Motherboards What hardware have you broken (make me feel better)

I just broke a motherboard.....

Tell me some stories about bits of hardware you've broken to make me feel better and that at one time or another 'it happens to everyone'....

Currently bashing my head against a wall.

 

When Athlon MPs first came out, I bought a Tyan motherboard and ordered two $800 Athlon MPs. When they arrived, I fit the first one in, then put the heatsink on and promptly crunched the corner of the core. $800, gone.

I fit the second, and lo and behold, same corner, same heatsink. Crunch.

$1,600 down the drain. I turned them into keychains. They're hanging next to my PC at home as a reminder.

 

I broke :

A 3DFX voodoo2 when trying to OC by a fair 20MHz (was playing FF8 PC when I got a blank screen and a continuous beep, when I made the touch test on the 3DFX2 chip they where cold ... not good)

An Abit BH6 mobo (the computer was off but the power cord was plugged ... wanted to reset bios via the jumper and I shortcuted something with my jumper remover tools

A geForce 9600GT due to a loose screw falling right on the mosfet area ... shortcut again .... whooshy sound and burnt smell)

 

I've fried a motherboard once when I didnt realise that I'd put an extra brass stand off in the chassis. Turned it on and pop. Not good.

Also melted a CPU by not pushing on the CPU fan header enough. The Abit board I had at the time didn't have a fan fail alarm so by the time I was in windows, it was too late. The Athlon melted itself and the room stank! It introduced me to quad core goodness though as I went out and bought a Q9450 and a new board (not Abit!!)

 

accidentally?

numerous intel coolers [stock and not], i hate those bloody push pins... also tripped and fell on the monitor i was carrying...

broken more joysticks, keyboards and mice than I care to count [really heavy handed with them]. Most notable was a Gravis [remember them? what did happen to them?] Firebird [I think], it was a pain in the arse to set up... and after an hour or so i'd managed to snap the joystick...

deliberately?

took a sledgehammer to a pink iMac [one of the original ones] after a friend had taken a few shots at it with an air rifle.

not me but a friend [the same one that took the pot shots at the iMac] snapped a PS3 controller in half because someone told him 'it couldn't be done'...

 

I do remember them. I had one plugged to my Gravis ultra sound sound card, when the joystick port was on the sound card .

Look at the size of this sound card (I do love the "Assembled in Canada")



I broke quite a few quickjoy sticks for those who remeber them. Microswitch where rock solid, but not the plastic parts activiting them

 

Killed an E8400, DFI LT X48-T2R and some OCZ Reaper memory by getting a bit to voltage happy when trying to OC...

 

I've not so much broke as had things just give up the ghost, an old vcr, an old hdd... although I knackered two joysticks from an Atari VCS way back in the day when I was littler. More recently (i.e. about 10 years ago) my original Playstation started sparking from the power plug so that hasn't been on since. I've had a Microsoft X8 Mouse replaced under warranty because both mouse buttons stopped working. The replacement was sold on here and the old one, well I thought about fixing it but that went in the bin. Also had a Logitech G7 that suffered a similar fate in that the left mouse button stopped working although I think I've still got it somewhere. I had a PSU just go - one day it was fine, next day nothing, that was a fair old while ago.

Not really had anything majorly bad go wrong thankfully, but I certainly feel your pain Parge as that board was a bloody good'un

Ooh, just remembered, I did have a cry when my 9800Pro went. I fitted an aftermarket cooler to it and it worked brilliantly for a couple of weeks until it started artefacting before totally giving up. That was a very sad day. I learnt a very expensive mistake I wouldn't be doing again.

 

An E8400, an EP45-DS3L, a HD4850 all at the same time with some static during winter. I was a sad man.

 

Couldn't get my hand down the side of my graphics card to release to locking widget on a pci express slot , tried using a screwdriver to depress it - slipped and gouged three tracks = dead p55 pro mobo

 

Exploded an Asus M3N72-D motherboard, made me more than a little miffed, I think the rest of the system still works.

Proceeded to use the same PSU on another Asus board and Q6600 that a friend donated me to give me a system, same result, PSU killed both boards.

I was less than amused.

Snapped a PII board in half when I knocked a HDD onto it, killed it stone dead, then Dad proceeded to solder cables along it and, somehow, it worked again.

Hard story to believe, I know. I'll have to try and take pictures of it some day.

Knackered my 440MX by bending the card to the point where it snapped with how warped the case and board had gotten, too.

 

I did the same many years ago with an Athlon CPU. Spent ages trying to get the Heat Sink on only to break off the corner of the core in the process. I'm so glad they come with Heat Spreaders protecting the cores these days.

I used to have water cooling in my PC. I just rebuilt the rig and moved it for testing, though I accidently pulled on one of the tubes as I moved it. This caused a v. small leak that dripped onto my Gfx card whilst the PC was benchmarking; took out the card and my motherboard! At least it gave me an excuse to upgrade.

Building PC's is an expensive hobby!

 

I dropped a TRUE into the socket pins on a P5K, totally unusable after that.

Saw that my Res was cracking but left it in while I waited for a replacement to arrive. Unfortunately it leaked very slightly but enough to drip down onto my HD4870 and kill it.

 

I once forgot to pop a heatsink on a CPU... Yeh, it didn't work after, but I think it was faulty anyway

Also I dropped a HDD I was trying to recover data from, that was a sad face moment.

Apart from that I'm usually too careful and paranoid to break stuff, I have too few pennies to be replacing stuff...

 

An ancient P1-setup I was dicking about with. With some 7 volt fan mod action I managed to plug in a molex connector the wrong way around, and the setup wasn't happy with it.

Haven't broken anything of any value.

 

Years ago when I was new to Bit I bought one of the first series of CrystalFontz (I think?) 5.25" bay LCD. Followed the guide on fitting and running it etc, was the dogs dangleys!

I modded a psu floppy drive connector to provide the right voltage to the right pins etc and had it working lovely. One day I added some new hardware, thought to myself, must use correct lead on LCD, really thought hard to myself. Plugged everything in, pc fired up, smoke eminated from LCD controller board. Bollocks. Wrong connector.

 

This just recently happend, so the pain is still fresh....

Used a cable from a different psu (of the same make), to power my gpu.

Switching the pc on killed my gtx 480, my rampage ii extreme 1366 mobo, and my crucial c300 128gb ssd.

Still hurting a bit from that one! Never broken anything before.

 

External HDD,was setting up the front USB ports for my case but the firewire and USB had the same connectors so took a wild guess because the cables were braided and yeah i guessed wrong and the HDD got fried. about £60

Over heated Fx60 £300 (refunded) OC
static on my Z-5500 5.1 surround sounds when cleaning them £350 (refunded)
Overheated 8800gt rubbish stock fan £180 (i think) OC
A £35 keyboard not dishwasher safe but surrvived many pints of beer and crumbs lol

Static from my steelseries fabric mat killed these i think (still using it lol)
Razer copperhead £80
Razer lachesis £80
Logitech G5 £35

And now for no reason my sound blaster fatality £80 keeps swapping the 5.1 streams around so the sounds come from the wrong speakers randomly (may get one with SPDIF next)

 

I broke the best motherboard I ever owned - Foxconn Bloodrage X58. It was worth £300 but I got it a lot cheaper than that... but still, I miss it!

Apart from that I don't think I've broken anything; I angrily flung my Geforce 7500LE across the living room once, and it still works flawlessly

 

I broke a few mice.. almost broke my razer copperhead but that is okay. I scratched the hell out of my logitech G15 LCD when I was cleaning it once. - Ironic that I was cleaning it to sell it -.-