What components have you broken/fried?

Mr-White said:
I fried an xp2200 when the waterblock wasn't on properly
I cracked a gf4 waterblock when I screwed the barb in too far
I killed a ddr memory module forcing it in the wrong way round
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Good at this aren't ya lol

About ten years ago I frazzled a customers brand new XP2400 cpu in his new build by clipping the HSF onto the socket upside down - told my manager it was DOA and luckilly we got an RMA from (erm, I think it might've been OcUK actually... lol either that or a certain competitor that sounds a bit like ebay)

(for those who don't remember, socket A coolers had a little 'step' that needed to line up with the socket to make it even touch the core - This was upside down so it wasn't even touching the cpu!)
 
in the pursuit of a cooler cpu i took out my i7 and lapped it which was ok but while taking it out of the motherboard socket i had some kitchen towl in my hand so i did'nt get covered in thermal paste.the towel caught on the motherboard pins and pulled some out.£180 for a new board.ouch
 
Well there was that one time I noticed a strange wee switch on my PSU that said 220, and I flipped it to 110...while it was plugged in :p
 
RJC said:
Fried a Dell pc when I decided to move the 240 / 110v switch across, made a nice loud bang and a dead pc.
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A mate did this to a dell system at school, funnily enough he found the only one of about 500 that hadn't had something stuck over the switch.
 
Oh yeah, putting on an new cooler on a gfx, the memory heat sinks were attached a little too well. When I went to remove one, it took the chip with it.
 
That reminds me of my OCZ Reaper I fubar'd just after I joined the forum... the heatpipe had slipped and I wanted to reseat it but ripped the memory chips off the ram stick lol
 
killed the PSU in my mate's just out of warranty g3 tower about 6 years ago - flipped that little switch that said 220 :( He was not happy.

More recently, killed a hard drive - think it was the magnetic screwdriver I used to screw it screw it in.
 
The only thing I've ever done was knock a glass of water over on the desk - some of it ran off onto the PC below and hit a USB memory card reader plugged in the front port. The machine powered off and wouldn't come back on. Turns out it had blown the motherboard - everything else (inc the reader) was fine.

It was actually the wife's PC.....told her it must have been a "power surge" to avoid getting earache :D

That's about it in the 15 years I've been tinkering with computers.
 
Replacing the thermal paste on a gpu only to tighten the backplate a little too much :rolleyes:
I thought I heard a crunch too :D How was i to know it wasn't a bit of snot?
 
Hmm, I can't think of anything I've actually broken computer wise (completely different story otherwise). The closest call I had was with an old P4. The "official" heat sink wouldn't come off and I ended up with the CPU still attached to the heatsink. As I was trying to slide it off, I slipped and the CPU/heatsink combo went flying up in the air and landed with a loud crack bending almost all the pins and sending the heatsink half way across the room. After I straightened all the pins and reconnected it, I found it was exactly the same as before in operation and benchmarks.

Given it was a P4 I'm not sure that was a good thing :(
 
Killed my nans pc when I was about 10. Pc froze and I thought that little red switch was a reset button :(

2 wireless cards and a DVD drive have died on me in the last year, I think because of age/esd/karma :)
 
The only thing I've ever done remotely like this was bending about 60 pins on the back of a 939 3500+ (I don't recall how). I spent an hour bending them back and it worked fine, so I guess I haven't really broken/fried anything.
 
EniGmA1981 said:
(for those who don't remember, socket A coolers had a little 'step' that needed to line up with the socket to make it even touch the core - This was upside down so it wasn't even touching the cpu!)
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I have no idea how you managed that. It doesn't look or feel right if it's on the wrong way.
 
1995-ish I spent an absolute fortune (£200+) on a really good SuperMicro motherboard for my P90. It was supposed to be great for overclocking. It was a real luxury buy after a dismal year for me.

About two week later my old but excellent IBM keyboard developed a sticky key. I got in from work one night, turned on the PC, and got annoyed by the sticky key. Opened up the keyboard without turning off the PC, shorted something while poking around, and... Oops, now no keys at all work!

It turns out the keyboard input bit of those boards was pretty fragile even without me being an idiot. After quite a long rail journey I had to grovel to the supplier to get it exchanged. They were not at all happy with me or my "dunno what happened" story. Can't say I blame them, but I'd cleaned out my savings with that upgrade.

Andrew McP

PS I am reluctant to unearth another really, really bad memory from that era involving me trying to make some money upgrading PCs and a new HD plugged in and balanced on someone's case while testing. I was confident right up to the point it slipped into the case.

HD went in, smoke came out. <shudder>.
 
Grimley said:
I killed an AMD Duron 1200 many moons ago, all down to the vendor recommending a copper spacer to put between the cooler & the CPU. It was my 1st AMD PC build & didn't know it wasn't needed. :rolleyes:
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The cores on those old processors were pretty weak not having a headspreader to protect them. I used a shim on mine because the heatsink and fan I was using was huge and weighed a ton and put extra stress on the socket.

MW
 
not a pc but a good ole Commodore 64, decided that the earth cable hanging from the data cassette cablw should also be plugged into the back of the C64 along with the data cable. blew a fuse on the 'motherboard'. yup a nice clear glass fuse, pulled it out and replaced with a 13amp and we were good to go! lol
 
Daftest thing I did became apparent when smoke started coming out of an Athlon 1800 machine I'd just assembled out of old parts. Cpu fan wasn't spinning up & the heatsink was so hot it burnt my fingers, I actually heard a sizzle. I'd neglected to plug the cpu fan into the mobo, schoolboy error. PC still worked fine afterwards though!

That's about it touch wood.
 
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