A chainsmoker friend who used to be a PC techie but got seriously throttled by radical vision loss had another PC quit 9 months ago. I had built it for him about 5 years earlier using an Asus socket FM2+ motherboard with onboard VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs that his son bought him from TigerDirect. Before the new motherboard, CPU, PS and RAM were bought in January I had tried cleaning the A88X chipset motherboard with a modest amount of DeoxIT Brand contact cleaner/wash, which didn't solve the complete POST failure. Today I finally found the magic after closer inspection of the remaining tar and dust goo buildup near RAM and CPU sockets. After buying a compatible CPU to test with that didn't change anything, I used the rest of the can, which wasn't much, and didn't come out under much pressure. It didn't help, and neither did pouring a few ounces of 91% isopropyl alcohol on the dirtiest spots and hitting them with a plastic bristle brush. Then I tried 2/3 can of Techspray IP electronics cleaner that comes out in force, then blowing it off with compressed air, then baking it half an hour @200F. It worked. Board now boots using either his original A10 CPU or the A8 I just bought.

Title suggest a question, would you like to edit the post & change the title to "How to resurrect a smoker's motherboard", I'm sure others may be interested, thanks.

1 members found this post helpful.

Why bake it? Isn't electronics cleaner either spirits or alcohol based?

Surely 2 min in the California sun would do it? (49c... that's nuts!)

However the cleaner is based, compressed air just wasn't removing all the wetness I could see, much less the crevices I couldn't see into. My hair dryer quit a few months ago. I didn't want to wait a whole day with it simply sitting on a shelf to be sure it was completely dry. Where I live it's been raining at random times virtually every day. I didn't want to trust the sun and my memory to get the job done without risking getting it bathed with acid rain, or bird or lizard droppings.

Ugh! Reminds me of the time I received a couple of older systems from my BiL who used to smoke heavily. As I was cannibalizing it for parts, I felt like I was overdosing on nicotine just from handling the components.

Suggestion: don a pair of latex gloves while working on the innards of a smoker's PC. (Unless you're allergic to latex, of course.)

Nitrile gloves are the way to go. Inexpensive, relatively reliable, and they're what medical personnel use.

Oh yes, that could have unwanted side effects!
OTOH, <100 deg Celsius isn't hot enough for alcohol to combust I think.

I've heard of people baking boards to reflow the solder. Not sure about the temperature though.

Last time I saw motherboards being cleaned (as opposed to the newer no clean) they used deionized warm water and mild detergent and then rinse and dried it with low velocity warm air.

I've also seen Navy TACAN taken to pier and washed with green spray and washed with deionized water and left to dry.

If you use alcohol it is likely to dissolve some stuff.