Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[ha1o2surfer]

This is my biggest mistake, I swear! I bought a mini 90Watt adapter for my W110ER and with a 45 Watt CPU and a 45 Watt GPU running under full load caused it to overheat and made my house smell for a week (when I came home to it) The W110ER with a 45 watt CPU requires a 120watt adapter. Think of a burning rubber smell.. mixed with some plastic

[Art Vandelay]

My biggest mistake, is busting the CPU socket of my Asus P7P55D-E Pro, while installing my CPU, I went in too quickly and the corner on the cpu completely smashed the pins of the socket. After contacting Asus, I found out that it would cost me over $150 to ship it and have it repaired by Asus (socket is not under warranty). So I basically lost my expensive board and had to go out and to buy a cheaper P7P55D-E LX instead. I hate these fragile sockets of Intel. I prefer the old socket style, like what AMD is still using, at least the pins are more robust.

Those Intel sockets terrify me. At least some companies will repair a damaged socket, though.

[Dudenstein]

Mine would be getting TN panel monitors for my dual monitor set up. I was too focused on saving money when I got them.

[VolkovBrad67]

Still waiting for someone to say : "I bought Windows 8".

[Kev]

Several years ago I bought an HIS 4670 1GB for an older Dell. That card was a piece of crap. Loud, slow, expensive and hot. It did look cool though.

[Smite]

My worst is when I was Repairing laptops for a large Manufacture here I would put wrong screws in and drill them threw the upper case makes a nipple indention. The irony was when I trained new Techs I would let them make the same mistake too. They tend to double check after that.

[Barodil]

In 2011 I bought a standart MSI GTX 570 and somehow got a Twinfrozr Edition. Altough this one had better cooling I could not use it because my case had bad airflow. So I sent it back and got a standart design -> with a 4xx series cooler. Yes it was a GTX 570 cooled by an old heatpipe design (I wil upload a photo, when I'm at home). My mistake here; I didn't know it was the wrong cooler so I used it in my Sytem.

A few weeks later we got about 35°C outside (28° in my room) and my GTX ran at max fan speed with 97°C in Crysis 2 (and I think it got damaged in that week). Gues what: I didn't want that freaking hotair in my PC. As a result I bought an Accelero Xtreme PLUS II (yes, warranty void -.-) and modded my case. I was pleased with the result because temps and noise were low, my case had great airflow and I successfully finished my first casemod. But it wouldn't my biggest mistake if this was the end of this story.

Three months later, while visualizing a lightshow for a schoolproject (the evening before the show) with GrandMA on PC, my card and 350€ went to silicon heaven in smoke (luckily my PSU saved the rest of my sytem). Man you can't belive how pissed I was. My PC was not working anymore and I had no secound card around but fortunately I made backups of all relevant project data on an external HDD.

One might think now that something went wrong with the coolerreplacement but it was working for 1/4 of a year. Today I am pretty sure everything was alright with the Accelero and the damage was caused when the GPU ran hot in summer with this stupid jetenginecooler (I disassembled it to investigate why it had to die and nothing with new heatsinks got smoked). GrandMA was just too much for my "injured" then...

Now I rock an EVGA GTX 570 Classified (it's basically a GTX 570 on a 580 PCB with 580 cooler and better powerdelivery) at 880/1760/2300 without any problems. And when upgradetime comes I'm a going to buy an EVGA card and no MSI. For sure.

[vaerk]

I bought an OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2.

It stopped working after 1 month and OCZ refused to replace it.

[Guest]

In 2011 I bought a standart MSI GTX 570 and somehow got a Twinfrozr Edition. Altough this one had better cooling I could not use it because my case had bad airflow. So I sent it back and got a standart design -> with a 4xx series cooler. Yes it was a GTX 570 cooled by an old heatpipe design (I wil upload a photo, when I'm at home). My mistake here; I didn't know it was the wrong cooler so I used it in my Sytem.

A few weeks later we got about 35°C outside (28° in my room) and my GTX ran at max fan speed with 97°C in Crysis 2 (and I think it got damaged in that week). Gues what: I didn't want that freaking hotair in my PC. As a result I bought an Accelero Xtreme PLUS II (yes, warranty void -.-) and modded my case. I was pleased with the result because temps and noise were low, my case had great airflow and I successfully finished my first casemod. But it wouldn't my biggest mistake if this was the end of this story.

Three months later, while visualizing a lightshow for a schoolproject (the evening before the show) with GrandMA on PC, my card and 350€ went to silicon heaven in smoke (luckily my PSU saved the rest of my sytem). Man you can't belive how pissed I was. My PC was not working anymore and I had no secound card around but fortunately I made backups of all relevant project data on an external HDD.

One might think now that something went wrong with the coolerreplacement but it was working for 1/4 of a year. Today I am pretty sure everything was alright with the Accelero and the damage was caused when the GPU ran hot in summer with this stupid jetenginecooler (I disassembled it to investigate why it had to die and nothing with new heatsinks got smoked). GrandMA was just too much for my "injured" then...

Now I rock an EVGA GTX 570 Classified (it's basically a GTX 570 on a 580 PCB with 580 cooler and better powerdelivery) at 880/1760/2300 without any problems. And when upgradetime comes I'm a going to buy an EVGA card and no MSI. For sure.

Ooohey a lighting tech :P

[LuukvanA]

Buying the Z11 plus case from Zalman, the looks of the thing were pretty nice for what it costed me, but the longer I have one, the more it is starting to look to me like an ugly Transformer

[Guest]

Still waiting for someone to say : "I bought Windows 8".

