Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[Guest]

I once dropped a whole cpu cooler on the socket of a X38 motherboard while I putting the cooler the other side of the table (It was a Thermaltake Spin-Q cooler) and obviously that destroyed the whole socket.

[rrats]

Deleted thousands of photos manually before finding out about format button

[Adagio]

I run a tiny Wireless Internet Service Provider business. And once I was checking up on the network status on my phone, and accidentally tapped the "Delete" button.

Mikrotik does not ask for confirmation. It just does what it's told.

 

And I didn't have a laptop with me, so I couldn't get back in to fix it.

I had to borrow a laptop to restore a backup. (Luckily I do that regularly)

[jre84]

I had a top of the line clevo with a 6990m and decided to have soup while playing a twitch shooter....yeah soup and motherboards don't like each other whod have thought...most expensive mistake for me...

[thekingofmonks]

Didn't reconnect fans in my rog laptop after repasting, and fired it up..

[AkikoKumagara]

Dropping my Ryzen 7 1700X after removing it to help a friend update BIOS. Not only did my CPU get bricked, we also found out my friend didn't even need the BIOS updated after all.

[XGoodGuyFitz]

Not buying a computer while i had the chance before GPU prices became stupid high. 

[da na]

2 minutes ago, XGoodGuyFitz said:

Not buying a computer while i had the chance before GPU prices became stupid high. 

So glad I bought one literally a month before the market went crazy. 

[XGoodGuyFitz]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

So glad I bought one literally a month before the market went crazy. 

Just sad that its like this. I just wanna buy a computer 

[Arika]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

So glad I bought one literally a month before the market went crazy. 

i remember when i posted about buying my 2060 Super and people said "why didn't you wait for 30 series?"

[da na]

2 minutes ago, XGoodGuyFitz said:

Just sad that its like this. I just wanna buy a computer 

Pro tip:

Used HP z620. You can get an 8 core 16 thread Xeon, stick a cheap GPU (oh wait) in it... 

For a GPU, Quadro k2200. Or GTX 770. Relatively cheap and RX 560-like performance. 

[XGoodGuyFitz]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Pro tip:

Used HP z620. You can get an 8 core 16 thread Xeon, stick a cheap GPU (oh wait) in it... 

For a GPU, Quadro k2200. Or GTX 770. Relatively cheap and RX 560-like performance. 

how much would that cost in total would it be more than 1050 dollars and be worth not saving for a couple more months for a 3050ti with a R7 5800h? 

[da na]

Just now, XGoodGuyFitz said:

how much would that cost in total would it be more than 1050 dollars and be worth not saving for a couple more months for a 3050ti with a R7 5800h? 

Might as well wait for that but that def wouldn't be more than 1050. 

Granted the rest was before crazy market but the GPU was bought a few months ago. Check the specs of my main system in my sig, that was under $1000 and the EVGA GTX 980 SC was $250.

[sub68]

Opening a iphone with a utility knife.

(Razor blade type)

[da na]

Just now, sub68 said:

Opening a iphone with a utility knife.

(Razor blade type)

Let me guess, sliced half the ribbon cables? 

[sub68]

Just now, Mel0nMan said:

Let me guess, sliced half the ribbon cables? 

No stabbed the battery

[BuckGup]

I learned PCI power adapters that are on servers are different than consumers versions. Only took killing 2 V100s

[Bitter]

Oh I forgot about this. Couple years ago I'm pretty sure a metal lace end on my hoodie dangled onto a motherboard and killed it or the PSU. I bought it for $20 to extract the product key for free Windows Pro.

[da na]

40 minutes ago, Bitter said:

Oh I forgot about this. Couple years ago I'm pretty sure a metal lace end on my hoodie dangled onto a motherboard and killed it or the PSU. I bought it for $20 to extract the product key for free Windows Pro.

Well... I did a similar thing accidentally earlier this year.

I was wearing my room key for my dorm and it shorted somewhere on a system I was troubleshooting, around the front IO area. Screen went black, restarted. Board lived, but I learned a lesson. I now remove it whenever I'm working with a computer. 

[Bitter]

I haven't learned, I just try to tuck them into my shirt but often forget.

28 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Well... I did a similar thing accidentally earlier this year.

I was wearing my room key for my dorm and it shorted somewhere on a system I was troubleshooting, around the front IO area. Screen went black, restarted. Board lived, but I learned a lesson. I now remove it whenever I'm working with a computer. 

But going forward I might do better.

[GeorgeMKane]

7 hours ago, Arika S said:

i remember when i posted about buying my 2060 Super and people said "why didn't you wait for 30 series?"

Same. For me it was "Why didn't you just get the 2070 SUPER?" I got the 2060 SUPER just after purchasing the other components, and still had to borrow some money to get a better monitor. That "better monitor" is now my current second monitor.

 

I recently got the RTX 3060 a few months ago, and it is a noticeable improvement (I do a lot more than just game).

 

I will say that one mistake you can easily make is not asking for help. ASK FOR HELP. Whether that's asking for help building, asking for help financially (borrowing money can easily be better than a credit card, especially if it's a small amount. If your family member or friend charges you interest, find new ones. (Yes, you read that right... but I won't go into detail about that)), or even just asking for help holding a light to what you're trying to examine.

Edited November 4, 2021 by GeorgeMKane

[Gork]

C. Listed.

Two for one sale:

First one: My famous last words at a job I had a looooooong time ago. Having 'one of them days'. TLDR: Sent a joke templated word doc to the wrong people. "Dear my money bags." I couldn't find an excuse fast enough to leave work. Yes I was an intern. My imidiate boss was not amused. His boss thought it was hillarius.

 

Second one: Up to some stupid hour fixing a nonproffits computer, got everything back together finally got it to boot. important records and all. all that stuff backed up (THANK. GOD) .Emptied the trash. and plugged some dumb external Iomega external drive back into  the longest SCSI cable ever, this is a bit stick...next time I cameback to work: 

I was told the drive had a added feature of. Of Sparkenschpten and exploding....

Somehow I must have chunked an adapter into a power cable. I have no idea how or why no one thought it didn't look right. I gather drive was dying anyway and one hell of an explosion when plugged in. 

The computer limped along for a while longer 

[Chiyawa]

For me, when I'm new to Linux OS, open a terminal, run this command:

 

sudo rm -rf /

 

I was trying to delete everything from a drive. Forget the dev/sdb part.

 

Thank goodness there's nothing in my main OS drive. Had to reinstall Ubuntu back...

 

So yeah, first time knowing that Linux is way too powerful that this simple command can wipe out everything.

[rrats]

I have destroyed DVD-RW drive once by setting the write speed to an extreme speed.

[rrats]

On 12/9/2020 at 11:52 PM, WillOfTheLand said:

I was greeted by the sound of the HDD screeching as is grinded to a halt.

Good thing it was an HDD.