Other Scariest thing thats happened with you and hardware?

Whats the most brickshittery worthy moment thats happened with you and your various pieces of hardware?

Just thought of this after my secondary pc's dvd drive just emitted a massive pop noise and went up in smoke when I pressed the button to open it. Just about shat myself. I flipped the power supply switch and uplugged like hell while being overpowered by the 'fried electronics' smell. I'd smelled something similar with a dead fan a few years back but this one was several times worse. Now the 5.25 inch bays in the case seem to have the smell permanently.

Now that I think of it, I dunno why I thought it would be ok to use as it was salvaged from and old dell which had been acting as a hoover gathering dust and dog hairs since 2001.

 

Cheapo unbranded power supplies can randomly catch on fire. I learned that the hard way.
Dropping an M3x30mm screw on your GPU while it's turned on makes it stop working. I learned that the hard way too.
I also learned what a dry running pump sounds like and that soaked sound insulating material goes mouldy.

 

I learned that it's worth the extra money to buy a decent brand of replacement top/nozzle unit for a DDC pump after the cheap one I bought gradually cracked right where the nozzle meets the body despite being quite careful to never over-tighten the fittings.
Noticing a blue stain on the carpet underneath my rig one day was a hell of a panic-moment, made worse when I looked in through the side-panel window to see the pump spraying coolant around the inside of the case.

Through some sick twist of luck it only soaked the internal rads and poured out the front of the case without touching the motherboard or anything sensitive.


Replaced the top with an EK acetal one when I could afford it. More expensive, but it also feels sturdier and gives more peace of mind..

 

Various moments of praying for no blue screens makes me cringe with stress.

Worst case I've had though was when I first started up my build, it'd switch off after a few seconds of booting up, turned out it was some pins on the motherboard that got somehow damaged. After returning the MoBo and getting a replacement I thought all was well until my new 1TB Samgsung HDD broke too, it some how got damaged too by the faulty MoBo.

 

It would have to be back in 2006 when I was playing a druid and used Insect Swarm on Azuregos during our raid fight in World of Warcraft, and the PSU blew. Suffice to say, I never did use Insect Swarm again.

 

One day my fan controller broke and I didn't notice. My radiator was not dissipating heat at all so my water temp went above and beyond the safe temp for the PVC tubing. The tubing lost grip of the outlet of barb of the pump, leaving pump spraying a torrent of water everywhere. Luckily only a small amoung touched some components before I hit the kill switch.

The there was the other time. It was a long while ago when I was still using pre-mixed coolant. I little bit spilled on my motherboad when I was putting everything back together after changing the fluid and some TIM for my CPU. I knew it got into some circuitry so I didn't use the computer for the rest of the day and the one after that since I had work. Unfortunately I didn't know a glycol solution would pretty much never dry so the second I turned my computer on sparks were flying. The results was a fried graphics card and a fried motherboard. That was the last time I would ever use pre-mixed, non conductive coolant. Thats right! I was using non-conductive coolant.... so much for that.

Now I only use stright water. Actually I got a bottle of zinc oxide nano fluid I want to try out.
Now I only use more expensive compression barbs.

There was also that one time I got a screw stuck somewhere on my motherboard. One day it decide to fall out but while it was doing that, every component it touched was sparking. Nothing was damage but I learned to ALWAYS retrieve recover screws even if it is stuck behind a heatsink and requires you to remount it.

 

Once I was putting together a computer, I noticed a pool of red liquid on the bottom of the case. I looked down at my hand, HUGE gash!!! I don't know how I didn't feel it.

I zapped a new graphics card with static, almost punched a hole through the wall.

I filled my loop with Distilled water*, A week later I noticed my temps were extremely high.
* Fine print on the bottle "Minerals added to enhance flavor" Its fecking water, should it have a taste?

 

I hear you... I used premix on they first system I watercooled, was in an Antec 900, had a pair of HD4870's when they first came out.. the fitting on the top card started leaking for some reason (last time I used them plastic clamps too) It leaked all over the bottom card, into the PSU and on the bottom of the MB then it shut it self off lol. Lost one 4870 and the psu.. the MB lasted another year before it died.. Last couple of systems I put togeater I used silver coils with distilled water .

 

Some kind of weird SATA cable that as soon as it was plugged, caused the Mobo to NOT boot (GPU stuck at leaf blower state) and needed a clear CMOS (remove battery) to start again.
I really thought my mobo was a gonner.

 

When I went to reinstall Windows XP it didn't work for some reason. It turns out that my ram when bad without reason. New ram, no problems and everything is fine now.

 

Probably most nerve-wrecking was trying to pry apart a brand-spanking-new 9800GX2. Also ages ago when I "worked" in a PC-service as a part of our school-thingmabob the then newbie-Jipa was put in charge of replacing the cooler of some high end motherboard as well as a DVD-drive from someones laptop.

