LOL Stupidest things you've done, or seen, when building PCs

So how many of you have gone full 'tard building a PC? Or seen someone else do something so upsetting you questioned their sanity?

Medium 'tard:
- Once covered the entire CPU top in thermal paste. (who hasnt?)
- Had a Taisol 760 fall off my Athlon XP overnight, landing on my graphics card. Turned on the PC and wondered why it kept locking up over and over again until I discovered the CPU was sans-heatsink (FYI Taisol still exist!)
- Bought a PC Chips motherboard

Full 'tard:
- Attempted to add more graphite to a pencil-mod an ATI 9800 Le while it was still running, shorting the card.

Beyond maximum 'tard:
- Attempted to remove a heatsink from a brand new GTX 480 - one of the only press samples in the country - and instead drilled through the card. Nvidia still hasn't forgiven me.
- Took the cover off a PSU to mod the fan, then accidentally put my hand in while it was plugged in. Couldn't move my arm for several minutes.

 

"Once covered the entire CPU top in thermal paste. (who hasnt?)"

Does that make ma a medium 'tard? I spread a thin layer over the IHS every single time I install a heatsink.

I've also shocked myself like that in a similar way before, but not with a PSU. I forgot that I had it plugged in and started probing ... nothing like a 240v shock to the arm to remind you to unplug things!

 

No this was before IHS when you had the cores exposed. I covered the ceramic plate too.

 

I once removed a slot mounted P3-450 with a screwdriver because I forgot it had release clips

 

I used a screwdriver to fit an old Athlon XP heatsink back in the day.
Naturally it slipped and gouged a layer out of the board.

Was so relieved when it booted and I didn't have to replace the board, especially considering it wasn't mine....

 

- After many successful volt mods on my own kit, said okay to doing a motherboard (Asus P4C800 to be specific) for a mate. Bricked it... awkward.

- I'm almost sure I've also bought a PC Chips motherboard.

- Mounted a block to a Opteron 165, wondered why temps were insane, even at stock. Went to re-apply TIM and re-seat and it was pulled crooked by the tubing to the extent it wasn't even making contact with the core - fortunately, I probably would have chipped it otherwise.

I can't recall any more, yet I'm almost certain there are at least a hundred.

 

AMD 939 socket CPU, didn't line the pins up, thought id clamped it in then put the heatsink on. Many many bent pins

 

Ouch.

That reminds me of another one. My first "high end" PC of my very own when I went off to uni. The P4 1.8A arrived with a fair few bent pins on one side. Instead of sending it back for a replacement like I should have done, I was impatient and decided to bend them back very carefully, and naturally broke one of them clean off. Fortunately everything still worked.

 

Dumbest thing i ever done was flick that switch on the back of the PSU to 110v, I'm not sure to this day what was going through my mind.

 

I think I've blocked out most of my fails, because I can't think of too many PC building instances.

I've done the usual crap like waste 3 hours because of a crossover cable back in the day.

I recently neglected to remove the polythene cover from the contact plate on an AIO and couldn't figure out why the temps were so sh!te, and I did drop a microfibre cloth onto an open CPU socket, with the obvious results when I yanked it away. It took me bloody hours to straighten all those pins.

Oh I bought a Geforce FX5600 GPU once - that must count as monumentally stupid.

 

Built a machine for a friend, all went swimingly.

Mentioned a friend had sold him a HD and was not showing full capacity, used Fdisk to re partition it.

Except I deleted the partition on the main system drive and wiped the lot. Many lost photos and general important docs of family members. Still gies me a bit of a cold sweat thinking bout it!

Killed the odd bit of hardware but nothing too ££ luckily.

Guess that's not so bad in over 15 years of fiddling unless think of something else terrible.

Oh my one and only time bending a pin in a socket was of a very £££ Asrock Z87 Formula OC that was absolutely epic. Mended it but it wasn't cosmetically perfect, resold for what I paid for it but is still guting.

 

Did something similar; I got a new HDD for the system drive, installed it and booted it straight to install windows a-fresh; selected a HDD and hit format and install. Immediate panic as noticed on the summary it was formatting the old drive not the new one; literally pulled the power cord out the back :S

Turns out I hadn't fully plugged in the molex power plug onto the new HDD

Luickily pulling the plug didn't fry anything, and I managed to recover the contents of the drive, but man that was sweaty palms/sh*tting bricks as I installed windows, booted up, installed the recovery software and ran it.

 

The biggest fail that sticks in my mind wasn't when building a PC, but off-loading a big, fully populated server cabinet that we'd built to take to an IT trade fair we were exhibiting at.

We took it there on a single axle trailer and were running a bit late so my colleague and I were rushing things and didn't think the off-load through quite well enough: (Cue the Keystone Cops...)

- unhitched trailer, pushed it nearer the building entrance and put it down on its jockey wheel.
- on the trailer, I rocked the cab back slightly while my colleague slid a hand trolley underneath, and we both moved together towards the back of the trailer - him wheeling the trolley and me steadying the cab.
- all of a sudden we reach the tipping point of balance, the trailer see-saws and my colleague ends up running down the path, desperately holding on to thousands of pounds worth of runaway cab.

I laughed so much I nearly died.

 

Tried removing the CMOS battery whilst PC was upright and on, it landed on my GFX card, sparked, fried the mobo and the PCIex slot

 

That reminds me of two such similar moments, fortunately neither being down to my actions.

- An engineer just finished installing a 8 frame IBM TS3500 (tape library, 7 figure price tag) and switched it on. First step the robot does a sweep of the whole library to make sure it has a free range of movement. It turns out that the bumper on the end of the rail wasn't quite secure and it came crashing through the end panel of the library onto the floor. This being a dual-robot model, the second robot wandered down to the to find out what happened and came crashing out after it. Best.

- As a close second, a Hitachi USPV (storage array, another 7 figure price tag) crashing through the floor in a datacentre on delivery. Load limits of this particular section of floor were known not to be up to it, but hey, it should be fine, right? Oops.

 

I forgot to put the I/O shield in before installing the motherboard and making good progress on the build. Doh! Not too bad but I haven't been building PCs as long as many here or from as young an age. So there's plenty of time yet.

The worst thing I've seen was Jayztwocents drilling holes in his motherboard to mount a waterblock

Funnily enough I can't find the video.

 

Switched off PC and unplugged from wall socket to replace a GPU, removed GPU and fitted a new one. Completely forgot I had a UPS, still connected and silently delivering power (I'd disabled sound notifications). Trashed both cards but the motherboard survived.

 

Just last week, i forgot to remove the plastic "warning label" on bottom of the cpu heatsink.

 

I made that mistake, I knew sod-all about graphics cards in those days. Soon got sent back when I discovered it was slower than the card I bought it to replace.