Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[NotABigGamer]

Mine was trying to play anything with this Dell Inspiron 1440 I inherited it. It can even play Minecraft and it loses power and overheats in 2 minutes.  (don't wory I am going to build a PC soon!) 

[NotABigGamer]

1 minute ago, NotABigGamer said:

Mine was trying to play anything with this Dell Inspiron 1440 I inherited it. It can even play Minecraft and it loses power and overheats in 2 minutes.  (don't wory I am going to build a PC soon!) 

It sucked

[RoryRB]

So basically this thread is for you to post your biggest PC-related size mistake that you have made, whether its a good one or a bad one.

My one is that i recently bought a coolermaster h500p mesh and it is huge, and i mean HUGE. Its doesn't fit on my desk, and even if it did i would not trust my desk to support it !!!

[pizapower]

Put it on the floor.

[Origami Cactus]

Thermaltake Core V21 is way bigger than it looks like on the photos. It is a m-atx case, but it is bigger than a compact atx case.

 

On a positive note Intel 660p was way smaller than i though, you could make a budget 2tb portable ssd with that thing, and have it usb stick sized.

[RoryRB]

2 minutes ago, pizapower said:

Put it on the floor.

Well im getting a new desk soon plus the rest of the components don't come until late August-early September

[GhostNappa890]

I tried to replace a blown cap on my 9800gt. didn't have the same size, just threw on whatever I had. ended up killing the pci slot.

[TheNaitsyrk]

I thought I'd get some info on what is the worst thing people did when they built their PCs for first or second time. CPU dropped in the socket?

 

I for instance: dropped a radiator on my motherboard and the lettering and aluminium pretty looking ornament from the mobo bent and fell off. Woops.

[Firewrath9]

bad component choice (meh psu, bad case)

[Radium_Angel]

I built my 1st PC back in the AT days, when the power cables were 2 separate pieces that, while directional, could be plugged in incorrectly all the same.

Plugged them in, incorrectly, power it up and watched the power blow a hole right through the motherboard.

 

...oops.

[Epimetheus]

Got a pentium, an h310 motherboard, a 1060 3gb and a vs 550 psu. And looking back i would've liked to build a mini itx but it's not an error just a "didn't think about that"

[.Apex.]

30 minutes ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

I thought I'd get some info on what is the worst thing people did when they built their PCs for first or second time. CPU dropped in the socket?

 

I for instance: dropped a radiator on my motherboard and the lettering and aluminium pretty looking ornament from the mobo bent and fell off. Woops.

About 10 years ago I saw a 4 Pin (or 3?) Connector coming from the PSU that looked exactly like a Fan Header, so I plugged that in on one of the Fan headers and my Motherboard instantly fried, still don't know what that connector was

 

Edit: Oh, I think it's Floppy Drive Power

[jiyeon]

Buying a Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. That cooler took me 40 minutes alone to mount and I even had to call my friend to ask if I was doing it right.

It's not a noob-friendly cooler to install at all.

[nick name]

Cut myself on the damn case.  

[Random_User]

Just built my first PC a couple weeks ago and bought a reference rx 5700 xt instead of waiting for aftermarket cards and boy does that card get toasty (usually sits at 105C when playing something in VR).

[AdamBGames]

20 minutes ago, TheNaitsyrk said:

I thought I'd get some info on what is the worst thing people did when they built their PCs for first or second time. CPU dropped in the socket?

 

I for instance: dropped a radiator on my motherboard and the lettering and aluminium pretty looking ornament from the mobo bent and fell off. Woops.

I had a cheap dell pc, and when i pulled on the USB header to change out the motherboard I didnt know they hotglued the connection, so I ended up ripping half the pins out of the board.

[AdamBGames]

32 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I built my 1st PC back in the AT days, when the power cables were 2 separate pieces that, while directional, could be plugged in incorrectly all the same.

Plugged them in, incorrectly, power it up and watched the power blow a hole right through the motherboard.

 

...oops.

Black to black. I now know that from doing the exact same thing.

[Void Master]

1. Back in the C2D days , i cleaned totally the thermal paste on the CPU cooler , thinking it was some type of protection ......

