[BrovoTheta]

Hello, Out of Curiosity. What are some rookie mistakes you have made that fried your pc?

 

[rxl-gaming]

Not evening joking about 3 months ago i literally turned off my pc and when i turned it on the next day my Rampage V Extreme died and so did my 5930k

 

[MightEMatt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rxl-gaming

Not evening joking about 3 months ago i literally turned off my pc and when i turned it on the next day my Rampage V Extreme died and so did my 5930k

Ah, classic example of trying to actually use your PC for things. Easy mistake to make, we've all done it once or twice. Remember, PCs are for building and admiring, don't risk your hardware by attempting to power it up.

 

[Ahnt]

I killed an A64 3800+ trying to de-lid it. It could have been dead before I delidded it however. I never touched any of the tiny chips under the IHS but I never tested it before delidding it, lol. So that would be my rookie mistake. Always make sure it works before trying to mod.

 

[The Pook]

First build, used included PSU with a cheap case I bought.

Didn't kill any hardware other than 2 hard drives thankfully. Killed the first, thought it was bad luck. Second died when the PSU decided to go pop. Not sure why it only killed the HDD but kinda glad.

 

[BulletSponge]

I was replacing an SSD in my dads little rig that I had built for him a year earlier. I was tired and in a hurry and rather than set the rig on a table I sat on the floor with it in my lap. Power was disconnected and had been drained but I still killed it. I was balancing the back side panel on my knee so I could spin the rig around easily and the panel flexed just enough to warp a bit and touch the back of the motherboard, "zzzzt". As soon as I heard that little static discharge I knew, I'd screwed up. PC would no longer boot and I had to overnight a new board to get it running. I finally learned to take my time and double check everything I do once that side panel comes off.

 

[microchidism]

buying EVGA gpus....lol

 

[luisxd]

Killed a A6-5200 + motherboad + battery charger (it was a lenovo g505) by overcloking it

 

[SpykeZ]

I'm inserting my buddy in here as I've never killed a PC.

I've built all my friend's computers. Then there's 1 friend who just doesn't take care of anything he owns. I'm in Madison, he's in Rockford. I'm on my way out to him to install something new, I don't remember what it even was. 20 minutes out he calls me, his computer is on fire. Literally. I'm like dude what the hell I'm 20 minutes away what were you even doing?! Idiot saw his floppy drive power wasn't plugged in because I never bothered, no use for him (winxp days). So what does he do? Tries plugging it into the fan pins on the motherboard. Guess what happens when you plug two things in together that are providing power. Fire, fire happens. I get there, half the motherboard is melted and his room smells like electronic death, and he did it while his computer was on and running.

So much for installing whatever new hardware it was.

I called him an idiot, he bought pizza and wings for wasting my time lol.

To this day, been building computers for almost 16 years and that's the one of two computers that was killed by the hands of the user. The other one was eh. Friend's brother had autism pretty bad. He graduated highschool and he loved gaming on computers, that was his thing. Nothing else mattered so his parents gave me a credit card and told me to get whatever it was I needed. Get it all up and running, he's happier than hell. Week later my friend tells me he spilled a 2 liter of mountain dew on the computer and all the soda went into it from the top fan cut outs lol. RIP. Moutain Dew super charges us buddy, not computers

 

[ghostrider85]

Ripped the pcie slot off the maximus viii gene, can't reach the locking tab on the bottom pcie due to my sli gpu blocking it, so i just yanked the gpu and the pcie slot came off with it.

 

[IMI4tth3w]

scratched the pcb doing a delid on my 3570k with a razor blade. still works but i can only use half of my memory slots, single channel only. ended up upgrading to a 4790k and got the rockkit cool delid kit, which was worth every penny.

 

[SONICDK]

broke two motherboards by using the wrong screw, so they touched the pcb,

 

[Valafar]

Back when the GeForce 4 Ti 4600 first came out I went and bought one. First time I had ever paid so much for a computer part and my very first high end card. I think I paid 300 or 400 bucks for it at BestBuy. Anyway, in the pursuit of performance, I decided to try and remove the heatsink and fan from the gpu and replace it with something better so I could overclock it The heatsink was glued to the gpu. In the process of removing it I also pulled off several layers of the gpu as well. Needless to say, I was devastated. Was living with my parents and my younger brother at the time who are also computer geeks.All was silent in my house the rest of the day. It was as if someone had died.

I also killed an ATI 6950 by volt modding it. The process went well up until I powered it on and blew one of the vrm clean off the board. In my haste I had forgotten to check the pot and make sure I had it turned it all the way down, instead it was maxed out. Yet another expensive mistake. Live and learn I guess.

 

[Duality92]

Dropped a screw on a 280X. It was powered on.

 

[dir_d]

Back when i was 16 i bought my parts for my 1st computer that i built which had a Athlon processor back in 1998. i was so excited that i built the computer put the processor in then fired it up. I heard a zing sound then a lil pop. I forgot to put the Heat sink on i was so excited.... Luckily Newegg was new and cool at the time so i returned the chip and claimed it was DOA. They sent another no charge.

 

[ozlay]

Killed a Celeron 360 that did 4.8 ghz on air stock cooler trying to delid it. Was going to run it it direct die.

Also cut my finger with the razerblade...

 

[rush2049]

Tested a buddies power supply that we suspected was going bad on my perfectly fine system.

It burned out my XFX 7800 GTX ..... sad day....

good news, the power supply was accepted under warrenty replacement, my 7800 was out of warranty at the time......

EDIT:

in an attempt to delid a cpu I used the razer blade method and gave up before getting the lid off the i7-3770K. But not before knicking the side of the PCB with my fingernail.

It then ran perfectly fine, but only two of the DIMM slots on the mobo worked. Would not post with the other two populated.

 

[SnakeBiteScares]

Asked someone for help building my first PC without really telling him what it was for, ended up buying weak parts that were not ideal. As well as that I bought it piece by piece and by the time I was done the parts would have fit into about 2/3 the budget I had planned. Also, instead of buying all at once within the budget I had planned I bought it piece by piece and didn't really keep track of the pricing and ended up spending about 150% of what I originally planned.

I killed that build by transporting it all together with a heavy NH D14 on it which warped itself, the motherboard and the cheap case I had built it in.

On my next build I went straight to 5GHz with my new cpu and killed the motherboard with what I assume was too much voltage, bought a new motherboard and did the exact same thing.

Basically:

• If you're new to building PCs get help from multiple people and tell them what you'll be using it for.
• Decide how much you want to spend on the build and buy the parts when you have enough money so that when you do have enough, the parts have reduced in price leaving you with more budget for better parts. Or don't even start planning the build until you know you have as much as you want to spend on it.
• Don't transport it assembled unless you know it's going to be handled carefully.
• Don't try to overclock it to a high overclock and voltage without knowing your hardware can handle it.