Biggest bonehead mistake you've made when building a PC

[Rakewell]

Originally posted by: 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.

You were able to RMA, I hope?

 

[daniel1113]

I don't think I've ever made a mistake that completely destroyed a component, but I have done a bunch of stupid stuff while building various computers.

The first time I built a water cooled rig, I decided to use a Lian Li V-1000 case with an Asus A8N-SLI premium motherboard. While it was a great combo on paper, I didn't take into account the orientation of the motherboard inside the case. For some reason, Lian Li inverted the motherboard inside the original V-series cases. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem; however, the A8N-SLI motherboard uses an orientation specific heat pipe to cool the north bridge, south bridge, and MOSFETs. I ran that computer for a week before realizing how hot those components were running and am still surprised I didn't fry them.

The last time I upgraded my water cooled rig, I decided to skip the whole leak testing phase since I didn't really change any of the tubes or connectors. Of course, as soon as I turned the thing on, water started pouring out of multiple connections. Fortunately, I was able to disconnect the power before there was any damage.

 

[Titan]

Originally posted by: Rakewell

Originally posted by: 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.

You were able to RMA, I hope?

<cough> No comment.

 

[DrPizza]

Wow, I guess I've been lucky, although I haven't done that many builds.

 

[venkman]

Mt. Dew, meet open computer case, open computer case, meet 64 oz of sugary liquid death.

 

[Rakewell]

Originally posted by: Titan

Originally posted by: Rakewell

Originally posted by: 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.

You were able to RMA, I hope?

<cough> No comment.

LOL

Your secret is safe with me.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: 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?

Yes. It confused the hell out of me how it was supposed to even work.

No, you know how the HSF has a sort of a notch all along one side? I had that on the wrong side, so the heat sink wasn't actually contacting the CPU core.

 

[Gibsons]

Bought a sis chipset once...

Gouged a mobo with a screwdriver.

 

[Molondo]

Oh man, i connected the cord that powers the fan into the video card. As soon as i heard that high pitch noise i shut the thing off in a fraction of the second.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: 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.

I did this with my last build! Luckily it was only two standoffs that I did this with, not all of them.

Also once I got really panicked when my new build wouldn't start and it was actually because I had forgotten to plug in my PSU's ATX 12V connector. It was because the PSU had a 4-pin one and the mobo had an 8-pin socket. Of course I eventually figured this out and read my mobo manual, where it told me how to plug it in properly.

 

[Linflas]

Using ASUS's Windows version of their BIOS update utility.

 

[OCGuy]

AMD processor.

 

[Jeff7]

The worst: Back in the 486 days, when I had little experience working on computers, I hooked a floppy drive power cable to the soundcard, mistaking it for a large CD audio cable.

The soundcard valiantly gave its life to protect the motherboard.

 

[Tremulant]

Originally posted by: 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!)

I've done that before, minus breaking the mobo.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Not building but I had to reformat a friend's computer. I unplugged her external HD. As I replugged everything back in, I swore the external HD power connector looked like a Video Out cable. I know that video out cable by heart having used an All In Wonder Radeon for 4 years straight. Well, something in the back of my head told me that I unplugged this from the HD, but instinct KNEW this was a video out. So guess what, I plugged it into the video card. It fried. I mean it wasn't smoking or anything, it just failed to work. Later when I compared the video card with the HD I thought that was the most RETARDED design ever. It was the same plug.

A few weeks ago I tried to voltmeter my fan controller. I think I shorted it for a few seconds (saw a small spark or two) and then later I plugged a fan in and it wouldn't work. Well I had 4 slots on the fan controller, one died early on, one just got fried, and so I could only control two. Had to go buy a new one.

You guys seem to fry a lot of things. By fry I mean sparks, exploding parts, smoke. I've never seen anything like that. Quite lucky I suppose. I'm just always scared as hell when I power up a new system. Well motherboard replacement basically. I'm always afraid I shorted something and when I hit power all hell will break loose. But nothing. Ever. The worst was just when the power button would do nothing (apparently my fan was too powerful or something and held the board back so I had to plug it into my fan controller instead)

 

[Kanalua]

unseated VGA card...I thought the computer was FUBAR...gave up and after a few months eventually took the box to my Uncle (1990s computer genius, in my mind)...properly seats the vid card, and everything fires up normal.

 

[Tremulant]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: 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.

I did this with my last build! Luckily it was only two standoffs that I did this with, not all of them.

Also once I got really panicked when my new build wouldn't start and it was actually because I had forgotten to plug in my PSU's ATX 12V connector. It was because the PSU had a 4-pin one and the mobo had an 8-pin socket. Of course I eventually figured this out and read my mobo manual, where it told me how to plug it in properly.

