Hardware Slightly water damaged console

[mike a]

Ok so I live in Florida and it's rain season now, and I was at the beach with my 3ds in my backpack and got caught in some rain. Got slightly wet, here's the gist of it
Motherboard: fine
Buttons...
R button turns itself on quite a bit and then takes awhile to turn off
Y button if pressed, stays on or sticks and takes a lil while to turn off
B button takes a few presses to register but works.
Everything else is fine, circle pad, L button, the zr/l buttons, etc work as normal.

What do I do to fix this, need suggestions

DISCLAIMER: I DONT K OE HOW TO SOLDER... KINDA SUX

 

[FAST6191]

It is low voltage so you are hopefully lucky here.

Anyway take the battery out as soon as you can. Water inside something might corrode it eventually but water and power is potentially far worse, even more so if it is salt spray.

As a basic thing the classic thing of leaving it somewhere warm and dry in a bag of rice or silica gel/desiccant might help.

Were it me I would probably take it all apart, clean the relevant parts with some kind of PCB cleaner (or at least a cleaning alcohol) -- rice is effective for a lot of things but if water has a hard time getting in then it also has a hard time getting out.

 

[TurdPooCharger]

Hello fellow Floridian. Are the frogs croaking in your neck of the swamp yet? Fuckin' mosquitoes be all ganking n' shieet.

You need to remove the battery, disassemble the 3DS, soak the boards in 91% isopropyl rubbing alcohol to displace as much water as possible (dont bathe the LCDs in the solution!), blow dry with low fan speed + low heat sweeping passes to dry the boards, wrap the boards in paper towel, and stick them in a large container fill with rice or couscous for extra drying 24 hours.

Letting traces of water sit on the board will corrode the metals with high risk of eventual hardbrick or messed up buttons.

Edit - Replacement YXBA daughterboard and (Z)L/(Z)R flex cable for the n3DSXL and n3DS can be found on eBay.

• [iFixit] Nintendo Handheld Repair

 

[mike a]

So before I was going to put it in rice, I turned it on,

And guess what....

It works LMFAO, nothing wrong with it

 

[FAST6191]

I would still put it in some rice for a day or so. Just because one time the water was not in the right place to cause traumas does not mean it will stay that way, or that there is not something turning it into green dust as we speak.

 

[TurdPooCharger]

So before I was going to put it in rice, I turned it on,

And guess what....

It works LMFAO, nothing wrong with it

You're lucky that the water hasn't shorted and outright hardbricked your 3DS when you turned it on with the internals still wet.

I take it you skimmed on basic chemistry in science class, specifically the topic dealing with rusting, oxidation, and corrosion. Well, best of luck..

 

[mike a]

It had been a week man

 

[TurdPooCharger]

It had been a week man

It's hard to gauge drying time especially for water entrapped in electronic devices.

1. If you want to play it safe, sweep your n3DS with low fan + low heat setting with a blow dryer directed at the bottom with the cover, battery, and SD card removed.
   • Do not direct at the lower touchscreen as you can melt the plastic sheet that covers the LCD.
   • Anytime it gets hot like that of a warm cup of hot cocoa, remove blow dryer and let it cool. Do this for about 10-15 minutes.
2. Go to in-store Target or Walmart and buy one of these 3.5 lbs Arm's baking soda. Pour the powder in a close lid container that can fit both that and your n3DS.
3. Take your n3DS and triple layer wrap the system in paper towel + tape. Put the n3DS on top of the baking soda, close the lid, and leave undisturbed for a full 24 hours.
   • Wrap it the cover, battery, sd card, and game cart remvoed.
     
   • Don't zipbloc bag or use plastic covering. That won't allow the baking soda to pull moisture away from the n3DS.

This is the rice/couscous idea but using baking soda. See this tutorial and the following posts (Proof of attempt at bad method).

The currently partially NOT-tested-in-real-life, improper method of ...
How to (attempt) fixing/cleaning the R-shoulder button without (full) disassembly
... because you have katsavidiphobia [aka, "the fear of screwdrivers"].​