Building PCs...

[SignatureSigner]

Yall ever building a PC and when you turn it on it doesn't turn on at all or it turns on and doesn't post or something? What's the stupidest thing you forgot when you built a PC?

 

I'll go first:

I built my first PC last night. Sorry, 'tested' because I don't have the case yet and I wanted to make sure everything worked. I put everything together, CPU MOBO ETC. I am so excited to turn it on and when I shorted the pins it all booted up but I had no display. I sat there tring different things and after dragging out another monitor, changing cables, and restarting I realized that the monitor was trying to input from analog (VGA) and I was using DVI...  

I then pushed the button on the monitor to auto detect inputs and the bios pops up... 

I felt so stupid for not checking the monitor

What are your stupid mistakes when building PCs?

[WhitetailAni]

I've built 3 systems.

1 with a Pentium III, a PCI video card, and 256MB of RAM.

It wasn't too hard - it's a lot harder to damage your CPU when it goes in a socket, and the only silly thing I did was misalign the RAM sticks.

My second build was with a Phenom II X4 955 and a GTX 750 for my Minecraft server. Nothing went wrong when I first built it.

Third was a 486. I don't know if it works yet.

Anyway, I tinker around with my main build a LOT. I open the case up maybe 2-4 times a month.

Well, one time I was zip-tieing a fan to my SpinQ, and I went to test it. I plugged in the PSU, flipped the switch and... nothing.

Not even a power LED.

I panicked.

Spent 3 minutes making sure the switch was turned on, everything was connected, etc.

And right as I went to post a question, I noticed that the 24-pin connector wasn't plugged in.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Let's see.

Power button died, making me thinmy PC was dead for about 4 months

The LGA 775 board I have right now needs a CMOS clear Everytime I switch gpus, thought it was killing gpus.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

The LGA 775 board I have right now needs a CMOS clear Everytime I switch gpus, thought it was killing gpus.

Weird.

I'm glad my motherboard doesn't do that.

[Radium_Angel]

Way back in the AT  PSU days, the power cables were two separate cables. Colour-coded to be sure (you were supposed to ensure the black end were next to each other), but you could plug them in wrong and they would happily fit. 

Well, I did that, not noticing the cables were wrong-way-round and powered it up.

The resultant release of magic smoke blew every fuse in the house, and a quarter-sized hole in my shiny new mobo.

 

...oops.

[CommanderAlex]

The only times I ever think of my PC not turning on is when I do some maintenance on it by shutting off the PSU power switch to OFF on the back. I go ahead and put the computer on my desk and hit the power switch and nothing...Then I figure out "Oh damn it, its the PSU switch,": flip the switch and the power button and it comes to life. 

 

Another incident I had was I did a "organ transplant" of my PC from a NZXT Phantom 530 to a Corsair 900D. I spent hours doing cable management and getting the system "just right" with 2 DVD drives; one is a DVD drive combo and the other is a Blu Ray player ($60 waste of money). I turned on the PC and saw no ODDs showing up. Found out I forgot to plug in the SATA power cables so it was an easy fix. 

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Way back in the AT  PSU days, the power cables were two separate cables. Colour-coded to be sure (you were supposed to ensure the black end were next to each other), but you could plug them in wrong and they would happily fit. 

Well, I did that, not noticing the cables were wrong-way-round and powered it up.

The resultant release of magic smoke blew every fuse in the house, and a quarter-sized hole in my shiny new mobo.

 

...oops.

I tried connecting an AT power supply with an ATX form factor to a power strip connected to an extension connected to a power strip connected to an outlet, just for Molex power to see if it would work.

The power supply let out the magic smoke, and everything else that it was connected to turned off.

Including the washing machine and dryer.

I just flipped the breaker and left the power supply alone, but forgot to restart the washer.

My mom was very confused why our snow stuff wasn't clean in time for our Michigan trip.

[WhitetailAni]

3 minutes ago, SpiderMan said:

Another incident I had was I did a "organ transplant" of my PC from a NZXT Phantom 530 to a Corsair 900D. I spent hours doing cable management and getting the system "just right" with 2 DVD drives; one is a DVD drive combo and the other is a Blu Ray player ($60 waste of money). I turned on the PC and saw no ODDs showing up. Found out I forgot to plug in the SATA power cables so it was an easy fix. 

Occasionally one of my hard drives won't show up.

It's because they don't have locking SATA connectors.

And here's the kicker.

Usually whenever I do anything inside my case, one of the cables gets unplugged, whether it be my SSD, or one of my HDDs. Well, the one time I want the cable to come off, it doesn't!

 

EDIT:
The SATA connector on my M4 doesn't have an amazing locking mechanism. I was removing it to add a heat sink I had laying around. I opened up the case and unscrewed its screws while holding it in place.

So I take it and pull out the front. Every other time I've done this, the cables come right off. I've replaced the cables as well.

But this time, nope! It jerks back and me and I hit my wrist.

And of course it hits at the right angle to slice my wrist.

[CommanderAlex]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

Occasionally one of my hard drives won't show up.

It's because they don't have locking SATA connectors.

And here's the kicker.

Usually whenever I do anything inside my case, one of the cables gets unplugged, whether it be my SSD, or one of my HDDs. Well, the one time I want the cable to come off, it doesn't!

I've managed to not do that before with my HDDs and power cables. I thought the HDD was dead and all my information was lost(not vital information). Turns out the SATA power was not connected. 

 

My dad has a prebuilt that I put a inside a new case as there was no room in the OEM case. He has it inside one of those office desk "cubbies" with a wood door on the front. Well I had to help him investigate strange issues with the PC and there's this lip from the front edge that sticks up so when I was sliding the PC out, it kept getting stuck. I was like, "Is there a cable still plugged in??" and there was none. So I pulled harder and the two front plastic feet came off (Corsair 100R) and I completely forgot about it...thought I was too strong for a second there.

[flashiling]

went to a friends house for the weekend to play games with him and go to a party, so brought my desktop too.

had some issues with my cable length and the wall outlets so after messing aroudn with the cables for about 15 min i tried turning on my pc and it did absolutely nothing.

and got a little bit scared, untill i realaized that i hadn't plugged my psu into the extension cord.

[manikyath]

probably the most hilareous thing is the 'forgot to plug in the power supply' thing.

- everything connected: check

- power supply on: check

- power cord plugged into the power supply: check

- look under the table, to a dangling power cord: ...

 

other favourites include plugging into a power strip that is turned off, a power strip that is not plugged in, the front panel wires falling off the stupid header on the motherboard, and the "PS_ON" signal having a bad connection in the 24-pin.

 

honorable mention to newer series of intel wifi cards, which fail POST if they're in an unsupported system.

[WhitetailAni]

15 minutes ago, manikyath said:

honorable mention to newer series of intel wifi cards, which fail POST if they're in an unsupported system.

I can't put an AX210 card in an X570 Steel Legend?