Grease in peripheral slots?! Who would do such a thing??!!! Board hosed?!?

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AveryFreeman

consummate homelabber
Mar 17, 2017
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Dude,

So I bought this server by some people that admittedly said they knew nothing about it. It was advertised as a motherboard, but they said it came with everything. So I ordered it, curious about what I might find.

When I get it, I open it up and look at one of the slots and I notice this shiny substance that's in ALL of the empty slots. It looks like Vaseline or something. I touched some of it, and sure enough, it's some kind of greasy lubricant

Is that some kind of thing I just don't know about? I really hope this whole board isn't ruined. Hopefully someone will tell me I'm overreacting and people do this for some odd reason, and it hasn't hosed the whole board.

Not holding my breath, though...
 

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alex_stief

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May 31, 2016
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I have only ever seen vaseline on motherboards used for extreme overclocking. It protects components from condensation with sub-ambient cooling. But you usually don't get it into PCIe slots. That's just weird.
 
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AveryFreeman

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Mar 17, 2017
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omg so I guess if it's dialectic grease, it should be OK

This guy on youtube has put it in all sorts of shit, I've seen two videos so far where he's put it in memory and cpu slots



He definitely wins the award for weirdest youtube sponsors
 

Whaaat

Active Member
Jan 31, 2020
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Use Liqui moly rapid cleaner #3318 to remove the mess.)) Nothing to worry about, non-conductive grease could do no harm.
 

Tom5051

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Jan 18, 2017
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If you remove all sources of power (bios battery), you can run a motherboard through a car wash. As long as it is clean and dry when power is applied, no issues. I would avoid the dish washer as the chemicals in the detergent can oxadize the heck out of some metals.
Some spray cans of that cheap de-greaser from an auto parts store would clean that up 100%
 

alex_stief

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May 31, 2016
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It is mentioned in the video that dishwasher cleaning agents are not recommended. He ran his components without it.
What kind of car wash do you have in mind?
 

AveryFreeman

consummate homelabber
Mar 17, 2017
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I poked at it with a couple q-tips, which did basically no good, so I finally grit my teeth and shoved a few PCIe cards in and turned it on

Looks like it's working just fine... going to be gross if I ever take the cards out, though

Update: I ran it overnight after putting the cards in it, it seems to be OK to have that grease in there.

I'll never look an electrical engineer straight in the face again.
 

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