Biggest bonehead mistake you've made when building a PC

[Rakewell]

I've been doing this for years.

I guess I've been... well, a little distracted lately. Got a replacement MOBO from Gigabyte. (The third one, thank you very much).

Couldn't get it to work. Swapped parts as much as I could. Would not post for the life of me.

Thought to myself "F@ck GB. Going to buy EVGA" Went to NEWEGG. Bought a board. Went home from work that night and thought to myself, "I'm gonna give it one more shot".

Got it working.

Turns out I put the RAM in the wrong slots (2,4,6).

Please, mates, make me feel better and tell me your most bonehead mistakes.

Cheers.

 

[Evadman]

I let the smoke out.

 

[surfsatwerk]

Originally posted by: Evadman
I let the smoke out.

The majik blue smoke that makes all electronics work?

My power supplies have a devil of a time keeping hold of that stuff.

 

[TwiceOver]

More standoffs than holes on the board. Little bit of smoke, a borked memory slots 1-3, and a lesson learned "Count your stanoffs".

 

[geno]

Didn't fully seat a stick of RAM and fried it. It literally popped and smoked. Luckily, the motherboard was fine. I asked Mushkin if they'd replace the RAM, which they agreed to. I got my new stick in the mail and all was well.

 

[2Xtreme21]

Scratched the mobo while pushing in a RAM DIMM incorrectly-- RAM slid out of the slot, scraped hard. PC wouldn't boot.

 

[shortylickens]

Used thermal paste instead of thermal grease.

 

[Arcadio]

I once was stupid enough to add more RAM to a client's computer by inserting the stick of RAM in the incorrect position AND with the power cable still plugged into the wall socket. Smoke and smell started flowing in the air.... All because I was in a rush. I ended up buying the guy a new computer...

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I bought an expensive chaintech motherboard for my first build... That thing was terrible, but I didn't know anything about what brands were good or not.

 

[acheron]

Had the open case sort of balanced on my lap while it was on for some reason, don't remember what I was trying to do but I somehow dropped a wire into the spinning CPU fan and it snapped several blades off. No Microcenters or other useful stores around, so I had to wait a week to get a new fan shipped.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Originally posted by: Arcadio
I once was stupid enough to add more RAM to a client's computer by inserting the stick of RAM in the incorrect position AND with the power cable still plugged into the wall socket. Smoke and smell started flowing in the air.... All because I was in a rush. I ended up buying the guy a new computer...

:thumbsup:

haha, that's pretty bad.

 

[Riverhound777]

I forgot to plug in the processor fan... and left for a few hours... House smelled horrible when I got home. Mobo and processor were both fried.

 

[olds]

Hosed up a bios flash and had to order a new bios chip.

 

[Miramonti]

Not lining up the motherboard standoffs correctly (fried), and not seating new graphics card correctly (fire).

 

[AmberClad]

Don't do what this guy did just yesterday.



My personal facepalm moments:

- Reinstalled a video card cooler after cleaning it and didn't plug the fan connector back in all the way --> 105C GPU core temps + burning smell

- Tried to fill a watercooling loop without screwing in the bottom stop plug on the reservoir first -- "why is it taking so long to fill...hey is that a huge puddle of water under the res?!".
(this was a test setup, not installed inside a rig)

- Repeatedly accidentally sticking my fingers or toes into my fans because I don't use fan grills

 

[Juddog]

For me many years ago I made the mistake of plugging in the floppy drive cable the wrong way (reversed) and the floppy drive light was on continuously. Back then the cables could plug in either way and the designation of which pin was which was more obscure (not like nowadays starting with modern IDE with a plastic slot to tell you which way to insert it). Another mistake was installing RAM in the middle of a thunderstorm while not properly grounded, I ended up frying the RAM (computer was unplugged and drained).

 

[SonnyDaze]

1. Knocked a HD off my work bench. It fell 34" onto the concrete. It didn't work after that.

2. On my very first build I took a wire from the PSU and connected it to some header pins on the mobo. Apparently they were the wrong pins or it was the wrong wire cause the wire smoked and melted.

3. I was testing some 80mm fans using a 3 pin plug inside the computer....while it was running. I accidently dropped the 3 pin male plug and it sparked and shorted out the entire computer shutting it down instantly. Luckily nothing was damaged and it still worked.

 

[NoCreativity]

Just happened Saturday with an upgrade for my wife (CPU, MB, RAM, VC). Only some of the stuff powered up, case fans, MB lights, Vid card fan, but no CPU fan. Thinking it might be the PS (due to prior power up issues) I decided to try the one from my computer. Had my PS nearly unhooked and out of my computer before I realized I forgot to hook up the 12V plug on hers.

In my defense, I was replacing an Athlon XP3000 setup in her case which didn't use it so it was nicely bundled up and out of the way.

Early on was dumb enough to buy a Biostar MB for my parents computer.

 

[Ramma2]

Dropped the open bag of new case screws/hardware all over the motherboard as it was running... all the lights flickered and went dim before I had a chance to pull the plug. Everything seemed to be ok, I guess I got super lucky.

 

[nakedfrog]

Put the heat sink on backwards. Wasn't used to ones that had to go on a certain way. It would boot up and start Windows, and then freeze pretty shortly thereafter

 

[waffleironhead]

Only bonehead thing I have ever done(so far) is to completely build a few towers before punching out the usb slots on the back plate(used to come covered back in the day). I had to completely disassemble and punch them out then reassemble. Few hours wasted.

 

[Tremulant]

When I built my little brother's computer 5 or 6 years ago I used the wrong screws to secure the mobo on the standoffs. I noticed it as I finished screwing it all down and then tried removing the incorrect screws and realized they were stuck. I'm sure I can remove them with a power tool, but I probably won't ever need to. Chances are that his next machine will be pre-built.

 

[Demo24]

I had a some random parts to an Athlon comp sitting around at work but no case. So I decided to 'freeboard' it on a piece of anti-static film. That was fine, except that I didn't have a power button to push so I was using a screw driver to short the two connections. All was fine until I tried to turn it off and the screw driver slipped and shorted out the board. Made a nice pop and I don't think it ever worked the same again.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: waffleironhead
Only bonehead thing I have ever done(so far) is to completely build a few towers before punching out the usb slots on the back plate(used to come covered back in the day). I had to completely disassemble and punch them out then reassemble. Few hours wasted.

Ugh, I was putting together a box once when my wife had a friend over, and she idly picked up a backplane and punched out all the holes while I wasn't looking. I went to grab it, saw it, and said "What the hell did you do that for?!?"

 

[Pepsei]

1. so used to budget video adapters that when i actually spent money for a high dollar card, didn't realized that it needed extra power. was baffled for weeks why the computer would crash after playing a graphic intensive game for <5 minutes. it was age of conan so i blamed it on the game for weeks.

2. didn't research the parts well enough...so when i got it... i realized that the super duper cpu cooling kit was so masstive it covered up dimm slot 2. and yes, i end up not using that slot 2, it was an experimental pc running osx anyway....