Biggest bonehead mistake you've made when building a PC

[Aikouka]

Only time I've ever done anything bad was with the first PC that I ever built. I pretty much knew absolutely nothing about building computers. I was so pleased when I got everything in place that I wanted to try it out! Well, I decided to turn the machine on... without a heatsink installed (because it wouldn't hurt it, right? ). Well, I couldn't figure out why the machine wouldn't work properly after that (didn't suspect that a couple seconds would hurt it so much) and then got scolded for frying the CPU. Also, on that same build, I thought the paste was meant to help hold the heatsink on, so I put it on the silicon instead of on the die.

So embarrassing.

To my knowledge, I've never screwed up a build after that.

EDIT:

Originally posted by: 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.

How'd you manage that? Just like Brylcream, a little dab will do ya.

If you want to be lazy, Zalman's thermal paste actually has an applicator that's a little brush. It's even easier to trying to get a nice "rice-sized" dab of Arctic Silver (or any other thermal paste).

 

[Tobolo]

Bought a nice case off of tigerdirect clearance for $20. Had a pimpin LCD panel on front that had a three pin power connector. System would not boot anytime I plugged it into the power loop so I thought, "hey, its the same power connector as a cpu fan, I can put it one of those slots."

After the explosion, I have a great case with no LCD panel.

 

[Renob]

sencond build with a new case forgot to put in the mobo stands turned on the power fried the mobo,vid card,sound card and TV tuner all new hardware!!!

 

[Rakewell]

*The sound of RMA Reps from around the world rolling their eyes*

 

[CoinOperatedBoy]

My favorites so far are the hammer-to-the-HSF technique and any involving dumping a drink into an open case.

I haven't done anything majorly destructive, but I did mess up a couple video cards. I was swapping out a couple 6600GTs for 7600GTs and they were in really tight. I started rocking one of them to loosen it and didn't realize that my grip was on the attached fan. It popped right off since the glue was old and crappy. Somehow I managed to do the exact same stupid thing five minutes later on the other card.

 

[Nik]

Couldn't figure out why it wouldn't boot. Had the floppy cable plugged in backwards.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

I've never actually blown anything up, which is a little surprising considering my cavalier attitude when it comes to building computers. The worst mistakes I've ever had were being behind the technology curve. I bought a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP card for more than I would've had to pay for a GeForce 2 Ultra because "it's Voodoo man, these things are the best!" The company went bankrupt a few weeks later. And I was so ignorant at the time that I had no idea I needed to change my ingame settings to actually take advantage of the card's increased power; I played for 2 months on software mode before realizing I could enable Glide or OpenGL in TFC and Counter-Strike (damn, that was an ENORMOUS change; I spent about 3 hours just watching the shifting lights as rockets flew across the map).

I bought a Socket 754 mobo instead of a 939 right about the time AMD stopped making any more chips on Socket 754. I figured I would be able to upgrade down the line; I was wrong.

One time I was anxious to get a computer up and running, so I plugged everything in, turned it upright and turned it on. Didn't bother to do anything about the wiring inside the case. It all worked fine, and I figured everything was gravy. Well, after about a week, I inadvertently nudged the machine while it was on. Apparently there was an unused hard drive dongle hanging directly over the CPU HSF, and me nudging the case was enough to send it right into the fan blades. I heard a loud *thwack*, followed by some strange pinging noises (which I think was the dongle bouncing around the fan), and the computer locking up. I turned it off, opened the case, and saw the now dongle-less wire hanging by the fan. Genius that I was, I put so electrical tape over it, taped it to the top crossbar and turned the computer back on. Which, amazingly enough, actually worked. I didn't even bother looking for the severed dongle end, which I found while cleaning out the case about 3 years later.

On my first computer build, I was so ignorant about heat dissipation that I didn't bother to get any fans for the tower, then proceeded to fill it with high end gear that generated huge amounts of heat. I had to run it with the case open and a Vornado house fan blowing on the motherboard. It looked so ghetto.

