Project information

Title : Replacing a liquid-damaged PCIe port

Date : 04/01/2026

Description : Replacing a liquid damaged PCIe slot on an MSI motherboard

Problem : A motherboard had been liquid damaged, particularly on the PCIe port.

Overview

I was sold a modern 11th generation gaming-motherboard for $20 along with other parts by a local computer store.

The motherboard had appeared to have had chocolate milk spilled in it which had travelled through and damaged the PCIe port, it had also seemed to have touched some of the other components but those were easy to clean and had very little to cause any concern.

The PCIe port was removed using a hot air gun AND also a de-solder station at the same time. I was not able to heat the solder up reliably with only one or the other with the tools I had, the hot air gun allowed the solder to be pre-heated which made it easier to use the de-solder machine.

As seen in 'image 3' there are a couple specks of motherboard paint that came off in the initial stages of attempting de-soldering using only the de-solder tool however the rest looks fairly standard for a repair of this type.

I used isopropyl alcohol and window cleaner to remove corrosion and debris from the board (not seen in images).

Images 4, 5 and 6 show the old port which was removed, you can also see the dried up brown-coloured liquid.

As seen in the video the board has booted up with a temporary heatsink and a RTX 2070 GPU installed, it displays picture reliably.

The motherboard was sold in a custom gaming PC build shortly after being repaired.