Yeah, it was only with I think 3 or 4 of the stand-offs (it would've been more, but I ran out of the wrong screws and started using the correct ones, lol).

 

[irishScott]

Not so much building, but suffice to say I got curious with my first (and currently only) laptop. Wanted to see what was inside, so I opened it up. Then I wanted to see what was under the heat sink, so I unscrewed it, pulled it out and riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip there goes the thermal tape. Had to order some 3rd party stuff, but I still need to keep a small fan on it at all times, with a cooling pad, to prevent it from overheating if it's doing anything other than web surfing.

 

[sswingle]

Yea, I've done that with the standoffs too, but fortunately the board survived.

 

[DisgruntledVirus]

Personal ones:

About 3 years ago, built a brand new system. Dropped $2500 (including a new Dell 2408 that was $500 of that) for everything. Well it would overheat and restart on me so finally I've had it with the issue and go troubleshooting to find the issue and fix the problem. I decided to feel the CPU heatsink to see if it was abnormally hot. Well, in my infinite wisdom I just put my hand in the case (powered on system) without looking to basically guess where the heatsink was. I misjudged where it was, stuck my finger in the fan, the fan cut a chunk out of my finger and fingernail. It also screwed up the fans balance so it rubbed the side making a very annoying noise. On the bright side it was finally an excuse to actually go buy a new HSF

About 5 years ago for Christmas I decided to build my dad a newer computer. Got everything for $300 or so, and was installing everything. Install went fine, turn it on the first time for a few min and turn my back to do something else real quick. My mom's boyfriend is watching tv and looks over then says "Ummm DV should there be smoke coming out of the case?" I look back and smoke is pouring out of the PSU, so I quickly unplug the system. I see more smoke coming from a power cable that is plugged into the floppy. Apparently I REALLY screwed up plugging the power cable into it, because the cable was only plugged into 3 pins instead of all 4 (and the kicker is it was the cable was plugged in the wrong way). Luckily only the PSU died on that.

The best friend one I can think of:

In HS one of my friends wants to build a new system. So I help him pick parts and everything. He orders it and it gets there early in the week, and I tell him I'll help him put it together over the weekend. He says okay, but apparently got impatient because he put it together himself. The day after he installs it, he asks me what could be going on that it won't boot and shuts down after only a few minutes. I tell him I don't know, but to bring it over that weekend and I'll figure it out. He comes over, and I start taking a look. It seems like a heat issue, so I first look at the cpu HSF. That was when I first noticed something wasn't right. There was something on the bottom of the HSF that isn't the same color/texture/etc as the metal fins. So I take the HSF off, and realize what it was. It was the plastic protective cover that HSF's in retail packs ship with to protect their thermal paste. So, he had been running the pc with plastic on top of the CPU core. IIRC it was an Athalon chip pre-heatspreader days so the plastic cover had a nice burned rectangle where the core was. The system worked fine after I put the HSF on correctly.

 

[geno]

Originally posted by: MichaelD

Didn't plug in floppy power backwards, but one pin "to the left". Drive exploded. Little motor parts all over inside case.

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

 

[ahenkel]

Had a on old dell PII and the PSU went bad, so I grabbed a new 250watt psu from storage, Plugged it all in and I killed the PII. Didn't know I needed a special Dell PSU

 

[Rakewell]

Originally posted by: ahenkel
Had a on old dell PII and the PSU went bad, so I grabbed a new 250watt psu from storage, Plugged it all in and I killed the PII. Didn't know I needed a special Dell PSU

Dells. GD proprietary parts.

 

[Daishiki]

After powering on the box for the first time before closing it up, I was mesmerized by the heat sink fan and wanted to feel the airflow. Instead, my finger got a feel of one of the blades and broke it. With a shift in the center of gravity, it started to vibrate. I turned it off and waited until I could get a new fan.

 

[Proprioceptive]

Built a new system with an AMD FX-60 processor and water cooling system and it was working just fine. Next day, I was turning on the computer and after 5 minutes, the screen would go fuzzy and I had to shut it off. I restarted it, and the same thing happened at the splash screen. I checked to make sure everything was seated properly on the motherboard and everything was good. I started it up and it goes fuzzy immediately this time. After some serious brainfarting, I realized I'd shut off the water cooler the night before and forgot to turn it back on.... so I freaked out thinking I just fried an $1,100 processor (when it first came out). Fortunately, it was the motherboard, and the processor worked just fine. Man, I was lucky.