Whats the worst thing that happened to you when building your PC?

Tech mate and I have built a few:

Spending 6 hours to figure out that one setting in BIOS switched on the onboard graphics..

Watch tech mate apply thermal paste to my brand new rig CPU and it splatter out all over MB......

The best one - double 'letters' when typing..... "lliikkee tthhiiss" because not one but two keyboard wireless dongle thingies were plugged into the back of the PC!

I like Windows, Android,, it is best to suffer for your tech :p
 
My first ever build I needed to flash the BIOS for it to accept my CPU. Used a very old floppy to do the flash. Failed halfway through - mobo was completely dead. Worst thing was it was the day before Christmas Eve so I knew I'd not be able to get a replacement for ages, so was left with all my lovely new PC parts sitting around for a week or two and feeling nervous since I'd already killed one part...

Another build I connected one of the USB headers incorrectly. When I used the port it blew with a nice bang and a whiff of smoke. Rest of the PC was fine, just that one header never worked again.

Another one, I was using a portable USB drive to copy files over to the PC once I'd installed Windows. Set a big load of files copying then got up to make a cuppa while I was waiting. Not noticing that my foot was tangled in the USB cable. Yanked the drive off the desk and the plug out of the USB port. The drive was fine, but I'd somehow managed to yank the internal part of the USB port out with the cable. Oh well, you don't need all those front USB ports anyway, do you? :)

So nothing that major really. Given I've done well over a dozen builds and have been majorly clumsy on occasion it shows how resilient PC components must be in general (I've bled all over parts after cutting myself on cheap cases, slipped with the screwdriver getting those horrible old AMD HSF clips in place, fitted HSFs using the wrong attachments, forgot the thermal paste, broken cases fixings when removing a GPU, etc., but nothing ended up not working as a result).
 
I use PrimoChill 240mm CTR Phase Reservoir. Its one of those clamps on from the outside rather then inside. Alas the bottom of the res was not clamped on tightly. It filled about 3/4 of the way then gave out after the weight of the water was heavy enough and gushed fluid all over the base of my case and D5 pump which resided below. Woops.

After said Drama and being pretty shaky of not repeating the same mistake, I forgot to put the tubing run from CPU block to radiator block. So after filling up the res and running the pump had a waterfall all over my PSU. residing under the exit port of CPU block. Man I was not happy that day.

Unrelated WTF moment. Darkside LED striped touched the edge of my case, Lian-Li so aluminium being a good conductor, sent a jolt up the cable and into the fan connector and set fire to said header. Seeing a small flame light up in my case was horrifying to say the least. Thankfully was just the small daughter board on the Maximus impact boards you get so only needed to replace that which was fully fried.
 
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