xisintheend

I fried 2 power supply units and 2 HDD from a bad wall socket in 2 months. Thankfully everything was under warranty and I was able to get them replaced. I finally figured out it was the 99 cent cheap socket that was installed by the electrician when the place was built, which was all burnt up inside when I went to replace it and crumbled into piece as soon as I took it out! Thank god my house didn't fry.

Russkiy

This makes me want to check my outlets... good stuff! What does ФК STAND FOR?

GoTMaXPoWeR

I think I've posted this before somewhere, but here goes;

The computer downstairs is an ugly thing. It's a mini tower, and it's a slight bit bigger than my Antec 900. As an attempt to make it less of an eyesore, I "had a go at" putting the components of that computer inside my old Packard Bell. Half way through I thought to myself, 'these two computers are of similar spec anyway, so why dont I just swap the HDD's', so I did. Took the HDD out of the mini tower and placed it in the Packard Bell. It wouldn't start, GPU issues. I couldn't get it working, so I put the HDD back in the mini tower and booted up. It made a bunch of long beeps and the monitor displayed no input. At this point I was literally crapping my pants, didn't know what the problem was at all, so I turned the computer off and went upstairs to do some Googling. As I went to boot up my computer, my parents got home and I was pretty worried. The second I found a solution, I ran downstairs and my mum was stood infront of the computer looking at it as if it just jumped up and bit her. It was making the same odd noises it did before, and my Mum immediately knew I'd done something wrong.

I had to pay the £50 to get the computer fixed.

That's one of the only times I've had something bad go wrong. It happened about 8 months ago.

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Audio Rig - Z-5500's, X-Fi XtremeGamer, FB2K

Wishlist - A working PSP! D:

theGourd

The case I'm using now had issues fitting PCI cards correctly in my old Mobo. It wasn't mounted exactly right, so when I'd screw the card down in the back, they would start to pull the copper out of the PCI slot. So for a while my SB Audigy gamer wasn't screwed into the case. This wasn't a problem until I unseated it plugging my speakers in. Dead SB card, dead PCI slot. The mobo would still work oddly enough... until I later blew up the PSU anyhow. Haven't had the guts to test the rest of the parts from that build yet.

dirtydozza

On my first build I was kind of learning as I went I knew it wasn’t that hard to build a pc but did not know exactly what I was doing (google was my friend) everything went ok till I turned it on and was an instant burning smell. However it posted and could access the BIOS everything seemed fine at first but on closer inspection it was showing no HDD and no DVD. It turned out I had misread the PSU instruction manual* (all pictures no actual words) with the sata power connecters I had the HDD and the DVD on the same power connector and fried them both. Thankfully the shop I bought them from replaced them both after checking my PSU and wiring (which was rectified by the time they saw it) and I even ended up with a 320gb instead of a 250gb because they did not have any more of the 250’s. so all in all it turned out ok I had a bigger HDD and had learnt a valuable lesson

cs_maan

Had a similar experience, where the case and the sound card wouldn't align properly so when I screwed it in, the card would cause my PC to restart and restart and restart until I messed up the PCI slot, which I don't think works any longer. Took it out and it worked perfectly fine so no sound card for me...good thing this was on a dying mobo anyways and it was old too.

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smash_mouth01

ooo I have a beauty when i first bought my 4850 ($275 au) I couldn't wait to get it home I had read that it only required a 450 W psu so I thought sweet , So put it in and booted the ol girl up
and ran ETWQ and then 5 min in the comp rebooted I was like *** so I had another crack it did it again.
So stupid me did another round of ETQW this time I could smell some thing and the crack pow a spark here and there and a bit of smoke and that was it.............nothing (crap my partner will kill me I thought).
With nothing left to do I buy a new 1200w psu ($160 au) took that home and set it up and still nothing...crap crap crap I was thinking I hoped to high heaven that it wasn't the GPU I had just bought, so I head back into the comp store and said she still doesn't go and it's my work comp can you fix it I ask , Don replied I'll get right on it.

So I just headed to Mc donalds for a wrap and waited for the dreaded phone call, an hour later I received the call "it's the mobo " Don said...I asked him was the graphics card still good he goes "yes it's fine but can you pick up your comp the guys are playing ETQW on it" what I didn't realize is that i left my copy of ETQW in the dvd drive lol.

So thats my story of my most expensive graphics card I'd purchased.

gpu : $275
psu: $160
mobo:$70
labor :$25
total :$530 au

But when I got the old board back I had a look and there where brown markings around all the ferrite chokes lol

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XCrossXFire ClubX

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=791458

http://www.speedtest.net/rank/3419426015.png

Russkiy

yo Neighbor!!!

Sake

I wish I did too, but I'm not quite sure.
I may or may NOT have fried my first mobo. (in my sig). I forgot to put the mounting screws in (first build, the other 2 i'd built had them already in, i took em apart and put back together) and nothing would happen, no light, no nothing So I missed out on using my desktop @ my friends Lan Party.
Good news is it was RMA'ed and got a new 1

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.: ATI HD4800 series club :.

!!~AMD Phenom II X3 700 Series OC Club~!!

xBISHOPx

The first time I ever tried to fix a computer I told my friend that I would take his and make it a bit faster by installing some ram, reformatting his HDD and doing a fresh install of XP. I had ordered another 512 stick of ddr ram but I had another stick of 512 ddr2 from another computer that couldn't use it. I figured that while I wait for the other stick to arrive I would try that... I just read up on how to install ram and while I was installing it I just couldn't get it to clip in. I remember a part when it said "Some force maybe necessary" so, erm, I made it fit . After thinking "Well that was harder then it should be" I went ahead and plugged it in and powered it up only to hear a loud buzzing noise and the smell of burning plastic . I immediately unplugged it and removed the stick and tried it again, nothing would display. I had a cold feeling in my gut because I just realized I ruined my friends computer and had to call him to tell him, it wasn't a very good/ long conversation .

I had another bad experience with my first computer I've ever owned, I had a PSU with a bad fan, after a few month of using it the fan started to make an annoying noise so I had to keep it off when I wasn't using it. At the time my brother was working with a party supply store and one of the ladies that dealt with the customers had a son who had two (HP/ Dell) computers with no HDDs that he didn't want so my brother took them off her hands. I figured I would just take one of the two PSUs out of the two scrap computers and replace my own, after spending a bit changing it out I went ahead and tried to turn it on only to see a spark and hear the PSU turn off. I figured the PSU crapped out since it was some piece of crap 400 watt one and decided to put my old one back in until I buy a new one. After turning it on with absolutely no response from my computer I started to panic, after all it was my first one. I took it to a repair shop and found out the the mobo was fried . Only good thing that came out of it was that I was able to get an even better one after a few months.

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