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Just for fun, list the dumbest thing you've ever done while building or working on a PC. Mine was leaving the plastic sticker on the bottom of the CPU cooler block when installing it Luckily, I realized this before booting the computer up.

So today I naively thought it would be a good time to get round to tackling my new pc build and namely shaping, cutting and connecting my petg tubing. 12 hours later, and 1M of PETG wasted, Ive only, managed to make about 100mm of connections, namely connecting my resevoir<Pump<T-Junction Fitting<1st of 3 480mm rads & attach a bleed valve (took 1 hour alone to fit). To make matters worse, I had to make some alterations to my case to mount my resevoir which cost me one of my handheld Dremmel Rotary Tools (its fuxked now). Im not 100% the resevoir is secure either. Ive come to the firm conclusion that Hard tubing is a pain in the ass and i should have spent my £150 buying some soft tubing and new fittings and sold on the 20xsomething EK HDC fittings i have but too late now. Ive made some progress but I still have 7 connections to make and ive only managed 3 so far in a whole day. Is there anyone who can give me some advice bending the petg tubing as it constantly twists/warps whenever I attempt to make the rediculously tight bends i have to make, so i have to resort to 45' 90' angle fittings instead. This build is going to kill me I swear, and I will put money on something leaking somewhere at some point. Not to mention i dissassembled ny pc over 2 montha ago and i swear im having withdrawal symptons lol. Anyway heres some more pics coming so you guys can see my "progress" so far, but at this point it feels like 2 steps back>1 step forward.

Hey, I just wanted to ask you guys as to what your stupidest mistakes while pc building are. My stupidest mistake was the time when I was filling my loop and forgot to plug off the extra openings on my GPU water block, it resulted in water spilling everywhere.

Background I was wanting to simplify my personal computer setup to a single device. One laptop that would be portable enough to take to work, and capable enough to potentially play games at home. I decided I wanted to try out a laptop with Thunderbolt 3 to connect an eGPU to my desk setup at home. The first problem with this was finding a laptop with full TB3 speeds. Many of the more portable laptops are configured to only PCI-E x2. The full speed of TB3 requires a PCI-E x4 connection, which whittled my choices down a bit. I ended up deciding between an HP zBook Studio G3 or newer, and a 2016 or newer 15" MacBook Pro. I chose the macbook because of battery life and my need for macOS at work. If you don't care for either of those, I would recommend the HP zBook, as you can avoid all of the mess that Apple has created. I looked at Dell XPS series, as well as the Precision 5510 and 5520, all of which have x2 connection. The 13" Macbook pro's have x4 on the left side, but x2 on the right side, in addition to the lower power dual core processor. Hardware 2016 Macbook Pro 15" - i7 6700HQ, Radeon Pro 450, 16gb of RAM, 256gb ssd. Bootcamp installed with 1709 version of Windows 10. You will need to set this partition to at least 50gb. Akitio Node Pro enclosure - While not explicitly an eGPU enclosure, it has the power supply for it, and it works. Bonus handle for portability. Comes with a short, but full speed, TB3 cable. EVGA GTX 1080 8gb Tested with GTX 960, but this card was only to get the setup running, the permanent configuration is with the 1080. Changing these cards does not cause any stir apart from needing to reinstall the driver. Setup Assuming you have a brand new macbook, begin by updating macOS. Using the Bootcamp Utility, install Windows 10 with at least 50gb of space. Let Apple's installer finish the driver setup and reboot. Within Windows, use DDU to uninstall the display driver. Download DDU from http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html Boot into safe mode. You can do this by holding down shift as you click restart, then selecting Troubleshoot, then Safe Mode. Run DDU as administrator. By default, it will also disable automatic graphics driver installation. Restart to Windows. In Device Manager, Disable the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. Boot back into macOS, and install Clover. In Disk Utility, add a 1GB FAT32 partition named Clover. Download the installer from here: https://clover-wiki.zetam.org/Home Run the installer, and select to install to the Clover partition. Prepare your body for the DSDT steps. Follow steps 8 - 11 here. BE CAREFUL WHILE DOING THIS. https://egpu.io/forums/implementation-guides/2016-macbook-pro-154-tb3-gtx980tirazer-core-os-x-win10-clover-dsdt-in-memory-override/#cloverdsdt Plug in your eGPU when you get to the boot selection screen. Make sure your everything is connected, including an external display. Before Selecting EFI boot, plug in your eGPU. Make sure everything is connected securely, including power cables to the Graphics Card. EFI boot should provide you with the option to boot to Windows. If you have not already plugged in and turned on the eGPU by now, then turning it on afterwards will cause Windows to blue screen. Install NVIDIA drivers, and reboot again. Considerations At this point, booting through EFI, turning on the eGPU, and booting to Windows will provide a seemingly random chance of enabling both the integrated display, and the external display. Installing reFind with the alteration for spoofing apple efi may correct this issue to not be random. Initially testing with the 960, the Unigine Valley benchmark, set to Extreme HD preset, showed scores of 1420, 1440, and 1470. The GTX 1080 had a score of around 3660. I have tested this eGPU enclosure with Windows based laptops with Thunderbolt 3, which appears to offer something closer to a plug&play experience. If I could go back, I would probably get the HP zBook Studio g3, as it does support the full PCI-E x4 speed, along with having a nice form factor, and the option for Xeon processors. Benchmarks and pictures will come tomorrow. Has anyone tried reFind + Clover? Share eGPU stories!

