 With its factory tuning and data center DNA, an Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts. So I've gotten some complaints that we don't do enough crazy projects anymore. Now the fact of the matter is that a lot of the time we don't plan to do crazy things that are broken and stuff. It just kind of happens. So it kind of happened this time. This is my Dell XPS 12 that I've been using for the last quite a while. We were in the middle of shooting something yesterday and I kind of ran off this morning. I was running around looking for it going where the heck is it because it wasn't at home and I found it on the porch and unfortunately it rained last night. So this is the state of it. This water is actually dripping out from inside the notebook. Now there is an extremely good chance that this notebook is completely dead. With non battery powered devices, you could basically submerge it and then if you could open it up and completely dry it and make sure there's no residue or nothing to short it out, there's a very good chance that would live. With something with a battery in it, it's constantly getting power provided to it so the chances of shorting something out and destroying it are very good. So it was actually left open like this so the water was able to force its way in through the keyboard. So this is in very very rough shape but you know, a thousand dollar notebook, you're still going to take a shot at fixing it right? So I'm pulling out my iFixit kit with my Torx heads here. Actually these are a handy new thing that we've got now, these nice little magnetic trays. So we're going to do a sub $100, we might have actually done it by the time this video is done, but sub $100 handy things and we're going to highlight those because I think they're great. So I'm going to pull off the bottom here, we'll be back in a moment. Alright so this is kind of the moment of truth, we're going to open up the shell. Fortunately I don't have an Apple computer so it comes apart even though it's an ultra book type form factor. So you can see the entire inside is absolutely soaked with water being able to run out a little bit more freely now that I have it opened up. Now one thing that I'm going to want to do pretty much immediately here is disconnect the battery connector. I mean like I said it's probably a done deal at this point but it still can't hurt to have the power disconnected. Unfortunately it looks like Dell glues that in, why would they do that? Dell what are you guys doing? There is a chance that if I dry this out completely and replace the battery that I'll be able to get it back up and running again but I'm going to have to figure out how to get this connector off first. So panic moment there guys, it turns out that water on a connector that's beaded up kind of looks like glue. So no, the battery is not glued in so what I'm going to do next is pull the battery out and actually I'm going to pull it apart as much as I can without going so far that I lose track of how it goes back together and then basically I'm going to put it somewhere to dry and then we're going to do the old rice bag technique. This is just a handy sort of do yourself a favor trick is whenever you're taking something apart take lots of pictures because even if you forget one little detail it can be a major hassle later on and then one thing that I'm doing as well is because it's got several different kinds of screws I am making sure that I take pictures of the heads as well as the threads next to the place where they come from. This just makes your life a little bit easier when you're putting it back together. You can see I've got the battery out now and then I've also got the, I'm just loosening PCBs so that I can get a little bit of air flow going through them and then what I'll do is I'll just set up a fan to blow on it for now before I do the rice bag trick later on because you can't count on the rice to do everything that's more of a finishing move so to speak. So I'm pretty close to having it about as disassembled as I think I'm going to get it. I was hoping that because of the way the screen works on this notebook with this metal border around the top of it that the screen itself wouldn't have really gotten any water in it because it was upright when it started raining but Luke pointed out to me well hold on a second surface tension it's going to come around here and then it's going to drip onto the screen from this gap in between where the, I don't know, I think they call it a ferris wheel style convertible screen. So he was right, water did get into the screen so we've got the carbon fiber top off now. It's really light, carbon fiber's kind of cool. But the good news though is that because it comes apart quite easily much like the rest of this notebook I'm able to open it up and get at least, I mean there's not much water in here so I'm really not that concerned about this part and it's mostly the bottom components here that I'm worried about so basically what I've done is I've removed the motherboard kind of as much as I can. You can see it's quite loose, it's only being held in over here and then I've prized it up a little bit so that it can get a little bit more air flow. I'm going to go position this in front of a fan and cross my fingers. I've taken the SSD out and then in order to speed things up you can dry things out by soaking them in alcohol and then letting that evaporate away. So this I need some data off of so I'm going to go ahead and do that with this but I'm going to give the notebook probably a good solid week before I take another shot at it. So here's my epic setup with, got a 3 speed fan running here and then I've got all of my parts in my handy dandy little, please focus, really? Wow, you're going to be like that, okay. My parts tray and then I've got the disassembled notebook taken apart and opened up as much as possible for optimal sort of airing outness. I suspect that I actually won't need the rice bag. I'm going to leave this here for about a week and then we'll see how it goes. I got things kind of lifted up there. Yeah. So funny story, I started by putting the screws in around the outside of the monitor and I was like no, I need to put the heat sink on. I need to put the battery back in. Let's find out if this bad boy fires up and then let's go ahead and invest in all the finishing touches there. So I'm actually at the point now where the fan and heat sink are back on. I put the SSD back in for good measure and it's time to put the battery on. I got to put this connector back on first. Okay, so moment of truth time. I went and got everyone and I did all the stuff I can do by myself. So I'm going to plug the battery in. Not going to bother screwing it in just because who knows if this is all just a total waste of time. I'm going to plug this bad boy in here. Oh my god, no, just kidding. Jesus Christ. You actually did scare me there. Okay. So here we go. Oh, oh, oh. That looks like an activity LED. Warning battery is critically low. Huh? Whoa. Here, if you can come have a look at the screen. So it powers on. The keyboard LEDs are illuminated. The activity LED on the SSD is going so that means it's not just completely dumb in there. Let's uh, whoa. Okay, well I'm going to turn it off for now and grab a power adapter and find out if she boots into an OS. Wow. That's unbelievable. I'm impressed something actually happened. I was expecting nothing at all. Yeah, I was expecting complete dead. But like, damn, that's actually pretty amazing. If this thing works, you're never allowed to get another laptop. You have to continue to upgrade this laptop forever. Okay. Oops, other side. Oh yeah, sure. Be gentle with it. Okay. Let's try firing her up again. So I actually, I for, forwent, is that the past tense of forgo? I forwent the uh, the rice treatment because I was impatient. So it sat here for about a week though. I mean, which evidently was enough. The thing I don't know yet because the thing that's most like, look at that. What? Right where I left it. What? Oh my God. There's my AX1500i unboxing review things. Unbelievable. Look at that. It did not even miss a beat. Unbelievable. Completely unplugged. Wow. For a week and having been soaked, that is, that's unreal. That is something else. Look at that. So it remains to be seen how well the battery held up because that was the big thing that could have been damaged and could have lit on fire. Like it's a lithium based battery. Like it could have been a big problem, but it turns out that it was well enough sealed and the screen was well enough sealed that we didn't get much water in there that the notebook actually worked. So there you go guys. All is not necessarily lost no matter how hopeless it looks. Thank you for coming along for this voyage of discovery here on Linus Tech Tips. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment and let us know. I don't know. So I'm sure you have something to say at this point. As always, linked in the video description is our sponsor support us page so you can buy a t-shirt. You can give us a monthly contribution and I'm pretty sure there's another thing too. Right. We have an Amazon bookmark so that it gives us a kickback whenever you buy stuff on Amazon. So there you have it. I think we're done here.