Biggest bonehead mistake you've made when building a PC

[StarsFan4Life]

When I was 13 (13 years ago, lol) I was testing out a motherboard for a friend. We decided not to put the motherboard in a case nor put it on anything. I help it in my palm, plugged it all in, turned it out....and shocked the shit out of myself.

I dropped the motherboard and it never worked again....


DOUBLE WHAMMY!

 

[Steve]

Not a PC-building incident, but how many of you have locked yourself out of your own router?


*raises hand*

 

[Mermaidman]

I built a new PC for a family member and shipped it with a massive CPU heatsink installed. This was a socket A rig and some of you may remember that the heatsink was secured by one spring clip. Needless to say, the heatsink fell off during transit and pinballed inside the PC.

Amazingly the PC still booted up upon arrival! Except the recipient didn't reattached the heatsink properly and the CPU promptly fried . . .

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: Steve
Not a PC-building incident, but how many of you have locked yourself out of your own router?


*raises hand*

*raises both hands*

 

[RossGr]

It was about 1992, I was running a knockoff 286 with a wopping 20MB hard drive. In those days all sound went to the tiny tinny case speaker. I decided to upgrade the crappy speaker. Went to Radio Shack and picked up a 4" speaker with a truly awesome magnet. Replacement was going to be eazy. I started the system booting, then while looking at the mounting holes I had to work with, set the speaker, without thinking on my HARD DRIVE. Instantly the system ceased to boot. End of hard drive in just a fraction of a second.

I had bought the system used and turns out I did not get the software required to format the pre IDE hard drive. Ended up getting a IDE interface card and drive to make it work again. This was really the start of my computer building days.

 

[Tremulant]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: Steve
Not a PC-building incident, but how many of you have locked yourself out of your own router?


*raises hand*

*raises both hands*

I've done that too a few times.

 

[Iron Woode]

Originally posted by: 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

not as bad as what that jackass Docsmarts did 2 years ago.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

First PC I built, the shitty PSU that came with the case (using it at all was a stupid mistake) had the input AC voltage set to 220v by default. PC would boot but would get funky artifacts with my ti4600 and seem unstable. I swapped it with a Geforce 4 MX440 and the artifacts were gone, so I thought that it was a videocard problem and RMA'd the other card. Got the replacement card and still got the same problem, I remember being frustrated. One day I randomly check the PSU and notice the switch was set incorrectly. . . set it to 110v and everything was fine.

 

[StarsFan4Life]

Originally posted by: PieIsAwesome
First PC I built, the shitty PSU that came with the case (using it at all was a stupid mistake) had the input AC voltage set to 220v by default. PC would boot but would get funky artifacts with my ti4600 and seem unstable. I swapped it with a Geforce 4 MX440 and the artifacts were gone, so I thought that it was a videocard problem and RMA'd the other card. Got the replacement card and still got the same problem, I remember being frustrated. One day I randomly check the PSU and notice the switch was set incorrectly. . . set it to 110v and everything was fine.

What the hell was the point of 220v on the PSU's anyways?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: PieIsAwesome
First PC I built, the shitty PSU that came with the case (using it at all was a stupid mistake) had the input AC voltage set to 220v by default. PC would boot but would get funky artifacts with my ti4600 and seem unstable. I swapped it with a Geforce 4 MX440 and the artifacts were gone, so I thought that it was a videocard problem and RMA'd the other card. Got the replacement card and still got the same problem, I remember being frustrated. One day I randomly check the PSU and notice the switch was set incorrectly. . . set it to 110v and everything was fine.

What the hell was the point of 220v on the PSU's anyways?

damned feriners.

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Originally posted by: Tremulant

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: Steve
Not a PC-building incident, but how many of you have locked yourself out of your own router?


*raises hand*

*raises both hands*

I've done that too a few times.

My mother did that with her wireless router and actually had to have the people from Qwest come out and reset it for her. That was amusing.

 

[yhelothar]

Pressed the heatsink down instead of fully mounting it to do a quick POST test on my friend's comp back on the athlon thunderbirds. The thing was toast in about 2 seconds. I bought him another CPU the next day, but his mom already bought him another one.

 

[Iron Woode]

found the link to DocSmarts thread.

oh, the Lulz.

http://forums.anandtech.com/me...ab=arc&highlight_key=y

 

[Maximilian]

Blew up PSU by setting to 150v by accident, we use 230v here.

Ripped off althon XP core by deciding to rip the heatsink off really quickly so it dosent get damaged (since it was a bit stuck). Illustrated here

Doh!

