Biggest bonehead mistake you've made when building a PC

[JTsyo]

Tried to pull a video card out holding the front of the card and a large capacitor. Didn't realize that the lock didn't disengage. The capacitor just snapped off. Luckily I was pulling it out to replace it and it was a FX card.

 

[acheron]

Originally posted by: 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).

Shit, I used to do that practically every time I opened the case. I'd always try to remember which way it went in for the next time, and I'd always do it wrong.

 

[2dt Drifter]

Swapped mobos in my old machine, got it up and running for the first time so I went to the kitchen to get a drink, came back and there was an orange glow coming from the box.... ran over and looked into the top fan port to see the mobo was on fire. Unplugged it and let it sit for a while. Girlfriend asked "what in the hell is that smell?" to which I replied "My hopes and dreams caught fire"
I think I left a standoff in the case where one wasnt needed and it shorted out.

Or it's even better when I was building a machine for a friend back in college, had all the parts in and ready to go and it wouldn't boot. RMA'd the motherboard and two weeks later the new motherboard wouldn't work either... found out the PSU had shipped in the 220v position and just needed to be switched to 110V. I was such an idiot.

 

[Scouzer]

Not that interesting, but my first time using Arctic Silver was an utter fiasco. I got it everywhere, on my clothes, on my desk, on the case, it was such a pain in the ass. I'll never do that again.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Cut a memory trace with a screwdriver while installing an HSF is one, I fixed the MB by soldering on a small wire and protecting it with a drop of superglue. It was still working with full memory banks after four years when it was pushed to the curb.

 

[geno]

Originally posted by: 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

What? Like, fins-side-down backwards?

 

[skyking]

1) doing some quick lazy testing, and shorted the board on a hard drive to the case. dead.
2) messing around with a GPU cooler, and scratching the board while removing/installing push pins. Dead.
There are more, but those are the most memorable.

 

[Freshgeardude]

I had 2 bonehead mistakes, one ended in a mobo needing replacement and the other nothing broke.


MOBO: I wanted to clean out my comp of dust. I noticed a lot of dust my my video card and I couldnt get a good angle with the handheld vaccum cleaner. I went to go take it out and some screw got loose in the case. I tried to get it out but couldnt. it wouldnt raddle either so, I stupidly turned my comp back on. got a two long beep code. said video error, I thought I busted my graphics card. I then tried the G-card in another comp and it worked. such a relief. diagnosed it until the mobo and sent that in rma, got a new one.


second one: my friend wanted to do cable management on my comp (same one) since it was really bad. He basically unplugged everything and hid the cables on the side panel that doesnt have glass and is never opened. when I tried to start it back up, everything plugged in, he plugged in what he though was the cable to the lcd. as soon as he plugged it in, 2 of my fans started spinning and with blue leds and all. He got scared bc he agreed to pay for any damages if he did any. he rechecked the wires and realized the cable was going from his g-card on his desktop that was near by. tried the monitor and it worked. I never saw him with such relief lol

 

[orakle]

First build: didn't put the metal/plastic standoffs on the MB mount of the case, just screwed the MB right on. The machine wouldn't power up.

Somehow the board didn't fry and after taking everything out and redoing it properly the machine still worked like 5 years later the last time I heard about it.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

Used a hammer to get the heatsink loose -- I hate those pushpins.

needless to say the mobo did not work

(what can I say -- I was desperate!)

 

[lokiju]

Only thing I can think of ever breaking was a pin on a CPU on accident.

Still worked though.

Non physical damage related, I thought I had copied all my movies from my old hard drive to my new one but in the process of it I got distracted by my wife asking me something and then deleted all the data from the old hard drive only to realize it hadn't been copied to the new one

I was able to get most of it back at least with a un-delete app.

 

[geno]

Ohhh almost forgot. I was removing the heatsink from a P4 that had been seated for a while. The adhesive on the HS was so strong it pulled the CPU out of the socket while it was locked (couldn't unlock the socket without removing the HS. Couldn't remove the HS properly without getting the CPU out to separate the two...rinse and repeat). I guess that put too much stress on the solder joints underneath the socket, because the mobo wouldn't boot after that. Luckily I found a replacement 865PE board for cheap (not too easy considering the costs of such a board nowadays!)