As for hardware failing in a marvelous way, I once had a Maxtor HDD literally blow its controller chip. BANG and lots of stinky smoke. I even remember taking it to the RMA.
Jipa: "This broke" *points at the cracked chip*
RMA-guy: "So it seems" *slaps a new drive on the table*

 

The worst thing that ever happened to me was I'd just bought a P5K Premium for £120. Back in the day this motherboard was considered the best of the best and £120 was a lot for motherboard (before i7 made £150-200 the norm for enthusiasts). I was keen to try this overclocking lark on my E6600 and cranked it up to 3.8GHz. While stress testing there was a loud bang, the computer turned off and there was a smell of smoke. The computer wouldn't power on at all and I was terrified I had fried my new motherboard. I didn't have a lot of experience at the time, but it wasn't long before I figured out it was the crappy generic PSU which blew. I learned my lesson and a shiny Corsair HX620 arrived from Scan which still powers my rig to this day.

 

My worst experience was thinking I'd ruined my i7 920 when lapping it. I'd been using isopropanol as the lubricating liquid but I still ended up getting a black residue over some contact points, which I washed off.

Later that evening I set up everything and... the computer wouldn't start. Absolutely nothing. I got really depressed, pulled outmy laptop and spent the next two hours watching some film before facing the fact I was probably going to have to shell out another £200 for a processor.

Before I went ahead and ordered, I looked on the internet for a guide to see what procedure to follow when a computer wasn't working. The first thing it said was to re-check all the cables. I thought 'surely a clever fellow like me hasn't got something so easy like that wrong', but luckily I swallowed my pride and re-checked.

The mistake I made? Because my room is poorly lit, I'd put the on/off plug only on one prong . The computer booted fine.

 

Scariest thing that happened to me: external hdd was on a table, power cable running across the floor. rushed into the room, completely oblivious to the cable. tripped, hdd fell 1m onto tiles. hardware failure, hundreds of lost memories. now all my hdds are on the floor.. and mirrored.

I'm saving this thread. It will help save me from all these mistakes!

 

Either been very lucky if this was your worst moment.

brickshittery worthy moment thats happened: When you put your hand behind your rig to turn off and on the PSU and then an almighty bang and spark. Lucky no injuries sustained, and no hardware aside from the PSU dying, turns out a spider ran into the PSU and shorted it out.

 

most brick worthy moment...

Flashed a 6800GT with a custom bios of mine, which overclocked the card from 325Mhz to 400mhz, then two weeks later after forgetting the stock speed i used software overclocking software to push it to 475Mhz until it BSOD and refused to boot.

Bricks were shat and memories jogged, machine boots blind and i flash the GPU bios back to stock totally via counting keystrokes and panicking until the beautiful beep, flicker of the screen and everything perfectly fine! Win!

3 months later i fit a different waterblock (move from danger den to aquagrafx) and i crush the VRM on the best card i've ever owned!

 

For me it was when I first dabbled in watercooling with a TT Bigwater SE (Not great I know, but this was 6 or so years ago..) and set it up fine, no leaks (even the block top didn't crack) but after a couple of years my machine just started randomly shutting down, sometimes it'd be an hour or so somes times it'd be 20-30 minutes. Ooookay I thought, and proceeded to reseat my RAM and GPU. No change. I worked at a computer repair shop, so I grabbed a new PSU, and replaced mine, while was a real pain in the ass as it was a TT case, still no change. then I touched the pipes, and realised they felt really warm, and checked my CPU temps, which were very high (can't remember what, but it was a pentium D dual core jobby @ 3GHz, so very warm) and realised that the lil pump had failed but the natural convevtion between the block and the rad was cooling the CPU enough to run Rome Total War for a goo 30 minutes!!! That was my last go at watercooling, but I've nearly finisted my new loop, of which nearly everything is second hand from the market place and very cheap

Also one of my best mates had many issues with his last build, 2 Rampage Extremes were DOA, which killed a kit of RAM, the RE's waterblock used odd sized fittings so it pissed out fluid onto the 3rd RE... There was much cursing that day

 

Just a system bug.

Couldn't resist, sorry.

Seems to be a running theme -- using a cheap OEM PSU until new one arrived, fired up a game of GRID with some buddies, about 5 minutes into the game the PSU exploded and a shower of sparks peppered the wall. Awesome light show

About 10 years ago had a stick of SDRAM in a Duron 700, IIRC... powered on, wouldn't post. The stick had caught fire -- it wasn't full blown flames but started as a dot the size of a pinhead on several of the chips and radiated outward in a glowing, burning circle.

I now fear the smell of burning electronics more than Chuck Norris.

 

For me was when I got my old P3, Latest thing at the time and a f***ing water pipe burst in the ceiling and flooded it.

Of course it was buggered

 

Had the CPU cooler fall onto the gfx card leaving a beautiful scratch on my recently purchased 6600 LE (fair while ago). Thankfully the PCI-E Slot wasn't bent. Obviously hadn't attached the cooler correctly, which was annoying.