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

Robots are fantastic. They seem to be able to turn-out top-drawer slapstick without any programming whatsoever.

Your post about volt modding a P4C800 brought back fond memories. I had a P4C800-Deluxe and put it under the 'iron too (vdroop mod). I've still got it somewhere, mod still in place. Happy days.

 

Frying 2 not-cheap supermicro motherboards by not checking the position of the unused mounts which short circuited solder points on the underside. 2 years apart so had completely forgotten the first experience. Had to just laugh at how stupid I am sometimes.

 

I had a Cyrix CPU. Definitely counts.

 

I just allowed AMD Crimson to do an auto update. Now my PC has no display drivers at all... apparently.

Does that count?

Putting a cheap, unbranded light up '600Watt' PSU into my only PC circa 2006.

Phut!.... sizzle

 

240 volts into a 110 volt PSU? Check. Magic smoke escaped? Check. Nearly knocked out as my head was under a shelf when I switched it on? Check!

Bought my current board and CPU as a pre-assembled bundle with the intention of removing the stock cooler as soon as I got it. I didn't know that they'y used thermal cement so when I went to remove the HSF I yanked the CPU (FX 8350) out of the socket bending a large number of pins. 90 minutes, a needle and a large magnifier straightening the pins.

Standard build routine, blood sacrifice and oath to the gods of tech before a system will boot. Still works that way with servers now, we keep suggesting a user sacrifice instead but management won't go for it.

Yup, likewise. It lasted a few years with some "interesting" features as when I installed it and got everything running I went to put the casing on the system, old U shaped outer piece, one corner of which went between the motherboard tray and the PCB, sliced through the insulation and shorted the motherboard. It had an onboard GPU which was mostly trashed by that but the rest of it lasted a while.

486 SX2 80, I still have it, it still works (for a given value of "works", obviously!)

 

We have all done that!

 

I did this with an older PSU that had a 115-230v switch on the back. This was a long time ago before I had any working knowledge of electronics, and after setting the switch to 115v I powered up the PC and instantly fried everything in it. Took a while to dawn on me what I had done... I had to use my sister's laptop for a week.

I've made the common rookie mistake "forgot to plug in the graphics card auxiliary power" before and scratched my head for quite some time wondering why there's no video output.

All of my major blunders have been from modding and building things rather than actual PC building (I learn fast). My biggest blunder was when experimenting with voltages for reducing fan speeds. I stripped the ends of a SATA power cable so that I had instant access to 3.3v, 5v and 12v all at once. Sadly, the 3.3v and 5v wires touched when the PC was powered up, and I fried the motherboard. RIP Foxconn Bloodrage, my first ever X58 board. (Miraculously, the PSU survived and I still use it in my main rig.)

Another similarly stupid (but thankfully not quite so damning) incident was when I had soldered up a fan controller and needed to trim the component terminals on the back of the stripboard. I decided to do this when the PC was running, and I wondered for a second why there were so many sparks as I started to snip away... oops.

The only other thing I can think of was when I first got a Rampage III Extreme not realising the E-ATX format, and when I installed it in my case I couldn't get the rig to power up. Naturally I thought I'd been sold a dud, but I was soon eating humble pie when I realised that the back of the board was making contact with part of the metal interior of my case. D'oh.

These days I'm more sensible. I never test projects in my main rig and only connect things to my PSU when I know for certain there is no danger of shorting or other unpleasantries.

 

GPU bios modding days, oh boy...

FX 6800GT bios modded to Ultra speeds, 6 months pass totally forgetting this speed increase so up it another 50MHz Core, and 100MHz vram only to brick the card. Luckily you can "blind" force an updated bios rom back into the card which saved it.

Advance 2 months to install a aquacomputer full cover waterblock,

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Missed the VRM spacers and crushed them to f***. Totally dead beyond all hope.

Killed more nforce4 (Asus/DFI) motherboards than I can remember, and briefly owned a EVGA 680i motherboard which was the death nail for Nvidia and motherboard chipsets.

