Whats the stupidest thing you've done whilst building your PC

Ghosthud1

Ghosthud1

New member
I'll start.

Everything locked down in the computer except the motherboard, i place the screws in the threads on the motherboard tray i then go for a cuppa break, come back and i decide i actually screwed the motherboard down.

Somehow the board stood upright without falling out, go to power up the system, i tap the side of the case with my foot *CRASH*, motherboard falls out :huh:, luckily everything was fine! (my heart wasn't)

So yeah, can you top that?
 
I can see I'ma like this thread already :D

1) Buying a £25 650w PSU to power my £600 gamer... the thing exploded (popped one of the massive caps) but thankfully didn't take anything with it :P

2) Didn't lock down a DVD drive (I was a n00b back then, nobody should use DVD drives) picked up the rig to take it upstairs, and while walking up the stairs the drive slid backwards into my rig. I then (stupidly) ran back downstairs to break open the rig, again thankfully nothing broke although my GPU popped out of it's slot (cheap mobo back then with not pci-e lock-things) xDD

The trails of building rigs when you're 15... god I was stupid back then xPP
 
Mine was not long ago fitting the NZXT Havik 140 first time ever fitting an after market cooler only looked at the quick guide not the full guide and fitted the 775 bracket to an 1155 fitting as the quick guide said it was needed for Intel install and wondered why the board didn't look right as it was flexing it, as luck would have it found the mistake with no damage to the parts, so it was fitted for about 10 mins all up but gave me a lifetime of heart attacks LOL.
 
This was very long ago. I was doing a memory change, took out the old to add new. Also was changing the heat sink fan. I had shut off the system via the power supply switch. This was back when power switches on the case were click on and off and went to the PSU, not the motherboard and not momentary switches like now. I had pulled the heat sink since I had to mod it to get the larger fan mounted. I had not put the heat sink back on yet and bumped the PSU switch on the back, I hit it back off right away. Just in that instant it fried my processor. That was around the Pentium 100 era, they over heated if you looked at them wrong. Luckily the next day a large computer/swap show was in town just south of me and I was able to get a pulled processor cheap. There was no public internet to miss that night with no system, we were doing BBS's.
 
lol Fred I did a similar thing but I actually touched the cpu whilst it was off. Burned the fark outta my finger but I guess my blood acted as a quick liquid cooling and the cpu didnt fry. cleaned off the burnt flesh popped hsf back on and she lived lol.
 
My early pc building days

Well i remember when i started out i bought the most expensive motherboard out which was an abit all nice and shiny boxed feeling like a kid at christmas and dying to get home to install it,anyway everthing was installed apart from the motherboard when whilst putting the screws in the motherboard i slipped and cleaned off a good line of surface mount chips not a good memory lol.:(
 
my very first gaming pc build put everything in my case, all looking good so far last part was heat-sink I put the paste on then cm v8, turned it on came fine,but too have my cm v8 fall off, thermal compound was onlything holding it in place how it stayed up I dont know,the dumbest thing ive done....

 
First time I filled my loop for leak testing and bleeding my 3 year old was watching, not thinking I went out to put kettle on when I came back my son had poured his orange into the res to help me out.
 
I was barefoot and was touching the radiator with one foot when I was reaching inside the PC to add a PATA cable for a new CD\DVD Writer and I touched the mobo, got shocked but luckily nothing died.
 
I had a Antec 900 case on my Q6600 rig. I was reaching inside to move a Sata cable and all of a sudden my PC just shut down. I turned it back on, and reach inside the wire bundle again and it shut down again. I started sorting the wires, and found a fan splitter had one end unplugged. Every time I would reach my hand in, the two exposed pins would touch the True EX cooler and short.

I was lucky I did not touch the cooler when that happened.
 
I may have tried to mount my friends brand new bull dozer without opening the socket on the motherboard. I put the heatsink on and something wasn't right, pulled it off and I had bent about 20-30 pins. I took it out onto the counter and straightened every pin with a scalpel. Put it back properly and its been fine ever since :o so glad I didn't have to buy him a new cpu.

The stupidest thing I have done on my own pc would probably be either shearing a H100 mounting screw by over-tightening it or breaking my motherboard by putting my rig in the car upside down with a GTX570 hanging off it, both got RMA'd though so all's well that ends well :)

JR
 
The only thing that I can remember on top of my head is when I was doing a molex extension for some leds, and after extending all the wires I was too lazy to cover the exposed wire with electrical tape ( I had no access to heatshrink back then) and as soon as I connected it to the powersupply, all 4 of the exposed wires touched together and a mini bomb went off inside the psu, luckily only the two molex connectors died and the powersupply and other components are still working to this very day in my bro's rig.
 
Got in a hurry and plugged in a 6 pin pci-e power into a 4 pin cpu power. Luckily even though I pressed the power button four or five times checking jumpers because it would start to boot then die, Everything survived.
 
Kong said:
I had a Antec 900 case on my Q6600 rig. I was reaching inside to move a Sata cable and all of a sudden my PC just shut down. I turned it back on, and reach inside the wire bundle again and it shut down again. I started sorting the wires, and found a fan splitter had one end unplugged. Every time I would reach my hand in, the two exposed pins would touch the True EX cooler and short.

I was lucky I did not touch the cooler when that happened.
Click to expand...

A friend called me with a problem he could not figure out. I tried to troubleshoot over the phone. I ended up at his house and right away it jumped out at me like by divine guidance...I moved a mess of wires and pulled an extra connector from a fan splitter away from the chassis where it was shorting and all was okay. My friend was amazed and said, "Dude, how did you know to go right there? It was like you knew exactly where to look!" I have no idea, just did it, in seconds it was fixed. :)

We then played this new game he got that just came out, Tomb Raider. :)
 
was building my son a rig and he was eating and drinking at mine he got that excited when i brought his pc in from the shed after i finished building it he jumped up and threw chocolate milk all over my main rig!! lucky i was on it strait away it hit the top of the psu thank god my old rig had top mounted psu which was facing down otherwise i could of possibly had a dead son along with a dead pc...

worse thing i done though was my very 1st build back in the days when 486 pc's ruled the world, anyhoo i spent about an hour building my very first proper pc and it wouldn't power on. i sat there for ages trying to figure out what i did wrong checked all the wires took it apart put it back together still couldn't figure out what was wrong so went to my dad he comes in and the 1st thing he does is SWITCH THE POWER ON at the plug on the wall i had it off and didn't even notice i think the excitement of finally being able to play doom 3d got the best of me lolz..
 
Mine was my second build, AMD K6 2 400MHZ system, I was screwing in all the motherboard mounts into the plate. After finishing my build I press the power button and nothing. I checked all the connections and everything, tried a different mains lead and still nothing.

Next day I even got a new PSU as I thought I had a dud one, installed that and still nothing. Towards the end of the day I completely stripped everything out to start again and I noticed that I installed one too many motherboard mounts which was shorting the motherboard. After removing it and re-assembled my rig I press the power button and voila! It booted.
 
Used a screw that was too long to mount a rad when I first started watercooling and went right into the fins, making a huge hole, then filled it and turned it on, and it just sprayed out of there, soaking my GPU (it was only a GTS450, but luckily it was okay still), so I had to buy a brand new radiator, and leave my GPU and MoBo to dry overnight. In the end everything was fine, but it taught me to be a bit more careful when screwing rads in lol.

That was an EK Rad which had no metal plate behind the screw holes to prevent it happening, and now I've got Phobya rads which do, just in case I'm ever stupid enough to do it again xD
 
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