 

[Squisher]

Plugged in a molex connector to a fan while the pc was powered up. Just as the two touched there was an arc and everything powered off. Nothing I did got it to work. Called a buddy who told me that some power supplies take a few minutes to reset themselves. So, I walked over 15 minutes later and everything was fine, whew.

 

[yllus]

Tried to mount a new heatsink to a CPU. Heatsink had a screw mount, but the screws included were too short - I substituted in my own.

Started tightening the heatsink until I encountered strong resistance and a grinding noise. Turns out I was cutting holes right into the motherboard with the too-long screws I was using. Motherboard would not boot after that.

 

[xboxist]

A friend of mine just spent two weeks agonizing over a new build that wouldn't post. I finally agreed to come over and check it out (3 hours round-trip for me). I get there and stand over the case to give it a visual once-over. I spot it within 30 seconds and sigh. He's like, "What? WHAT IS IT!??" I'm not answering him as I take the CPU fan off. "OMFG you better tell me what you're doing because I checked all that shit like 5 times..."

Once the CPU fan was clear, I turned to stare at my friend while I reached in to secure the CPU arm-lock device. He bought me a steak. lol

 

[brtspears2]

Killed a socket 370 Pentium III by putting into a Slot-1 converter and setting the voltage wrong. There was also I time I crushed an Athlon chip by twisting on a Golden Orb heatsink/fan unit.

 

[Skunkwourk]

Too much Thermal paste on my T-Bird, ended up insulating the heat from the CPU to the heatsink instead of conducting it, fried it before its first use.

Forgetting to put a heatsink bracket on a Alpha heatsink before screwing the fan on, screwed the screws all the way into the processor, goodbye Athlon XP 1500.

 

[Fayd]

the only thing i've done that damaged my computers has been slamming the top of my desk with my fist, which killed the bearing of a fan in the PSU of my old dell.

people keep saying dont open PSU's, and there i have a proprietary PSU open laying around while i find another 80mm fan to replace the borked one.

 

[sandorski]

Not Building, just working on it.

Decided one day to rip my Audigy card out as I suspected it was causing me problems(turned out it wasn't but whatever). So I'm in my Tool Less case with a pair of pliers(hehe) trying to get a grip on the Tab that locked my Audigy in place. All of a sudden slip..whack. :Q Couldn't see anything amiss, so carried on.

Audigy is out, I fire up my system. Everything is fine, then a minute after Windows boots, screen goes wonky. Shutdown system, take another look inside case. On the Upper edge of my vidcard(9800 Pro) there are 2 Posts with copper wire wrapped on them. One of those looked funny. Took the card out and could clearly see that of the 2 pins that made contact, one was no long making contact. So I took a plastic clamp, clamped that sucker down, put it back into the case, fired it up, and had working Video again......for 3 weeks anyway.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: Evadman
I let the smoke out.

:music:Wooooo woo woo:music:

 

[txrandom]

Plugged in a floppy cable the wrong way and spent five hours troubleshooting why I couldn't get the Windows install to read it.

 

[Kaervak]

Surprisingly I've only managed a couple dumb things.

1) Somehow managed to kill the motherboard in my first computer. It was a compaq so no big loss there. Still have no idea how i did it though.

2) Back before Arctic Silver existed I had actualy copper heatsink grease. It was prety much just spreadable copper. Wonderfully conductive stuff. I got a little bit in the empty DIMM of my Abit BE-6 after doing a teardown and killed the board. That really sucked.

3) I was building a system for a friend and was putting on the heatsink. The clip was incredibly stiff (S370 system) so I grabbed a flat head screwdriver and used that instead of my thumb. The screwdriver slipped, hit the motherboard and tore off a capacitor. Got the clip on, powered up the board and it worked fine. Let it run for a few hours under load and never had a hiccup. I replaced the cap anyway and the system worked fine for years.