I bought a Mac, does that count?

[Raidorz]

My current GPU the Asus HD7870 DCUII. Paid close to $200 early adopters' fee and the Asus distributor kinda SUCKS in Singapore.

[nillas12]

My biggest mistake was letting the store where I bought the components of my previous computer rebuild it because they could not agree that the mobo was dead.

What I got back was a warped case, a poorly installed H70 with one of the fans with a corner sawed off with a blunt saw, the sidefan of the case in a box without the screws, the mobo was not screwed in at all (just hanging from the screws), both graphicscards were dead(probably rough transport) and most important of all the problem I had was still not solved(no POST). Before this the mobo has been sent in for rma 3 times already of which the 3rd time they sent it back to ASUS and they got it back with the instruction to replace it which they didn't yet claimed they did ignoring my arguement it was the same serialnumber and even the remains of the padding of the H70 backplate still on it. After 7 months of having no working gaming rig and dealing with incredible incompetent 'experts' I threatend to sue them in a letter to the CEO I got a new mobo sent the next day. Installed it, problem fixed.... ...exactly what I said to them on day 1 of the problem!

This has thought me to never let any computer store 'expert' or anyone else who I can't verify as being more skilled than me even touch my computer.

Linus, please migrate to The Netherlands :P or even better, clone yourself for every country.

Haha. Totally agree with that. Whenever I walk into a computer store and some dude walks up and asks: "Can I help you?" I can't help but turn a bit arrogant and think : "I know more than you." Most of the times I am proven right.

I was looking for a mechanical keyboard once, and the above happened.

This young dude came up to me and asked the obligatory: "Can I help you?" For once I was in doubt as I couldn't find their mechanical keyboards. So I said: "Actually yeah. I need a mechanical keyboard, and I saw on your website that you had some. Also I would like them to be cherry mx browns, since I like the blues but want a bit more silence."

And this poor guy just widened his eyes and looked scared, and sorta mumbled: "lets see what we can find." He spent 10 minutes trying to convince me that different rubber dome keyboards were mechanical keyboards. In the end I just walked away.

I have a lot of these funny little stories. I really need to start behaving around these people.

[LuukvanA]

Trying to add some bytehertz to my hdd, didn't work

Haha, now i'm starting to doubt if you are really an asian:P

[LuukvanA]

I have a few and learned from it a lot:

1. i bought corsair vengeance and i'm an overclocker... whooptiedoo

2. in my realllllly first years (on a year of 12, im now 19), i tried to format the C:/ disk in the os by rightclicking the drive and press format :')

3. tried to fix a PSU that was still plugged in... 230V hurts and the boss of the computer store was standing next at me and he allmost litterally peed his pants from laughing

4. i tried to fix a waterloop leak with superglue. didn't work. enough said

you may laugh, im over the unsuccesfull years now :P

Haha, well done! but a question about 1, what did you buy from corsair, RAM I suppose?

[Salmiakbal]

Trying to add some bytehertz to my hdd, didn't work

I'm not Asian.

[LuukvanA]

Trying to add some bytehertz to my hdd, didn't work

*Looks at name* Okay nevermind, you're from holland/belgium i suppose...

[zer0]

lots of buying mistakes... what i do is i sell them to my friends and colleagues hehehe

[Fordox]

I have a few and learned from it a lot:

1. i bought corsair vengeance and i'm an overclocker... whooptiedoo

2. in my realllllly first years (on a year of 12, im now 19), i tried to format the C:/ disk in the os by rightclicking the drive and press format :')

3. tried to fix a PSU that was still plugged in... 230V hurts and the boss of the computer store was standing next at me and he allmost litterally peed his pants from laughing

4. i tried to fix a waterloop leak with superglue. didn't work. enough said

you may laugh, im over the unsuccesfull years now :P

vengeance is memory ;)

[th0rshamm3r]

Changing out 4 ram sticks while the PSU was still plugged in. Static took care of the motherboard.

[Nirmal]

I bought an hp desktop before I started building my own and hated it.

I think that is what made me build my own as well.

[BirdyTheMigthy]

i fried my GTS 450 a while back when i droped my metal torch and and landed at the back of the card

[Nirmal]

I can't think of anything serious but recently when I was trying to get my new graphics card in I put my case sideways without knowing that there were a couple of screws on the ground. Lets just say that there is nice scratch on the side of my case now. Luckily it is on the side that faces the wall. :)

[gts250ftw]

Lol a pretty big fail here.....my first build i didnt know abt risers and the bormal screws they gave were too short soo i had 2 abt 1 inch screws and i secured my mobo to the case with those and the screws were too long to close the back side of the case so i bent them ...the mobo used to short out soo i caried it by a pc shop and they told me abt the prob.....i got a free fan outa all of tht....luckily the mobo survived.... Mind u i was 11 when this happened heh

[GAMESaROCKN]

Not really a mistake but more unlucky. Last year I had severe chest pains the week leading up to term papers which were due on the Monday. The chest pain didn't go away till the Friday before. Till this time I was not well enough to get out of bed. The first thing that I did was that I went onto my computer to send an email to my parents letting them know why I haven't been in contact with them for a week. My hard disk drive decided to die soon after and not having backed up my data for around two weeks due to being sick, I lost most of my progress on my term papers. I ended up going to the library to madly complete the papers that weekend. Luckily I passed all my courses that semester and got a new hard disk drive soon after in the summer.