 

[JeepinEd]

I was doing maintenance on my first water cooled rig. I noticed that the coolant I used (I think it was thermaltake something or other) was forming some sort of buildup in the water lines. I decided to drain as much of it out as I could and run vinegar through it to clean it out.
I filled the vinegar and fired up the PC. I figured I'd let it run for a bit while I did some work.
The little bit of coolant that was left in the reservoir, along with the vinegar and the heat from the CPU, caused a chemical reaction that created an expanding gelatinous mess. It put so much pressure on the water lines, that they burst, spraying gunk all over the inside of the PC.
At least my hard drive survived.

The following week I started building my new *Air Cooled* computer. It still runs great!

 

[JulesMaximus]

Getting the bios settings wrong and the system isn't stable as a result...can cause much frustration.

 

[palswim]

Originally posted by: l0cke
I bent the pins on a S939 3500+ (great CPU) but I used a credit card to get them straight. Still working.

Yeah, I bent so many pins on my 3500 (often doing that pull-the-heatsink-off-but-oops-the-processor-came-too trick), but I would always take out my knife, straighten them, and then put the processor back in. It never stopped working up until I sold it on craigslist.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

I've never done anything stupid while assembling my PCs but my brother has a couple. On one occasion he was installing a video card and didn't have a lot of light. The card seemed a bit sticky going in so he pushed harder and eventually it went it. Turned on the PSU and the case quickly filled with smoke. Turns out he caught one of the PSU power wires between the video card and the PCI-e slot and when he pushed it in he stripped part of the wire insulation, and the wire was in contact with some video card contacts. Expensive mistake.

His other mistake was when we were young (14? 15?) and he was installing some RAM. The RAM stick was having trouble going in so he gave it an almighty shove and heard a crack. Turns out he was pushing the RAM in upside down and he broke the mobo. He was assembling that PC for a friend as a favor. :roll:

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Originally posted by: StarsFan4Life

Originally posted by: PieIsAwesome
First PC I built, the shitty PSU that came with the case (using it at all was a stupid mistake) had the input AC voltage set to 220v by default. PC would boot but would get funky artifacts with my ti4600 and seem unstable. I swapped it with a Geforce 4 MX440 and the artifacts were gone, so I thought that it was a videocard problem and RMA'd the other card. Got the replacement card and still got the same problem, I remember being frustrated. One day I randomly check the PSU and notice the switch was set incorrectly. . . set it to 110v and everything was fine.

What the hell was the point of 220v on the PSU's anyways?

Are you serious? You know most of the world uses 220v?

 

[TheStu]

Incorrectly secured my heatsink after I did a mobo swap. The heatsink was an older all copper thermalright monster. It fell solidly onto the GPU, cracking it at the AGP connector. I didn't even know any of this had happened until after I got back from class and my system was off and wouldn't boot past the POST screen.

 

[Acanthus]

Once fired up a celeron machine with no HSF.

The most expensive (but not bonehead) was a watercooling leak on my 1st ever WC build.

 

[BassBomb]

Wiring the USB incorrectly, putting voltage to ground and vice versa

Needless to say, my flash drive I was using to store drivers saw sparks and has never worked since. I didn't even realize what was going on I just noticed a spark and kept plugging it back in to see if it will do it again.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Built literally hundreds of pcs in my time.

One time I static killed a clients pc at her house. Amazing what a bit of static can do. Killed the entire mobo. In the end my boss had to buy her a whole new pc.

Another time I slashed open my finger to the bone on a cheap case. My dickhead boss refused to get me medical care so I got a taxi and then never came back to work ever again.

Man I hated that job.

 

[Shadow Conception]

Screwed the mobo right onto the case without standoffs. Sound card wouldn't fit through the expansion slot in the back, so I used pliers to bend the card's expansion plate. Still wouldn't fit. Made a Google search and standoffs turned out to be a cause. Image searched "standoffs" and found out what that small bag of golden screw-things was for...

 

[marvdmartian]

Worst was reversing the usb pin connectors on the motherboard (back before they got smart and made modular plugs). Plugged my 128mb jump drive in after I got the system up and running, to transfer some programs to it. It gave a little POP! and a thin wisp of smoke came out of the casing of the jump drive. It was fried. I even took it apart, and saw the little black spot on the circuit board where it fried. Sucked too, since those little drives used to be damn expensive!! Luckily, it didn't fry the usb on the motherboard, so I fixed the pin issue and it was okay.

Built a computer once, and installed two optical drives (cd-rom and cd-rw). Set the jumpers on them as I installed them in the case. Turned on the computer, and wondered why the bios screen was taking FOREVER to recognize the drives?? Seems it really confuses the hell out of the motherboard bios when you set both drives on one cable to master!!

The most painful was when I took a tower cover off (back before they had removable side panels), and being in a hurry, just set it next to my desk (where I'd have to walk). Went around the desk to get something, stumbled, and stepped back to catch my balance.....and sliced the back of my calf with the sharp edge of the metal! Still have a nice 1" long scar back there to remind me not to get in a hurry!! :roll: