Friend's build

[hmmblah]

So I friend of mine decided to build his first PC. He lives roughly 4 hours away and gave me a call Friday night. He had the whole machine together, but when he tried to turn it on, nothing at all happened. No fans spin up, nothing turns on. I walked him through a few troubleshooting procedures like unhooking unessential hardware, making sure PSU switch was on etc.

Well, he was able to have someone bring it to me late last night. I took a quick look at it today at lunch, I wasn't able to plug it in, but I think I may have found the issue.



That's the bracket for his cooler (CoolerMaster 212 Plus). In the red circle you can see it's not sitting flat on the back of the motherboard, but it's on top of a transistor or something.

[AlienALX]

No offence to your friend but this is why some people should just buy a pre built machine.

Building a PC really isn't as easy as it sounds. Just the other day on here we had a dude trying to screw his motherboard straight to the tray with no standoffs and I saw at least two instances of that when running a shop.

The problem is that no case I have ever come across has any instructions on building a PC. I mean, there simply aren't any. You could probably buy a book though.

I've seen far worse than that though. I remember once some guy came in and wanted to buy a CDRW drive (back in the days when burn proof very first came out on SCSI drives). He point blank refused to pay £27.50 to have us do it and asked me what to do.

"I dunno man, I guess just connect every cable". Yeah, right.

He found a 2 pin 12v cable on the psu and jammed it onto the master jumper pin on the drive. Simultaenously burning the entire PC. So bad was it that the IDE cables burnt so that all that was remaining were hair like wires with no coating on them at all.

He did see the funny side though. But didn't when he had to pay £600 for a new computer.

Even my friend who has built three PCs made the fatal mistake of forgetting to plug in the 8 pin. And that cost him his Phenom 9950 (sent it to me confident it was dead).

Crazy really. I guess people who know things automatically assume that some one else can pick them up in five minutes. And there are just sooo many mistakes to be made when fitting stuff.

Ah well, sounds like you did him right in the end

[SnW]

That looks very much that he has forgot to put the washers on ..

[AlienALX]

Yeah I would strongly imagine there would be some kind of spacers to go in there.

[hmmblah]

No washers. The underside of the bracket has insulating tape on it. I've used this cooler once before for a build that was running stock. I tried to get him to bring all the parts up here so I could help him put it together.

@ALX - he tried to fit the mobo at first without the standoffs too . Luckily he noticed it didn't fit quite right and called me before he tried putting any screws in. I just hope this motherboard isn't dead because of this. I'm going to take it all apart tonight and reassemble. I don't think I have another heatsink though as this one definitely won't work.

[AlienALX]

Legend

[AMDFTW]

ouch that board could be dead already if it has touched bare metal.

altho they say you cant handle PCb's cos of the oil on your fingers but that rubbish.

anyhu u suggest you take a look at it

[hmmblah]

It actually hasn't touched bare metal as their is tape between the metal and motherboard. I think it's more likely he crushed whatever is under that bracket.

[AMDFTW]

i meant as he lay the mobo in the case with no standoffs

[AlienALX]

Originally Posted by AMDFTW

altho they say you cant handle PCb's cos of the oil on your fingers but that rubbish.

I think you have PCBs mixed up with halogen lightbulbs.