Whats the worst thing that happened to you when building your PC?
- Thread starter qaw010203
- Start date
Soldato
Haha, also my Problem I'm afriad :/
cpu cooler mount clip snapped under pressure that resulted in fried cpu, it was one of those early days socket A super hot athlons.
fast forward to a year ago, the same thing happened on my old core 2 duo build and i didn't even realise anything was amiss until i noticed slow downs when watching videos then went to check cpu temp.
pc parts are pretty much bomb proof these days, you have to be a complete utter tool to **** things up.
fast forward to a year ago, the same thing happened on my old core 2 duo build and i didn't even realise anything was amiss until i noticed slow downs when watching videos then went to check cpu temp.
pc parts are pretty much bomb proof these days, you have to be a complete utter tool to **** things up.
Man of Honour
Tried my friends cpu in my system to see if it was working or his motherboard was dead, the cpu killed my motherboard. Lesson learnt
Hmm..
Crushing a Thunderbird core with a ham-fisted attempt to attach the cooler resulting in smoke and dead motherboard and CPU.
Trying to ventilate an old case by cutting 80mm holes in the side for fans. When using a hole-saw I went waaaay too quickly resulting in more smoke, burning paint and a warped case side.
Not realising an AGP card had a retention clip at the back. Yanked it out removing the AGP slot from the board.
Installing Windows on someone else's machine. I didn't bother disconnecting all his other drives and ended up formatting the wrong one.
These are just off the top of my head. All happened in the early days of me starting to build machines. Learnt from every mistake though. Every mistake learnt from gives you an 'inkling'. 10 x 'inklings' = a 'clue'. 5 x 'clues' = a 'good idea' etc, etc
Crushing a Thunderbird core with a ham-fisted attempt to attach the cooler resulting in smoke and dead motherboard and CPU.
Trying to ventilate an old case by cutting 80mm holes in the side for fans. When using a hole-saw I went waaaay too quickly resulting in more smoke, burning paint and a warped case side.
Not realising an AGP card had a retention clip at the back. Yanked it out removing the AGP slot from the board.
Installing Windows on someone else's machine. I didn't bother disconnecting all his other drives and ended up formatting the wrong one.
These are just off the top of my head. All happened in the early days of me starting to build machines. Learnt from every mistake though. Every mistake learnt from gives you an 'inkling'. 10 x 'inklings' = a 'clue'. 5 x 'clues' = a 'good idea' etc, etc
First build i ever did i went in blind because I was ignorant. Put the motherboard in without an risers, blamed the fact that it nowhere near matched the IO port on fact I bought a cheap case.
Plugged everything in, didn't power up "strangely". Started sticking my hand in and fiddling about until i decided to watch a Youtube vid and realised it does need risers. Everything worked fine afterwards, all of it still does work even though i shorted it for a good 10 mins maybe.
I've also broke PCI clips, Mobo Headers, Sata ports from my misuse of brute force.
Also when i was in primary school one of my friends came back to my house for the first time and my hamster was dead. Unrelated, but I thought you would like to know.
Plugged everything in, didn't power up "strangely". Started sticking my hand in and fiddling about until i decided to watch a Youtube vid and realised it does need risers. Everything worked fine afterwards, all of it still does work even though i shorted it for a good 10 mins maybe.
I've also broke PCI clips, Mobo Headers, Sata ports from my misuse of brute force.
Also when i was in primary school one of my friends came back to my house for the first time and my hamster was dead. Unrelated, but I thought you would like to know.
Soldato
The only thing bad I can remember is about 4-5 years ago I was home late from work and desperate to build my new HTPC rig. I was in such a rush, I slipped with a screw driver and put a tiny scratch on the side of the outside of the case where the fan was being installed.
Luckilly when the HTPC was in position you couldn't see the scratch. I still have that case in its original box in my loft
I had lots of fun and games removing/installing socket A heatsinks but never did any damage to the hardware, my finger nails on the other hand...
Luckilly when the HTPC was in position you couldn't see the scratch. I still have that case in its original box in my loft
I had lots of fun and games removing/installing socket A heatsinks but never did any damage to the hardware, my finger nails on the other hand...
My wife found out how much I had spent.....
Soldato
Using a cheap case.
You know the ones, they cost under 40 quid and don't always look too terrible, but you have to bend and snap bits of metal to get things to fit.
You'd be safer putting your hand through a pane of glass!
Also, chancing a h110 cooler to fit in my Bit Fenix Shinobi XL. those 140mm fans do not attach to the top of the case, both were quite new at the time so not much info around, to make matters worse I put a screw right through the rad so I couldn't just return it damn thing!
You know the ones, they cost under 40 quid and don't always look too terrible, but you have to bend and snap bits of metal to get things to fit.
You'd be safer putting your hand through a pane of glass!
Also, chancing a h110 cooler to fit in my Bit Fenix Shinobi XL. those 140mm fans do not attach to the top of the case, both were quite new at the time so not much info around, to make matters worse I put a screw right through the rad so I couldn't just return it damn thing!
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Soldato
Trusted the rain forest website to correctly advertise case motherboard size compatibility and not checking for myself and then having to snap the clip of a nzxt phantom (original one) he clip being the one that sits over the psu, the motherboard went right to the bottom of the case and I externally mounted the psu untill a haf x arrived
and I externally mounted the psu untill a haf x arrived The only thing bad I can remember is about 4-5 years ago I was home late from work and desperate to build my new HTPC rig. I was in such a rush, I slipped with a screw driver and put a tiny scratch on the side of the outside of the case where the fan was being installed.
Luckilly when the HTPC was in position you couldn't see the scratch. I still have that case in its original box in my loft
I had lots of fun and games removing/installing socket A heatsinks but never did any damage to the hardware, my finger nails on the other hand...
You put a scratch in a case? You don't get to join the 'Idiot' club with that..
Caporegime
I plugged the USB front panel cable into the 1394 header and set my motherboard on fire... 
Soldato
Haha
Maybe if I had more free cash I would have been a bit more ham fisted with my installs ;D
Soldato
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- 11 Sep 2013
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Not much - Lifted the CPU out to clean off the OCD-annoying scraps of TIM and promptly dropped the CPU right on the socket pins!!