Is this water damage?

Question

MacBook Air 13" Early 2014

The April 2014 update of Apple's 13" MacBook Air features refreshed dual-core i5 and i7 processors, plus slightly increased battery performance.

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Aiden @someaspy

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Опубликовано: 12 дек 2017 г.

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Is this water damage?

I can’t remember spilling anything on it and this Mac is somewhere around 3-4 years old. Model number A1466

So here’s the story. One time I was on my Mac (at the time running macOS.) and suddenly it just shut down without warning while on the charger and not like hibernate and save your data, it completely turned off. Confused, I booted it up again only to see “no hardware” and no WiFi. But I had Bluetooth just fine. I tried reinstalling Mac, resetting network settings, calling Apple (“bring it in!” Obviously) so then I eventually was able to connect using a USB to Ethernet adapter but only that way. (It was so slow at 10mb/s it was a wii connect adapter!) but after a while we lost that adapter and I ordered a new airport card. Same problem even with airport card replaced.

So It sat in my room gathering dust for 3 or 4 months. Then we bought a USB WiFi adapter from staples. It is not compatible with Mac OS I fed up with all these problems, I install Windows 10. And it works fine (not the airport the WiFi usb) it’s kind of annoying sticking out. In between then and now I replaced the clutch on the MacBook successfully with no issues. Skip forward a bit to today. I opened my Mac to see if I could try to fix the airport card, which still does have Bluetooth, and notice the colorful screw holes. I’m pretty sure that is not normal.

I got some halfway decent photos.

Sorry if there are duplicates.

this is more of a question for @oldturkey03 or @mayer

thanks!

Ответ на этот вопрос У меня та же проблема

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it appears that there is a screw missing from the hole and from the scratches on the torx head in the upper left, someone has been inside the computer. Not sure about the water damage because I do not see any kind of deposits or discoloration of the breadboard or the electronic components.

12 дек 2017 г. из luther.haynes

Oh I removed the screw for the picture =p

12 дек 2017 г. из Aiden

So the weird color stuff around the screw holes are normal?

12 дек 2017 г. из Aiden

Maybe this is normal. Is this normal @mayer?

12 дек 2017 г. из Aiden

also @lutherhaynes good eye seeing that scratch! I have done repairs in the laptop as mentioned in the quedtion

12 дек 2017 г. из Aiden

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it appears that there is a screw missing from the hole and from the scratches on the torx head in the upper left, someone has been inside the computer. Not sure about the water damage because I do not see any kind of deposits or discoloration of the breadboard or the electronic components. — luther.haynes
also @lutherhaynes good eye seeing that scratch! I have done repairs in the laptop as mentioned in the quedtion — Aiden

luther.haynes @lutherhaynes Репутация: 205 3 2 · Answer 1 · 2017-12-12T20:12:39-07:00

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luther.haynes @lutherhaynes

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Looking at all the pics, there is discoloration around many of the holes, also in the pic with the screw driver, upper left, toward the middle, see the discoloration on the board, it looks like it is faded, and the IC chips near it and the other one to the right looks like they are faded. That's is what is weird because there is no deposits in the connectors or near the capacitors (caps would discharge and would show signs of burns) that are clustered together.

The discoloration looks like the copper plating has come into some sort of disruption and had overheated or cooked like a high moisture content.

That's weird that there is several spots that has this.

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so overheating? Water damage? Or both. This question turns out to me more complicated tha I thought.

12 дек 2017 г. из Aiden

it is possible that the water damage came first if it is the case. The overheat comes second because electricity follows the path of least resistance. The discoloration could be caused from the overheating, regardless of how slight. Those contacts on the screws are really thin and it would not take much to cause them to discolor. Think of them being like the old thermostat coil metal, slight change of heat or cold causes them to contort.

12 дек 2017 г. из luther.haynes

All in all, it is fixable.

12 дек 2017 г. из luther.haynes

Where would the water have come from? I never spilled anything on it...

12 дек 2017 г. из Aiden

I didn't say that you spilled anything on it. I'm just trying to place logic on it.

These are micro circuits and it doesn't take much heat, moisture or static electricity to disrupt a circuit.

Check the contacts on the airport card and see if they need to be cleaned or look to see of they have scrapes or tracks on them. You might want to check the grounding using a sweep meter or an oscillator meter if you have one. It seems like there might be a loss of grounding since there are more than one grounding screw cotact is discolored.

14 дек 2017 г. из luther.haynes

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