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

I think you've miscategorised this one - should probably be under "Beyond maximum"

 

Oh the things I saw working in a repair shop would make your hair curl !

One day some guy came in saying his rig was dead and he couldn't figure out why. It was a Celeron 300A that he had overclocked using the jumpers. Any way, when I took the side off I could see a lovely Geforce card so he had money.. Then I looked closer and saw that the motherboard was held in with bin twisty ties. You know? those metal ones covered in plastic?

How it had lasted as long as it had was a mystery... Needless to say though it was indeed as dead as a doornail.

Most of the time it would be something stupid like putting a mobo post in the wrong place etc.

Another classic was this guy who lived locally. He bought a CD burner from us (back when they were premium kit) and asked how easy it was to fit. We told him it was simple if he followed the instructions and so off he went.

The next day he came back with his rig and it absolutely stunk to high heaven. I mean like back of your throat here. When I took the side off the IDE cable was literally burnt to a skeleton. Like, all of the plastic sheath on it had completely fried. I continued to look closer and then I saw it, a black and white cable with a small plug on it going straight from the PSU onto the back of the CDRW's jumper. He had put a 12v fan cable over the slave jumper.

Miraculously nearly everything survived apart from the CDRW. Even the IDE port had buckled under the heat. He said he was the type to "connect everything up" so I guess he saw this fan power cable and thought it must go somewhere. Nutter ! £150 for a new CDRW and £65 in fees.

Personally speaking yeah, I've had a few mishaps myself. Mostly involving breaking fans by accidentally sticking a finger in whilst they are spinning or a screwdriver or what not.

 

Making up braided power cables, mixed the 5v and 12v lines, fried a brand new HDD (luckily there was no data on it?).

Dropped a screw on a running motherboard, the PC rebooted but there was no damage.

Repeatedly shocked myself on a watercooling PSU as I was adamant the power to it was switched off, it turns out I had wired into it before the switch so it was live regardless of the position. I only started to accept that it must be live when a screwdriver over the terminals was getting big blue sparks.

Spent hours troubleshooting a PC that wouldn't boot, when the 4 pin motherboard power was unplugged.

Thought I could achieve wireless internet (before 802.11 was a thing) using infra-red adaptors.

Did anyone else slice their fingers to ribbons on the cheapest steel cases going?

 

That's not stupidity. It was a rite of passage!

 

Reminds me of a derp moment I forgot, decided to put a quiet cooler on my 9800XT, cleaned the TIM off with... water yeah broke that one good! Still no idea why I did that.

 

Stupidest thing I did - that I can remember: Forgetting to clamp a heatsink down on to an early Athlon (the early exposed core variety) and wondering why magic smoke filled the air when I powered up the board. I claimed ignorance and we just sent it back to the supplier as DOA (honest guv...).

I also cracked the core on a customer's system that they'd brought in for test; we replaced it free of charge of course, I heard about that one for weeks.

Stupidest things I've seen however.... Working in a computer shop ~16 years ago meant I saw a lot of dumb stuff...

• A customer pointing the LED of an optical mouse at the monitor, waving it in the air (instead of putting it on the desk), and claiming it doesn't work.
• Being accused of racism because I told someone that it looked like a sugary drink had been poured into his computer and that's why it's not booting (he literally pulled the "it's because I'm black, isn't it?" card when I told him the repair cost).
• Power supplies flicked to 110v and returned full of charred innards.
• I've even seen the near-mythical CD trays used as cup holders (or, pint glass holders in this case).

Far more than I can remember now...

EDIT: Just remembered this one: the oddest thing I saw was a CD explode in a CDROM drive. Booted up a freshly repaired PC in front of the customer to demonstrate that it was working, and decided to fire up the disc loaded in the drive (some godawful Sonic game). Starts whirring up as normal, gets a bit louder, then there's a bang and suddenly the noise stops. I've never yanked out a power cable faster. Still in the front of the store with the customer I pulled the case off and managed to extract the deformed CDROM drive. After using the emergency eject little shards of exploded CD fell out of the drive. I'd heard of CDs "exploding" in CDROM drives since this happened (an early Mythbusters episode covered it) but this was the only time I ever saw it, and if it hadn't happened right in front of me then I wouldn't believe it.

