it was promosing that it was not permanently damaged!
Next is the WiFi card. After cleaning the pins to remove the nasty looking corrosion and scorching there is permanent damage on a couple of pins that remains but most of the crap originally present was able to be removed. I tested the WiFi card in another of my Dell XPS laptops (XPS 9550) that also supports the Intel 7260 AC card (minus one antenna as this card is 2x2). Upon booting into Linux (as that’s what my XPS 9550) has installed), the WiFi card was detected and able to be see wireless networks, so also salvagable.
Beep codes suggest RAM issue
The last attempted power on after the water spill revealed two short beeps then a pause, followed by the same repeated. Looking up the beep codes for the XPS 9530, two beeps is an indication of a RAM issue.
My assessment in part one didn’t find water damage in this area. Water has managed to get onto a very small part at the very top of the logic board near a MOSFET power block, but other than that it looked clean. The pins on the RAM modules look OK, the RAM slots themselves look OK and surrounding area on the logic board around the bottom part where the RAM is, seems to be unaffected.
There are a few of theories around this beep code based on the damage that was visible.
- A short circuit could have meant that the memory bus line from the CPU to the RAM slots were not properly communicating, so no RAM was able to be seen.
- One or both of the RAM modules has been fried, even though there is no visual evidence of water on these parts.
- The logic board has been permanently damaged.
I am not an expert on the electrical side of hardware, but the Dell XPS 9530 motherboard schematic is available to view some of the layout and components.
The fact my XPS 9530 is giving beep codes suggest that there is some life, so the CPU is most likely working, however communication to the memory bus might a problem. However, given the potential of shorts going on in a few places, it could also be a misleading beep code.
I am happy to admit I am not knowledgeable in the electronic side of hardware, so probing various power/data lines with a multimeter and such is something I cannot do, so I’m making some educated guesses at the hardware level.
Will it boot again?
The daughterboard arrived quickly as it was coming from the UK, this is where the most water damage occurred, so replacing this may resolve a lot of the issues and is possibly quite lucky that as a single component it can be swapped entirely. The connector that bridges the daughterboard to the main board looked worse for wear as well, so this also got replaced. This delayed the repair because it was coming from outside of the UK in the middle of a pandemic. Eventually this also arrived along with replacement CMOS battery, which was replaced because of corrosion.
After cleaning the main logic board and giving the inside shell/case a wipe down, given it’s basically a complete tear down at this point, I re-assembled everything to a point without the bottom case on. Powering on, this time I got 5 beeps, so a different code but not a successful POST still. Referring back to the table on beep codes, 5 beeps is CMOS battery related, as this was a replaced component, it could be an issue with the connector or just not seated right, hoping for the latter I reseated the connector and tried again and this time, we had a booting laptop again!
Despite the corrosion in places, the main board seems to have survived and replacing the other parts has resolved the issue.
Like with many water damage events the problem with most electronics even powering off a device immediately, power is still running through these devices when the battery is sealed inside, you need to be quick and pull the battery connector (and CMOS battery) to remove all power. This sometimes is not possible and in this case, it was more than 24 hours (the laptop was on loan to someone else!), so further damage was made possible.
Luckily however, this Dell continues to live and will go on to continue on until Windows 10 goes EOL.
