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

I did the same as you parge mate, screwed up my rampage iii extreme installing a new cpu, bent the bloody pins for the power delivery or something I think D: hence on a chip that I knew only needed around 1.2v to do 4Ghz, then needed 1.38v to do 3.8Ghz, that was a sad face moment, luckily my only one so far, and hopefully for a long long time to come *crosses fingers*

 

thanks guys, this is like geek therapy. I'm feeling better already! Don't think I've ever broken anything before and I hope I won't break anything again....

 

I love these topics

Here's my list (atleast, what I can remember...)

When I was about 11-12 years old (being 26 now) I broke my gameboy... How? I couldnt win at the game I was playing and gave it the ol' headbutt treatment...

Broken numerous keyboards (cheap Cherry ones) by smashing them (this is one of the many reasons why I dont play counterstrike anymore...). Along the same lines, many a mouse went head to head with the wall of my bedroom, fascinating fact: the cheap crap ones can actually take a few hits, whereas, oh lets say, a Razer Lachesis really isnt that sturdy...

Couple years ago bought myself a new computer, when the parts arrived I set to work installing all the hardware, used a flathead screwdriver to set the heatsink in place, slipped, killed the motherboard. After having that replaced I bought a new nVidia 8800GTX, orderd a waterblock for it, killed it by fitting the block using not enough brains and to much muscle.

Managed to "train" our old computer into rebooting everytime you bumped the case (moving your foot and gently hitting it was enough). Highly amusing to have this happen to you when working on a school paper! (and, ofcourse, not having the autosave function enabled)

Wanted to test if an old PSU still worked using the paperclip trick, thinking I had set it correctly (green & black) I fired it up. It wasnt.

When working on a PCB for a running LED thingy, I managed to blow the main fuse of our house (some solder had dripped to far and connected 2 lanes wich really should not have been connected...)

As in the most expensive piece of "hardware" that I've broken? Ah, my car's built in crapotronic GPS system. Wanted to find an adress, after loosing signal every time I came to a large and busy crossing (driving along country roads was fine! But as soon as the system noticed I was in a very busy area with many an option to choose from it would loose signal and leave me in the dark as to where to go...). After cursing and swearing at it, it finally got me in the neighbourhood of where I had to be, only to loose signal once again, at that point, I lost my signal aswell and decided to find out just how good these things are in a fist fight! I won the fight, but in hindsight, the damned thing cost me quite a bit of cash to have it repaired, funny thing is now: I dont use it anymore, got nav software on my iPhone...

Destroyed quite a few cellphones (most of them I broke intentionally tho), same rule as the mouse applies here aswell: the cheap ones can take a hit, the expensive ones, not so much.

As in the latest bit of "hardware" that I've broken: I have a Silverstone RV02-E White, with a lovely side window, about an hour ago, one of my CCFL's came loose and I went to work setting it back, took the sidepanel off, set it next to my desk, stood up, knocked over the sidepanel and scuffed the sidewindow... the edges arround the rivets are a bit cracked now aswell. I'm actually quite annoyed by this, will probably take out the window and set a new one myself...

Come to think of it, maybe I should'nt be near hardware...

 

Your name is quite fitting isn't it?

 

Had a molex connector wired backwards to run a fan at 5v. Used the same connector to hook up two brand new 2TB drives back when they were actually worth money. Needless to say the logic boards don't like having more than twice the voltage they were meant for....

Passive cooled FX5500, turns out they don't like Australian summers very much....

And most recently screen on a iPhone 3GS due to a headbutting. Good thing that with a bit of know how can be fixed rather cheaply...

 

I bought a couple of used HD5770 fitted with EK water blocks. One failed almost immediately although I did get a new RMA replacement through the seller (non-reference so useless for a water block). A couple of months later the other one failed and I ended up buying a good used one from the marketplace.

It was only when I came to switch the blocks that I realised the seller hadn't use thermal pads on all the vrm's. The installation pictures supplied with the blocks aren't very clear so I hadn't spotted that myself. It's only when I downloaded the PDF guides that have the pictures in colour that I realised and that the vrm's on both failed cards had probably overheated constantly and over time eventually failed.

 

Wow. I remember getting those metal shims to protect my MPs.

 

I'm always careful with hardware and haven't broken anything important unintentionally. Though I did once break my gaming mouse by cleaning it with acetate causing it's internal workings to dissolve making the thing useless. but their have been plenty of times when I ALLCAPS RAGED and broke stuff out of pure anger. For example.

• My asus DX soundcard went thru the wall when it kept picking up interference from the gpu and nothing I did could make it stop.
• Smashed a pair of sharkoon headphones to bits and then tossed the peices away when it started outputting background static
• And this is going to sound incredibly boneheaded, but when I was about 15 I bought a psp with my own savings, after I bought it I kept on getting nonstop 24/7 grief from my parents saying that I was ruining my life with mind degenerating video games ect ect. After a month of it I finally lost it and said something along the lines of "FINE YOU DON'T WANT ME PLAYING MY PSP, THEN I WON'T AND NEVER WILL and proceeded to toss it out of the window (we live on the 4th floor)

 

I broke my finger once during a repairal of a pc. Also broke the corner of a mobo, but it still works.

 

Can't say that I've thought about that to be fair, but now that you mention it...

Yes, seems quite fitting, doesn't it?

 

Killed a evga 7800gt while switching coolers. One of the ram heatsinks took the chip with it when popped off. Kill a hard drive after sleeving a PSU by having 12v and 5v switched. Kill a mobo by not testing a watercooling loop and the cpu waterblock leak on the live board

 

Broke a 775socket Bloodrage Mobo, The non conductive fluids I was using in my wet set up ended up being not so non conductive and a LaingD5 Vario Pump just keeps pushing that stuff about until it has nothing to pump ... bugger

glad I booted in the garage, easier to mop up

 

Bindi seems mysteriously absent from this thread. I would have counted on him explaining that thing with the GTX480 and the dremel...

 

Yeah I had those. Fat lot of good they were.

 

Broke an old pentium trying to remove the stock heatsink that was welded onto the heat spreader due to not being powered off for 2 years. Heatspreader came off with the heatsink and cracked the actual CPU.

My Mrs broke the kids Wii after deciding the disc wasn't going into the machine because she wasn't pushing it hard enough. There was already a disc in there (to be fair she still managed to get the second disc in it lol).