 

* Was bleeding my WC setup - opened a valve on radiator and after couple seconds I hear water dripping (this was on fully powered and working system). Turns out I forgot to close the reservoir.... At least it washed out all the dust from the bottom of the case ..

* DDC pump electronics fried (came back home to boiling PC, overpressure valves are important, mkay), changed the controller, assembled the whole WC, turn the system on - plume of magic smoke out of pump. Mixed the polarity... Disassemble everything, resolder the driver ic, reassemble - it works. Tidying up, bleeding the loop and occidentally disconnect pump power supply. Result - dead pump, again (best guess is because pump had a second header for PWM control, it acted as ground path while supply connector disconnected ground-first).

*My first D5 pump with PWM. Was testing the loop. Everything fitted, power up the pump - it barely moves. Fast forward 3 hours of trying to find a fault, loop rebuilding etc. Turns out manufacturer does not follow ATX spec and then left floating the pump spins at lowest setting...

*Dunno if qualifies as stupid, but - working on PC, suddenly college looks at me, gasps and rushes off. I look down - blood everywhere, 2/3 of a nail is missing, not to mentions other gashes on my forearm. PC cases are a major hazard.

 

Eee there were no rolled edges in my day !

 

I DID manage that once, connecting a Psion 5mx to my Nokia 6310 over IR for dial-up internet.

 

Yep, sliced fingers from beige cases, until I bought a Globalwin 402, then CM 201.

It worked fine with K6-2!

To video it as well? Beyond max 'tard.

 

Thank f*** I'm not the only one, I was young (high school) but not young enough I think it was just for a let's see what happens when you flick this job

When it blew, even at that age, I felt like I would have deserved being shocked to a Darwin award for it.

Aside from one bent pin on an old cpu I can't think of any others.

 

had a few but latest was when i changed a corsair hx850 out of my system for a evga GQ 650, i
thought for quickness just leave hdd cables in as both are modular and were all pinned in.
So for the next hour pulling my system apart as it wouldnt boot realised the pins on hdd cables are in a diffrent pattern to evga ones

 

Bricked a Dfi motherboard with a BIOS flash, got an Rma, bricked the new one the same way 5 days later.

In fairness I think it was more down to their crappy flash tool.

 

He didn't drill through the board. He drilled the X99 mounting holes to widen them slightly to allow his bolts to fit, if I remember rightly.

 

Smart move would have been to use 0.5mm thinner bolts. ie 4mm->3.5mm

 

Nah he drilled through the board and killed it because it had traces in the PCB.

 

I didn't watch the whole thing but he starts talking about why he did it here: https://youtu.be/67glAjdvwLc?t=497. Go here for the money shot https://youtu.be/67glAjdvwLc?t=633.

From what I gather: the board didn't have mounting holes that go straight through, and he wanted mounting holes that go straight through the board. Hence, drill.

That guy's channel keeps popping up in my recommendations on YouTube. Definitely going to avoid the muppet's videos now. You DO NOT drill through a PCB - ANY PCB, let alone an X99 motherboard FFS - unless you either want to kill it or you have the schematic and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is nothing there. Even disrupting a ground or power plane could have serious implications on a design as complex as a motherboard.

 

I've done that a few times back in the day with old heatsink clips. Always without any lasting damage thankfully.

 

There was a great one on OCUK recently where a guy filed two round cutouts into his GPU so the pipes could clear the PCB. He didn't realise there were traces inside the PCB, oops.

 

In chronological order (and some similar ones to others)

- Decided to upgrade the HSF on my Athlon XP1800, I had read you required solvent to clean the CPU (probably in early issues of CustomPC!) so decided that Lynx Africa was a suitable solvent. I cleaned the CPU and fitted new HSF. Seemed to be dead. Removed HSF and in a moment of complete 'tard I powered it up. Definitely dead.

- Upgrade full system and decided to tidy/clean old system before selling it. Came in drunk and decided to refit HSF on an Athlon XP3200, slipped with the screw driver gouged the motherboard and killed the system

- Bricked a router I bought on the marketplace here within 5 minutes of turning it on, I may have turned it off during the firmware update? Managed to get a replacement under warranty.

- Took an old 17" TFT to the recycling centre cos it wouldnt turn on. Turns out it was a duff power cable.......

I'm sure there are more