Your best PC blunders.... *OOPS!*

i'm pretty sure you're supposed to ensure that something (ANYTHING) is plugged into the PSU before you turn it on :)
 
That's what I didn't do. I plugged it in and used two of its molexes on a PC powered by another PSU. I think the one plugged into the mobo earthed through the one attached to the gfx card. The copper tracks stood about 3mm proud of the board afterwards :)
 
years ago i made an auto case fans speed controller out of the innards of an old psu, it worked brillianty until one day it's little psb touched the metal rail in the case. big bright white flash and sparks, pc went dead but after some diags i only managed to fry 2 case fans and the cpu (athlon 700mhz i think) everything else survived even the mobo and psu and the little fan controller with it's scortch marks heh wow.

after that i built a little case/box for it out of a cut video case and superglue, used it for a few years :)
 
Plugging in fans etc whilst the computer was on cue a light show with blue sparks flickering everywhere, I didn't get shocked and turned the computer off as fast as I could. It was fine though :p
 
nikebee said:
Speaking of fans, that was a blunder I did a few years back.

Trying to measure something on the side inside of my case with a ruler, thought "Bah, I don't need to turn it off..."

The ruler slid into the rear case fan... *BUDDDEERRRRRR* flies out and smacks me square between the eyes... I had a red mark running down the front of my face for about 2 days after that :o
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LOL. Sorry but that one needs re-enacting on video. :D

Mark A said:
Taking heat sink off without turning the PC on for a few mins before hand and consequently pulling the CPU out with the heat sink :eek:.
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Done that. Didn't even know you were meant to warm the system up until I saw this post. When I did it I pulled the heatsink straight up - CPU and all - and then promptly dropped the CPU while prying it off. The CPU survived, or at least seemed to (mobo was already on the way out by then).

I've also done the PSU hotwiring thing to test a home-made fan controller I'd bought from MM on here. It all worked fine until I squeezed where I shouldn't have and shorted 12V to ground. I kicked off my very own thunderstorm there. :o

My worst ever (20 years ago :o) - Testing a new-ish UPS while at uni and blowing the main breaker for an entire hall of residence. Then blowing the same breaker again testing a circuit breaker I got to prevent the first problem. In the end the UPS caused more power cuts than it would have protected against. :D

And my second worst (15 years ago) - dialing into a customer's system and remotely deleting the wrong directory. :o
 
Berserker said:
My worst ever (20 years ago :o) - Testing a new-ish UPS while at uni and blowing the main breaker for an entire hall of residence. Then blowing the same breaker again testing a circuit breaker I got to prevent the first problem. In the end the UPS caused more power cuts than it would have protected against. :D
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Fantastic :D

A random power one reminded me of when I was cleaning my PS2 a couple of years back. I was sitting in my wheely office chair at my desk.

Took it apart to get the dust and bits of junk clean from inside it... all was going well, put it back together, turned it on and it didn't work.

I realised I hadn't connected it up properly, so dismantled it again, sorted it out and plugged it back in. Turned it on... all lights come on... fantastic!

Picked it up and held the power supply... *BBBZZZZTTT* electric shock, sends me flying backwards out of the door of my bedroom with stupidly frizzy hair (I had hair down to my arse in them days). My girlfriend just looked at me like the pleb that I am :o
 
Killed my Auravision Eluminx keyboard with a large glass of red wine gave up looking for a replacement 99.9% sure its discontinued, I loved that keyboard:(.
 
i once spent about a week trying to get sound on my pc, had m8s round trying to help me n all sorts. turns out i forgot the motherboard drivers :o:o
 
Mine

Just built a new pc needed another 120 mm fan decided i could take one out of the old psu undid the screws removed the cover, reached into get fan.

*ZAP*

Turns out the capacitors in a psu store quite a bit of charge :o

my god that hurt :(
 
My worst was when I found an old cathode but the switch had snapped off so I randomly started shorting out contacts on the PCB of it, eventually I found two that turned it on, I thought it was amusing to repeatedly short it to turn it on and off, after about 8 times it shot sparks everywhere, the fan noise from the PC audibly changed and most alarmingly the screen started getting spammed with error messages!

Took the cathode out, rebooted the PC and it was all fine afterwards though. This was on my current PC.
 
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Not mine, but relevant.

tech36bk2.jpg
 
And there was me thinking everyone knew you had to do that. Works with any card - not just graphics - apparently. :D







PS - There may be some sarcasm in this post. :)
 
I once broke a USB stick into three peices - one motherboardy peice one USB slot in peice and the plastic. I needed some data off it so i tried to hold together the motherboardy peice with the USB slot peice and put it in my pc. It first let off a spark as i put it in and started to burn as i tried it over and over again. The smell of the burning however was extremely strong and made me HIGH
 
Me: Switch on newly built pc
PC: Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
Me: <switches pc off and on again>
PC: Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!
Me: <refers to manual>
2 Hours later...I am reminded that graphics cards in this day and age now have molex connectors on them for a reason.
 
it's perfectly possible to put a DDR dimm in backwards.

smokin......


it still worked afterwards for about 2 weeks, reporting about 300k undersize until it and the motherboard gave up
 
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