Other Scariest thing thats happened with you and hardware?

I had a cheapo PSU that, when turned on, blew a few sparks then smoked a bit.

 

When my PSU went out with a nice big blue bang and the following smoke. Not good times, it felt like Russian Roulette trying to find out if anything else had gone with it.

 

I had a brand new 17" CRT (when they wer state of the art) go "BANG-*smoke*" on me the first time I connected it.

 

Borrowed a GFX molex power connector from a friend, when I he put it back in his PC and turned it on we smelt a horrible burning smell, looked down under the table where his tower was full of smoke to the point where we couldn't see anything through his side panel. Took off the side panel of his case and saw that this molex had burnt almost all the way up to his PSU. We cut off the cable and taped it with electrical tape. Bricks were idd shat at that point.

Another incident I had was with a Reconditioned Hiper PSU I was sent as a replacement to the original. The fan started making a clicking noise and whilst the PSU was running I had a poke at the fan with a screwdriver trying to align it better. I pushed a little too hard and tripped all the fuses in my house and killed my PSU. I actually scared myself quite a bit :/

Lastly, about 2 months into my iPhone 3GS contract I felt like giving my phone a clean with some Cyberclean. Pushed it into where the charging port goes at the bottom of the phone to get rid of the dust. Tried turning it on and it wouldn't start. Started getting extremely worried that I'd just bricked my almost new phone. Had the wow authenticator on there too (when I still pld WoW) so couldn't login. Eventually I got Blizzard to remove the authenticator and I logged into WoW, told some guildies what had happened and one suggested to try and hard boot it by holding down the power button and the home button. It loaded and I cleaned myself up ^^

 

Reassemling my rig recently and having none of my 6 HDDs show up. Turns out I'd forgotten to reconnect the SATA cables.

 

Thats massively dangerous...

 

Two bad experiences.

#1 Building a PC. spent loads on a "Silent PSU" an old akasa one i believe. Came set at 110v not 240v (little red switch) didn't bother checking this, plug in and switched on "Boom, smoke, cough, flee room"

#2. House got hit by lightening, (Was using Wireless mouse/keyboard combination) needless to say I **** myself. Was playing a damn good game of Counterstrike too. Regardless, that PC never turned back on.

 

Stripped down my loop to clean it. Re-assembled and then started filling with water. I thought it seemed to be taking a lot then noticed that it was pouring out of the Heatkiller. I'd forgotten to put the o rings back in.

 

put my pc on its side to clean out the dust and when i put it upright again I heard something rattle. I coulding't find any screwes so i plugged it back in and turned it on........

BOOOOM! and a great big white flash.

PSU dead luckly nothing els fried. Since then I hate bottom mounting PSUs with a passion 80 quid out the window because some one thought it would be a good Idea to put them at the bottom of a case instead of the top where they used to be!!!!!

It was not broken why did you "FIX IT"???

 

I was replacing the standard heat-sync for a corsair hydro h50....so i flip up the lever and gave the heat-sync a pull and the TIM wouldn't let go so i gave it a bigger pull and yanked the cpu out the socket with the socket locked and bent 2 pins....pushed them back with a precision screwdriver with a non magnetic head and it works ....but i got a scare because some of the parts whers still in the post i didn't know if i had to fork out £80 to get another CPU :S....


ALWAYS TWIST THE HEAT-SYNC OFF!

 

Not wanting to sound pedantic, but its heatsink...

 

First ever 'proper' build - assembled from parts with a friend, double- and triple- checked every wire in the case - pressed go...

...nothing.

Several minutes of distilled terror later it transpired I had neglected to plug it in.

 

forgetting to change the lead on my multimeter when testing a mains lead.

it was in the 10amp load socket, i was tired, and BANG blue flash black smoke, and scared shitless shop customers and staff, nearly had to change my pants.

 

When I built my first ever computer, putting all the parts together, hit the on switch to get a constant 'beep beep beep beep' really loudly, no picture. After a few more attempts we figured out that the ram was in the wrong slots. Fixed that, hit the on switch *no picture*.

Another hour or so of panicked google-ing uncovered that MSI (geniuses that they are) had set the default display output to the AGP slot on the motherboard, not the shiny new PCI-E slot. It took a day before i found someone who had an AGP card going spare for me to use to switch the bios settings over. Fun times.

I may be posting back in this thread over the coming months, after my new build

 

First instance My first computer:
Magnetic Philips head vs my System drive...Screwdriver 1 hard drive and all its data 0.

Second instance, OCZ Modular PSU 600w:
Died with a bang and a puff of smoke, luckily didnt take anything with it : ) Although OCZ refused to replace it : /

Third instance, the 8800 and the broken TV:
Decided to use my 32'' TV as a secondary for watching films etc, used a DVI to HDMI addaptor (Supplied with the card) to hook my TV up. Extended the desktop, and insainly loud bang. I had forgoten to instal the SPDIF cable from the card to the board and as a result...bye bye speekers on my nice shiney new 32" er : (

 

Turned around quickly while holding a screwdriver and somehow accidentally poked it through the fan hole on the back of my live PSU...

Next thing I remember was being on the other side of the room

 

Again, lucky to not be dead... Do people not realise how dangerous PSU's are?

 

Achieved

 

Liking this thread, it's been a very enjoyable read!

I've had a couple of frights, one being an utter disaster.

1. My head (The one with my mouth and nose) being about 6 inches away from my PSU when it turned into an airbomb. I felt like i'd been in a Slipknot concert for a few hours afterwards. Very few people have experienced this at close proximity but I can only liken it to a firework going off in your face. Bad times.

2. Overclocking my poor Creative GeForce 5900 Ultra back in 2004 which resulted in a fried GPU. I've never felt so sorry for myself in all my life.

 

Next time let the PC run for ten minutes, it'll soften the gludge up and it'll come off no trouble.