2. Didn't install the IGPU drivers thinking that Win 7 drivers were fine (it used to crash in the middle of a chess game D:)

3. And killed my PC after Raging on it ( seagate barracuda RIP )

4. Once thought that my lga 775 mobo was dead as it didn't work with my 4gb ddr3 replacement kit , found out that my intel mobo doesn't support 4 gb ddr3 modules only 2 gb 

5. Broke my stock cooler plastic push pins and used metal fan screws directly on to the mobo which killed a memory channel  ....somehow

6. Killed 2 Pentuim 3 Cpus ( one 533Mhz and the other one 1Ghz ) when i tried to reapply the thermal paste 

7. Bashed an i3 540 cpu to the wall .....

8. Bent pins on a 3 p4 cpus

9. plugged the floppy power connector in a wrong way (one extra pin to the left) and smoked my psu

10. turned on my PC with liquid rubbing alcohol on the vrms ....  

11. Killed another Barracuda by dropping it into the case ......

Too many mistakes 

made me a better PC builder tho 

EDIT : 12. PC not turning on and IDE cable was not correctly plugged in

[Oalei]

having a bad case, shitty screwdrivers, not buying any kind of sound output which is the worst thing, when i tried to listen to something i cant hear anything lol, because i've been using a laptop so i just forgot it doesnt have an integrated speaker

[MeatFeastMan]

Bought an FX 9590 early just to find out a week later that Ryzen was coming out.  Would have gone with the ryzen 5 1600 if I had a brain at the time. I mean don't get me wrong, I love my 9590 and it has served me well the past 2 years..but just a little more research would have gotten me so much more. Didn't mind shutting up the haters though, FX still gets the job done, and I'm proud to say my house is NOT burnt down.

[kpluck]

Used too big of case. On my first build I purchased a very large case thinking I would need lots of room for expansion. Turns out, I never needed that extra room. Never had a system with more than two drives in it.

 

-kp

[The Pizza Thief]

Used the DisplayPort cable that came in the box with my top of the line Asus $550 monitor, all was well for a few years until a couple of months ago when it went bad and almost bricked my GPU, could not get my computer to even boot until I changed cables. NEVER USE THE CABLE THAT COME WITH THE MONITOR. 

[TheNaitsyrk]

I think this is a good thread for people who want to build their PC but are too afraid to. If they don't follow any of this, they'll be fine! 

[Nightwing3456789]

I had a phenom ii system that was actually my first pc, but when I took out the cpu to replace the thermal paste, I bent the pins. Poor cpu just sits in a little box, as I try to bend the pins back.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

Wow I'm not sure ... maybe

• choosing a meh case (Xion XON-303) with no cable management, no watercooling support, no CPU backplate cutout, no easy-swap drive bays, etc,
• or PSU (OCZ StealthXStream 500W) with no 80+ certification, non-modular, probably group regulated, etc, that would be impractical or not advisable to re-use with my current system, or,
• choosing a motherboard (Gigabyte GA-MA69G-S3H) that would die after only 4 years and I'd have to wait another 3 years before I had the $ to replace it (which necessitated building a new system anyway since I failed to get a mobo that would still be compatible with CPUs / RAM / etc. when it was time to upgrade), 
• not choosing (along with a compatible mobo) a Q6600 (although that CPU by itself would have been like over half the entire sub-$500 budget), as well as going with a stock cooler (on an Athlon 64 X2 4000+),
• going with a 32-bit OS (so I was limited to 3GB RAM even after I installed 4GB later (originally had 2GB), I really did NOT want Vista, this was in Feb 2008 and 7 wasn't out yet),
• not getting an SSD for a boot drive,
• not getting a GPU (but with only a <$500 budget....)
• using a CRT monitor (Viewsonic PF815)
• and IDE / PATA hard drives (although I already had those, and I did have one SATA drive but it wasn't my boot drive; I still have the WD800JB, WD2500JB and WD7500AAKS,),
• not having RGB  (although my current system doesn't have it either),
• whatever else I may not have thought of,

Or maybe it was my cable management?