Building PTSD (share your stories of pain and failure)

[Fitwip]

I am not a recent PC enthusiast, but a recent builder. I've been researching the "ins and outs" of PC building for over 6 years. I've always been extremely obsessed, starting in early middle school, I would watch videos, read forums and do extensive research every day. This was to a point in which I almost failed school. Now that I have graduated, have a job, and for the first time ... money. I scraped together every penny I could find to build my first PC, one I've been designing and redesigning for over a year now, in preparation for the influx in money. About 2 months ago my goal was met. I used my new creation every day, being so obsessive and grateful I dusted it daily. So absolutely thrilled with my PC, I would randomly run r15 and superposition just to flex on my younger self. Then the inevitable happened, my AIO leaked and killed my motherboard (but not my CPU surprisingly, I thought it would, but i'm grateful it didn't). I was a little caught off guard, I knew it would happen eventually, but not 2 weeks after I installed it. I verified for the second time that I didn't puncture the AIO myself; by making sure I didn't over tighten the fan screws. Sure enough all of the fan screws were at least a centimetre away from the fins, and none of the fins had any blemishes. I accepted the situation, concluded I just got really unlucky, RMA'ed my motherboard and returned my AIO for cash. I borrowed my friends motherboard and managed with a stock cooler despite how uncomfortable it made me. A week later and now I have the money again for a new AIO (I wanted one that just happened to be more expensive). I install it, but shortly after installation I noticed the back plate came bent, causing the block to wobble on top of the CPU socket (I noticed before turning on the PC thankfully). Additionally, some fins were severely bent out of the box. Defeated once again by an AIO, I returned it for cash. I have owned my PC for only 3 weeks now and I have had 2 AIO's and a motherboard break on me. I started to believed I was just hot garbage at building PC's despite my extensive preparation, or I was doing some fatal flaw that I had failed to learn to avoid. Just to add to my anger, I built 2 PC's for my friends near identical in parts, smooth and problem free. Both friends have used their PC's 8+ hours a day for the past month and a half, completely problem free. Now I've built 2 near identical PC's completely problem free and i'm still using someone else's motherboard and a stock cooler only a month after I built my own. The combination of my obsessiveness with my PC's functionally and these frequent failures have given me a very mild case of PTSD, a condition in which I cant look at a PC without thinking of the 20 things that could break. A condition that I almost makes me want to say f**k it, sell everything and buy a pre-built just so something will finally just work.
To conclude my post, I am kindly asking the members of the community and PC master race to 1) Please confirm that these things just happen and I shouldn't go insane, or help me understand what critical error i'm doing wrong to have these frequent and expensive problems. 2) Please share you stories of failure. I think hearing someone else's bad experiences and failures will help me accept my current situation and help me feel less alone with this experience. I appreciate your time.

[zeusthemoose]

1. pc parts come broken, it happens. Air coolers are more reliable than aios, you might want to consider getting one of those instead. 

2. take a look at this thread full of mistakes people (including linus) have made. 

 

[Fitwip]

Thank you. I was unaware of this thread.

[Chris Pratt]

A good air cooler almost always beats an AIO. Now, custom water cooling is a different story, but you just think you have PTSD now.

 

From the sound of it, you made the rookie mistake and went all out on kit you probably didn't need. AIOs come with inherent risks, and they're only worth it in scenarios like extreme overclocking, or an average day in a Intel CPU’s life (Just kidding. Oh, Intel. So fun to poke at.). Even overclocking, you'd be totally fine with a dual tower cooler in most cases, and that's only on higher TDP chips. A single tower would be perfectly fine for overclocking something like a 3600. If you're running stock, the stock cooler even is sufficient, aside from maybe being a little noisy. You didn't mention what CPU you have, but if you do have something like a 3600, an AIO is frankly a ridiculous purchase.

[sub68]

lets see broke countless working hard drive

broke a old laptop by not realizing that there where still screws on the bottom

broke another laptop by smashing the screen agents another laptop that was on the keyboard

trying to pry up a soldered cpu rendering something use less

mess up a side panel paint job by not having good masking tape

ran with a laptop in my hands and tripped the laptop still works I am currently typing on it but the touchpad and battery still doesn't work.

bent a couple of socket pins

I actually learned from these mistakes

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 hour ago, Chris Pratt said:

or an average day in a Intel CPU’s life (Just kidding. Oh, Intel. So fun to poke at.).

Meanwhile my Phenom II X2 is performing it's own little solo with the heatpipe cooler that came with the Black Edition processors. Thing ramps up and down every 5 seconds. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Meanwhile my Phenom II X2 is performing it's own little solo with the heatpipe cooler that came with the Back Edition processors. Thing ramps up and down every 5 seconds. 

550BE?? Does it unlock? I think mine was good for 4.4ghz, somewhere there abouts.

