I chose Topic 2- What got you into the world of tech?
Back in 2001 my Parents got a divorce and had a computer that nether one of them wanted so I took it home and it stayed in my closet for 3 months. I came home from work one day bored and decided I wanted to play solitaire so I pulled it out and stared at the back of the pc tell my GF at the time got home and told her I didn't have any Idea how to plug it in LOL so she showed me. I started liking it so I asked her uncle if he would teach me how PC's worked. He owns his own Computer company in Kansas city, Kansas. He taught me the basics around windows and how to run DOS about six months later I went back to him and showed him what I had learned my self. He looked at me in surprise and I said what. He told me I just crammed 5 years of knowledge in 6 months. I said really. He told me I should go to school for it. So I went home and bought every book I could get my hands on that was about computers, I studied for one year before I went to collage. In collage my teacher told me I was really advanced and taught me more stuff then the class knew, I went to school every day and hung out with my teacher all day,.I did the hole schools networking with him, Helped him build firewalls for the school and helped him fix any PC's at the school. about a year into school they replaced all the computers at my school and I asked my teacher what they do to the old ones. He said throw them away so I asked him if I could have them all he said yes I had over 230 PC's and 15 servers. I was the fastest person to ever graduate from my school I did 8 years of school in 4 and a half years and the only one to get a 4.0 average all 4 and half years I was there. I got my associates degree in Computer programing, a Masters degree in computer Networking and a Masters Degree in Computer science.
Karma is a good thing and never hurts. I believe strongly in karma.
Just like paying it forward.
Thank you for this nice giveaway.
I wish everybody the best of luck on winning
My worst mistake must have been starting to invest into my PC. It is such a big money magnet and I haven't spent money on anything but electronics for the past 4 years.
I´m studying to take my A+ certificate this summer, so if any one needs the material to study the test for 801 and 802, i´ve got them all, videos, software with questions and test and books for 701, 702, 801 and 802.
if any want wants it send a message
I have quite a lot of spare time so I thought I would talk about my weird and wonderful computer stories and experiences in a sort of thread based thingy. Bear in mind these will most probably bad experiences of computer disasters happening, as they tend to be the most interesting. These will be typed in a slow tempo story teller like voice, so imagine I’m reading these to you slowly. I wonder if people will enjoy these or just tell me to go away. It’s an experiment after all.
Well my first story thingy begins with my first attempt at overclocking with watercooling.
I had just installed my new custom watercooling kit and was thinking of all the possibilities. It was all bought second hand so it ended up costing me only £120. That’s about $190 for all of you Americans. I had been bargain hunting on ebay for a long long time to get theses deal mind you. I had a laing DDC + pump with a dual bay reservoir it fit into, which I got for £50 together. Yes I know, it’s an amazing deal. I got a nice dual 120 slim radiator for £20 and a XSPC CPU block for £40. All the other bits and bobs like fittings and tubing ended up rounding the cost up to £120.
So anyway, I had this brand new watercooling system installed (I say new but it was of course second hand,) on my computer (specs at the time listed at the bottom). Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was to overclock my CPU, (Who wouldn’t?), so I went ahead and did the most stupid and worst thing ever. Being lazy as I am I simply googled up what others had got with their 1100T and punched the numbers right into my BIOS. What could go wrong? If I’m wrong won’t it just bluescreen or not POST. Well it did blue screen, so I increased the voltage up a little bit and I got into windows.
Amazing. It works I thought! So I did the thing anyone who is overclocking should do. I went to Prime95. It ran for about 30 seconds and then I just heard 3 loud explosions from my PC and a burning smell filled the room. (Not smoke, just that smell of hot burnt plastic that everyone with a watercooling loop constantly fears.)
Now what could have gone wrong? I jumped straight to my knees and pulled the plug out of the back of my PC. At first I thought I sprung a leak with my watercooling because of the sudden heat from the CPU. Maybe it could have loosened a fitting? But no. I opened my case swearing the whole time at why the hell I had tried to overclock when my system had been running perfectly without it. (Yes that thing we all do when things go to shit. I was panicking and everything!)
I peaked in with a torch, (or flashlight as you Americans call them,) and was desperately looking around for the source of the smell. I did a check of the motherboard but there were no burn marks on it. I couldn’t find any on any of the other components either.
(Now imagine me swearing on my knees under my desk with my shaking head in a cramped computer case for 5 minutes dreading the worst)
So I started to sniff around (before I was only looking inside) my computer and eventually found the culprit. It was my god damn power supply. So I took it out of my case and I unscrewed it (which is easier said than done) and inside I just found 3 capacitors had burst. Which explained the 3 explosions or rather “very loud bangs†from when they popped. Either way, if you hear something go pop in your PC then however small it is it will always sound like an explosion.
In the end using my awesome powers of deduction I worked out that the power supply which was 550W was just enough to support my system while idling however when I overclocked and I ran Prime95 which meant the PC was drawing all the power it could from the wall it simply overloaded.
Luckily enough it did not send a surge into any of my other parts and they were all fine. So the next day I went to the shop and got a Coolermaster Bronze 750W PSU.
Moral of the story for me was to never cheap out on a power supply and think it will be okay with going with a low power PSU. That’s why I always tell people to get at least 750W PSUs.
If you enjoyed it hit the like button in the bottom right I guess. These do take quite long to write so I hope you enjoyed it and if enough people want me I will write sequels to this. I do actually enjoy recounting these events myself. I say enjoy, more like shudder at the thought but it’s enjoyable all the same.
Thanks for reading if you got this far!
Build at the time (main components only):
Asus Crosshair IV Formula
AMD Phenom x6 1100T
CIT Gold (just the colour not the rating) 550W PSU
CM690II Advanced Case
Fun fact: You just read 900 words of text.
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