We've all got older parents/grandparents, right? If yours are like mine, they'll definitely need some help with using a computer or even a phone. Here's 5 mistakes my grandparents have made. 5. Accidentally sending the wrong thing to someone on a mobile phone. Here's actually a funny story. My grandma was planning a reunion of some form for her school group and needed to send someone a text message. After my dad spending a while teaching her how to open the text messaging app and start a new conversation, my grandma just sends 'Ho' to this woman. It would definitely shock me if I got a text message that just said that! 4. Buying a computer that has too much power for their needs, meaning it's expensive. Okay, so my nan had an Acer Aspire Windows XP laptop. You can understand she wanted to upgrade. It had like 1GB RAM and a Celeron processor. So my dad and I spent hours on electronics retailer's sites working out which laptop would be a good fit for her. After a while, we went into a store and started talking to a salesman. Now, all my nan does on her computer is web browsing, email and Word. She didn't need this computer. It had 8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD, keeping in mind that my nan has like less than 5GB of files in total. 3. Giving a computer-illiterate person a mobile phone. Okay, so my grandma had been harping on about getting a mobile phone. My dad, doing the right thing, bought her a $2 Virgin SIM and gave her one of his old phones. These are brick phones so you can understand where I come from. After her complaining she couldn't type properly on it, my dad went and bought her one of those cheap $50 phones locked to a network. It was just something that she could use for emergencies and texting. After using it for a while, she was saying that maybe she should switch back to the old phone. You can understand how frustrating this was. 2. Leaving the phone off the hook. Most people get worried when their parents/grandparents don't answer the phone. In this case it was for the stupidest reason; they had left the phone off the hook. They have a Telstra-provided handset (yes, I live in Australia and yes, my grandparents are with Telstra) and it works fine. They have a wireless handset so they can talk away from the actual phone but this was funny. My mum was getting a bit worried that they weren't answering their phone but it was after we gave them a mobile phone so my mum was able to correct the issue. 1. Buying the same brand of a product that didn't work. This one frustrated my dad the most. So my nan used a HP printer and it was definitely acting its age. It started to be stupid and sometimes wouldn't print so my dad told my nan that she will need a new printer. We didn't see her for like a month and then, out of the blue, we go over to her house and she starts saying that she bought a new printer. After my dad asked my nan what printer she bought, she replied with 'I bought a HP'. This frustrated my dad so much. That's 5 mistakes my grandparents have made, let me know what your's have made. Oh and one more, my nan got a virus from clicking in an email. Saved the stupidest till last

Hey guys here's a guide on how to set someone's computer on fire, and fry 3 of their USB components. For a little bit of back story, my friend asked me to build him a computer. His old case was too small, so I swapped it with my sister's case. No big deal, I've been putting computers together on my own for a few years now and switching everything over to one case will be no problem. TL;DR, READ. THE. FUCKING. MANUAL. My sister plugged in two of her USB devices; a headset which stopped working instantly, and a webcam which shorted when plugged in, causing the USB port to melt and cause a small match-size fire that burned out when the surge protection kicked in. Here are some pictures to document what happened. Veteran eyes, tell me if you see what is wrong here. I assumed since the audio cable was right next to the line of 3 pins, that the 4pin connector should go inside of it. Sometimes cables aren't used (like when plugging in a 3pin fan into a 4pin connector) Here's a motherboard document for reference. This is where I fucked up. The ground was plugged into the 5v+ pin, and the 5v+ slot was plugged into the ground pin, causing a short. Here are a few pictures of the damage done. I owe my sister a new headset, a new webcam, and a new whatever got ruined by getting plugged into that port.

So, what's the most embarassing mistake you've ever done when building a computer? Well, mine is that I forgot to plug the 8 pin connector in.. And when the computer didn't start I contacted a friend, and when I found out I didn't plug that in, it got pretty awkward..