The wraith Prism fan will clip right onto that heat pipe cooler ftw.....

[TempestCatto]

2 hours ago, Fitwip said:

Please confirm that these things just happen and I shouldn't go insane, or help me understand what critical error i'm doing wrong to have these frequent and expensive problems.

Don't think you've done anything wrong. Shite happens unfortunately. I've had A/V equipment in the thousands of dollars fail right out of the box, sometimes we just get unlucky. But what brand of AIO? I know Corsair to be very dependable.

 

2 hours ago, Fitwip said:

Please share you stories of failure.

One time I had a client bring me his PC because he wanted Windows 10 installed on it (back when W10 was still new). He had two drives in his system. He told me "the blue drive, not the Seagate. I have my data backed up." So that's what I did....turned out to be his games drive and he didn't realize it. I didn't realize it because I simply unplugged the other drive and just started the installation right away. Well he blamed me and I never got paid for that (even recovered the majority of the data on that drive too).  

[EvilVir]

Mine PTSD is well documented in two other threads. Long story short: I exchanged AIO for $1500 EKWB custom water cooling loop, just to get same (or maybe even worse) thermal performance that I had with off the shelf AIO. Due to multiple problems along the line whole build took me more than a month and I'm very unpleased with how it turned out. And the final nail to this coffin - while I was struggling with that stupid water loop I managed to do all sorts of damage all over the place. Had to replace DP cable, front case panel (Evolv X, panel alone costed me around $50 with shipping).

 

I have three other machines acting as all sort of local servers. With all of them I had three goals: small, quiet, packed with parts (mostly ssds). And I almost achieved that, just the case manufacturers are complete morons, designing their cases in such a way that there is plenty of wasted space everywhere, that you can't do anything about it and, unless you want to use a driller, you need to mount everything in some randomly pre-defined places. This is insane. Let's take Bitfenix Phenom micro-atx case. There is so much room inside it, you can literally stack eight 3.5" and like twenty 2.5" drives but noooo sir! Some idiot decided that only space you have for the drives are... on the side panels! And each time you open this thing you rip half of the cables.

 

And just don't let me started on all these damn youtubers with their worthless tech reviews. This alone gives me PTSD and pain. Watching them you learn that there is no better screwdrivers set than iFix It, which is totally overpriced garbage, everyone is one big happy family of EKWB, and water cooling in general, advocates, and then you sit there staring at your just-bought loop, exactly matching one they showed and praying that your rig would not melt. That's when you realize how much bullshit is going around. How all these LTTs, GNs and other "test" the hand-picked parts sourced by manufacturers PR departments, in the air-conditioned rooms on open-benches. And you feel like a total moron that got screwed on quite some cash.

 

So cheer up mate! You're not alone in this misery

[Roswell]

What does PTSD have to do with any of this?

[Teddy07]

12 minutes ago, Vitamanic said:

What does PTSD have to do with any of this?

Agreed

I find it is offensive compared to people dealing with PTSD

[18358414]

I was about 14 or 15, I'd worked delivering papers for a couple of years to save up enough to build my own PC.  Couldn't afford all the parts in one go, but bought the mobo, cpu, hdd, and psu in one go and planned to get the ram and the case in the next go.  When I got the ram and the case, I discovered the mobo was doa.  Lucky me, I had to wait a month and a half to buy the ram, so I couldn't just ship it back to the store or swap it. 

 

So I messaged the manufacturer, who offered to have me pay for the shipping so they can test it.  The cost of the shipping was roughly as much as I'd paid for all the parts alone, so I was out of luck.  I'd spent quite a bit of time trying to get that thing to work.  Wasted my whole summer vacation.  And by the time I saved up enough to buy a new mobo, the other parts were already frankensteined into the family computer.

 

This is the story of my failure.

[Fitwip]

On 8/21/2020 at 10:55 AM, Caroline said:

Let me guess: NZXT.

 

It happens. I broke a couple AM2 retention brackets trying to fit the coolers, shocked myself while repairing a PSU, cut my hands while delidding and a couple other minor stuff.

 

Cooler master 240L & 240R

[Fitwip]

On 8/21/2020 at 11:10 AM, Chris Pratt said:

A good air cooler almost always beats an AIO. Now, custom water cooling is a different story, but you just think you have PTSD now.

 

From the sound of it, you made the rookie mistake and went all out on kit you probably didn't need. AIOs come with inherent risks, and they're only worth it in scenarios like extreme overclocking, or an average day in a Intel CPU’s life (Just kidding. Oh, Intel. So fun to poke at.). Even overclocking, you'd be totally fine with a dual tower cooler in most cases, and that's only on higher TDP chips. A single tower would be perfectly fine for overclocking something like a 3600. If you're running stock, the stock cooler even is sufficient, aside from maybe being a little noisy. You didn't mention what CPU you have, but if you do have something like a 3600, an AIO is frankly a ridiculous purchase.