 

[ryan256]

Had a machine turned on with an open case I was working on. Forget exactly what I was doing. Anyways I had a USB cable in hand and fumbled it. Cable swung down & contacted the mobo. *SNAP* No video... Was afraid my new $300 video card had gotten hit & shorted out. Turns out it wasn't the card but the AGP slot on the mobo. RMA'd it and things worked fine, but had to wait 2 weeks for the RMA.

 

[Rakewell]

OK. Thank you all so much, I am feeling phenomenally better.

 

[mugs]

I left the case open. Computer was sitting next to a window. It rained. Rain comes down sideways in Indiana (corn isn't an effective windbreak when your dorm room is on the third floor).

 

[Kirby]

plugged in a dvd drive while the pc was still on.

 

[Steve]

Ordered a motherboard with 3 PCI slots, figuring it was a micro-ATX board and would fit in my mATX case. Well it turned out to be a full-size ATX board so I had to run to Fry's to get a fitting case.

Also, on my old K6-2 system, I misconnected the floppy drive's power connector and smoked it. Also, I cranked the CPU voltage up to 3.3v and smoked the board and CPU.

Five years ago I had a temp job doing phone support for VisionTek, and I was talking a guy through installing a PCI video card. Once he got it inserted I found out his computer had been ON the whole time!

 

[Uhtrinity]

Worst problems happened when someone was trying to talk to me while i was working.

Friend was talking to me while I was troubleshooting something in his pc. Got distracted, didn't turn off the system before unplugging the IDE HD, fried the HD and the powersupply. He felt just as bad as me for distracting me.

Another time I deleted the wrong partition due to the person talking to me while I was working. Fortunately I knew how to recover it.

Once static zapped and killed a new AMD K6, this was back when they were around $300.

Once crushed a voltage regulator on a high end video card while changing the gpu cooler. The voltage regulator was completely exposed silicon with no packaging similar to the older cpus.

 

[yuchai]

Killed my Corsair 520HX by somehow forcing a floppy power connector improperly into the floppy drive.

That sealed the deal for me and I no longer use any floppy drive.

 

[MichaelD]

Oh wow...where do I start? Over the past 8-ish years I've built probably close to 200 PCs for myself, clients and for work. In no particular order of importance:

Forgot to switch PS to 220v (at least twice that I can remember) Thankfully they're all automagic these days.
Didn't plug in floppy power backwards, but one pin "to the left". Drive exploded. Little motor parts all over inside case.
Forgot the thermal paste.
Forgot to use screws to secure HD inside cage. HD fell into CPU HSF. Fan not happy.
Forgot to use screws to attach MB to standoffs. MB not happy at ALL.
With beer in hand, leaned over open, running case to get a look at something. Fried everything.
Spilled can of peanuts into case. No damage but messy.
Didn't connect power cables to HDs or CD-Roms...for 10 mins, couldn't figure out why nothing worked.

That's what I remember off the top of my head. :laugh:

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: nakedfrog

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?!?"

i stopped using those things years ago.




only thing i've ever done building a computer was forgetting to plug in the CPU fan. so of course it got really warm and unstable.

 

[leadpaint]

I had a tower sitting next to me, running, and I accidentally dropped a thumb screw onto the video card. Saw some sparks and the screen went blank. Thankfully, it still worked fine after I rebooted it.

Haven't bricked anything yet.

 

[SagaLore]

Broke a CPU pin. :brokenheart:

 

[BW86]

Originally posted by: 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.

i still have a s754 chaintech board running in my house.

The worst thing I've done was put more standoffs than I needed and shorted the board.

 

[Titan]

I swapped the 5v and gnd on a 4-pin molex so I could 7v my fans. Then at the end of that chain I plugged it into a hard drive by mistake and fired her up.

The drive lived but the housing on the wiring melted and grey smoke billowed out of the case and PSU fan, all while my friends were watching. I had to ditch the PSU. That was impressive.

I also fried a CPU by u-wiring. I was running dual Opteron 265's on an Asus K8N-DL (dual dual cores) right after they came out, my cpus were like 700 bucks each. I successfully u-wired to up the voltage since the board wouldn't let me go higher, but those baby's ran hot. So I took out the heat sinks and CPUs to re-apply thermal paste, re-inserted and forgot to check my u-wire, one fried.