Also in the club of "lets switch the PSU to 110V" to see what happens, PSU was from a scrap PII compaq, but what is more interesting it switching back to 240V and applying power again. HOLY F**K BALLS!

 

Forgot to install the standoffs when mounting the motherboard to the tray. Shorted the motherboard.

Went out the next day and bought another mobo. Did the exact same thing

 

1) Decided to give lapping a go back in the days of owning an i7 920 (damn I loved that chip). Put it back in PC, having to take the mobo out to be able to do so. PC didn't start. Spent afternoon massively depressed and almost bought a new chip, before going for a final look over just in case. Turned out that I'd only put the power on switch connector over one of the pins .

2) Using a screwdriver to try and push the PCIe lock 'thing' so I could lock a GPU in place - with the PSU still on. Massive spark. Had to reboot a few times but system recovered, thank God!

3) Sort of a weird one: bought an M.2 drive for HTPC build over a year ago. Did not read up on specs such as SATA versus PCIe requirements as I assumed they all followed the same standard. Complete blind luck that the M.2 matched the mobo M.2 slot and worked .

Probably got a few others I can't remember at the moment.

 

Awesome-ness.

 

I've been building PCs for probably about 8+ years now. I only discovered last weekend that you could actually deactivate SATA ports through the BIOS rather than physically disconnecting them (important if you're anal like me and like to have particular drives designated as certain letters). This would have saved much effort.

 

Found a PSU in a salvaged PC that had that switch......I was so tempted but I remember the pooping myself when I last did it

 

In Windows you can actually use Disk Management (windows tool) to change the assigned letters for drives.

My biggest mistake was with my first PC build at 13 years of age. Installed everything, tried to boot it but the fans wouldn't even spin up.
I spent a few days puzzled about why it wouldn't work, until my dads friend who built PCs had a look.

I'd forgotten to install the mobo standoffs. In this case, my ASUS motherboard (it was the premium model) survived the experience. It was still working 10 years on when I gave it to a friend for "Linux purposes". I think that whole experience gave me a bit of respect for Asus mobos which I haven't had with any other yet.

 

Here's one from me, from last week but only just realised.

The tiny PWM extension cable that I dug out of stores and used to connect one of my radiator fans to the mobo isn't an extension lead after all (the length sould have been a giveaway but I was rushing and it was the only "PWM extension I could find...). It came with my old Titan Fenrir and has a tiny inline resistor (hidden by the sleeving) to allow users without mobo PWM connectors to run the Fenrir's fan at a reduced speed on a 3 pin connector.

Therefore I should see an improvement on the already excellent CPU temps when I connect the fans properly. Marvellous.

 

Yeah, but sometimes it can refuse to have the drive designation I want.

I now use ASUS boards exclusively as they're second to none IMHO. The driver support is amazing as well.

 

I once was building a PC for someone and was about to RMA a CPU as it wouldn't boot with it. I forgot to plug in the 12v CPU power feed.

 

Dumbest thing I've done?
Poke around a CRT with a screwdriver. It goes "boom" and sends the screwdriver flying.

Dumbest thing I have seen: an A+ student forcing a DDR dimm in the wrong way around. You know those things that are there to ensure it only goes in one way? Well - they were broken off by this muppet.

Strangest thing I experienced?
The AMD Thunderbird 1300's melting heatsinks reliably.

 

Brought a no brand psu for a desktop PC my sister was using for general usage. 500 watt thing for a 100 watt PC. This was from PC world back in the day.

The psu exploded quiet well about a week after install. Serves me right for buying the cheap PC world. She complained to them and they give her a new PC. So all ended well on that occasion.

I've forgot to connect the pump on my watercool loop a few times then wondered why temps were so high for a few hours. Forgot about the 4 pin CPU lead ( who hasn't lol ) and the gpu power leads also.

Used a lot of gaffer tape in the last few years to stick SSDs to the case probably not recommend no issues though.

 

I dropped a screwdriver onto the socket of an old X58 board. I was already having issues with it, and needless to say, that didn't help.