I use a 10700, I bought the aio in preparation for a 10900k that i wish to overclock

[Voids.sleet]

Just seem like one of those things that happens from the sound of it.

 

Let's see, I've had loads of things go wrong.

 

First one I remember, this was back in 99/2000, I was cleaning the family computer (was 14 at the time) and I took the heatsink off the CPU to give it a good clean. I ended up putting it back on without any paste, poof went the CPU.

 

Couple of months later, I get my very own pc given to me by my gran, guess who deleted "system32" thinking it wasn't needed...

 

Fast forward to 2007, I statically charged and killed a brand new, just out of the box motherboard. 

 

Later on I bought a new HDD and dropped it, no replacement there under warranty as it was my fault.... 

 

My next pc after that was a lovely x79 build. Let's see, I accidentally broke a catch on one of the ram slots. 

 

I had 2x ATI 7950's in the system and decided I wanted a 3rd. Without realising I scraped and broke one of the traces on the back of the PCB as I was installing it. I turned it on and smoked the GPU and the PCI slot....

 

Later on on the same pc I got a tpm and decided to encrypt a hard drive, guess who bricked the hard drive...

 

After that I had a laptop my sister sat on.

 

The only thing I haven't had a issue with is the little Intel nuc I have had but tell you what, as long as you learn what's happened and you don't repeat it everything is golden.

[Lakobrija]

Me reading this topic with knowing people with actual diagnosed PTSD since civil war: PATHETIC

[HerrKaLeu]

Many years ago bought a new PC with an Athlon 1400. This was my last complete PC. At the time that was the fastest CPU (inc. Intel). There was no lid on the core and there was the trick to allow changing multipliers for OC by painting graphite from a pencil over some of the exposed contact (graphite conducts electricity and would close the contacts). I have no idea if that trick actually worked, if the mobo allowed OC, or if the cooler would have sufficed. That was the first time I would have assembled a cooler. 

 

But when mounting the cooler back on, I scratched the top of the un-lidded core. Of course, the PC didn't start after this "upgrade". I contacted the store and acted like their computer broke and they had me send it back. They, of course, noticed what is going on, and I paid them to install a new CPU. They only had an Athlon 1333 in stock. So my adventure into OC my 1400, yielded lost days, about 350 Euros and a slower CPU. No, I didn't try to unlock this again..... 

[Arika]

Does getting a front panel IO pin getting stabbed under my fingernail count? 

[HugoVrana]

In spring 2019 i ordered all my parts so i can my own PC, and enter the PCMR.

I bought a Vega64 GPU. I did little research, and somehow i did not figured out how bad that GPU is. Because i hat some second thoughts about the cooling, i went with the ROG version. (3 fans and massive heat sink seemed like adequate cooling).

 

Little did i know, following events occured :

• After building the PC, and figuring out that you need both CPU power cables plugged in, otherwise the system doesn't boot up, i could see all the RGB glory.
• My GPU overheated after i run the very first game i installed (AC Oddyssey). How did i solved this problem? -> Sidepanel went off the case. Quick and dirty.
• Few days later, i started to get some artifacts and occasional black screen for few seconds. I figured, my GPU is probably wrongly installed.
• I reinstalled the GPU, the driver, changed the display cable and the monitor, but the issue persisted.
• I decided, to let my reseller replace the GPU, with the same model, but the next GPU was exactly as bad.
• Soon enough, the RTX lineup launched few days after, so i returned my Vega, and got a 2070 super.
• Of course my first RTX did not work properly. Returned the card one more time, got slightly better but still trashy case, and been running it for 2 years now.

 

• 1 moth after, the Ryzen 3000 got anounced.

[Warin]

That is the nature of computing. If you wait for the latest and greatest, you will never end up buying anything.

 

I bought a Ryzen 7 3700X and a Radeon 5700XT in early July.  I could have waited until this fall and get a Zen 3 CUP and a big Navi GPU, but I know from hard experience that I would have ended up talking myself into waiting for something else.  Also, AC Valhalla, Godfall, and WoW: Shadowlands were free with my purchase, so I decided to take advantage of that promo.

Sometimes I think that I am extremely fortunate.  I have never damaged a PC that I have built during installation or upgrades, Windows just seems to always work for me, and I am often able to sell on my old stuff at decent prices.  I guess I have all the good luck from the pc gods.

[Warin]

Just now, BlueScope819 said:

Yeah at a time like July it's perfectly fine to go ahead and build, otherwise you will always be waiting for the next big thing. With 5 days to go now though by the time the stuff you order arrives it will be out of date.

Indeed.  I did pick up a B550 motherboard, so if the next Ryzen CPUs are way better, I am pretty much ready for a drop in upgrade.