4) This was a recent one. I upgraded to a Thinkpad T43 so I was tearing down my old T23 replacing anything broken/too worn before I gave it to my cousin. I had it plugged in charging a battery, the system was off thankfully. As I was removing a screw I said "Hmm, I still have this thing plugged in" then I dropped the screw right on the motherboard, couple of small sparks and the battery light goes out. Pulled the AC adapter and battery, held the power button for a few seconds, put the battery back in and it powered up fine. Gotta love a Thinkpad.

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: txrandom
Plugged in a floppy cable the wrong way and spent five hours troubleshooting why I couldn't get the Windows install to read it.

hehe, that's the kind of thing that usually happens and usually drives one to the edge of madness.

 

[l0cke]

On my current mobo I fried all the on board USB, so I'm using a usb card now.

I bent the pins on a S939 3500+ (great CPU) but I used a credit card to get them straight. Still working.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: sandorski

Originally posted by: txrandom
Plugged in a floppy cable the wrong way and spent five hours troubleshooting why I couldn't get the Windows install to read it.

hehe, that's the kind of thing that usually happens and usually drives one to the edge of madness.

Yeah, I was helping my nephew fix his first computer after he got a virus. We just put a new HDD in there and I was going to run some diagnostics on the old drive and wipe it. But it wasn't showing up anywhere. I couldn't get Windows to see it, I couldn't get it to show in the BIOS... it was just gone. After about 30 minutes of head scratching and Google searching I realized I had never plugged the power cable back into it. I was so angry at my own stupidity, I ended up ripping the hard drive out and me and my nephew smashed it with a hammer. It was great fun.

 

[Chronoshock]

My last cellphone had a USB data cable. The cellphone end matched the phone's custom socket and happened to be the exact thickness of the spacing above a standard USB socket.
I grabbed the cable and plugged it in, not looking at which end I was using. The metal sheathing of the cellphone end contacted the ground and power USB pins and zappo, the entire computer goes dark instantly accompanied by a loud beep from the motherboard. The computer didn't want to boot up initially but after 10 minutes of waiting it was alive again.

 

[nutxo]

Building a machine. I dropped a hard drive and thanks to my catlike reflexes I kicked it accross the room where one corner embedded in teh wall then it fell to the floor. No Idea what I was thinking .... It just clicked It was brand new. I cleaned off the paint and exchanged it.


I once dropped a stick of ram like 5 inches onto a wooden table . After that it only registered 256 of 512.

 

[Exterous]

My first ever build I accidentally dropped a screw into the case after I first turned it on. Must to my dismay there was a small spark and the computer immediately shut down. I removed the screw tried turning the computer back on and much to my suprise it worked!

I have forgotten to plug it back in countless times after working on it - wondering what I did wrong that it wouldn't power on. You'd think I'd learn after the 27th time

The worst I saw though was a friend who was working on his computer. He had it on the floornext ot his desk on its side. When it booted fine he reached up to his desk for a case screw before he put the side cover on. Accidentally knocked a 1/2 full can of coke into the case. Needless to say it was a total write off

 

[ric1287]

talked my buddy into buying a shuttle before we went to college (mainly cause i wanted to build one)...didn't take the protective plastic film off of the heatsink. Couple years later the PC crashes constantly and just sucks, he sells it to me since he's tired of it. I crack it open (now being a bit more experienced) and notice that there is: about 2" layer of dust stuck in the HS Fan, and a weird blue plastic film melted on the heatsink. Cleaned it all up and it worked perfectly

Oh and recently, couldn't get a big ass 8800gt out of my Dell cause of the stupid goddamn retention mechanism they have, so after about an hour of fuckin' with it, I decided to just pull really hard and see what happens. Scraped the shit out of the contacts on the card and it wouldn't boot anymore. Luckily they RMA'd it just fine.

 

[PM650]

Plugged in the floppy power shifted by one pin - magic smoke was released from the floppy but it & the psu survived and continued working for years.