PC Building Disasters & Close Calls

[WinNut]

Never built a rig but did a little poking around on one.

 

 

I almost bent a few pins while reinstalling a Pentium MMX 233. God damn you, Socket 7.

[AllstaRawR]

I had an AIO liquid CPU cooler spring a leak and start dripping on my GPU. The only reason anything survived was because I was playing Skyrim on max settings and my GPU was overheating. The excess heat caused all of the dripping coolant to evaporate before it could cause a short. And then of course I ripped out the power cord as soon as I heard the hissing sound, because there is no situation where a hissing computer is a good thing. 

 

That was an amazing laugh. Such funny. Much feels.

 

Yeah, I broke one of my 250GB 840's in half trying to undo the sata power cable. Amazingly, Samsung found it amusing enough to RMA it. Good thing I do daily morning backups of my C drive... 

[Gary Da Cat]

Sooo, it was my first time messing around in a computer and i decided i wanted to take the fan and big metal thingy off the big green board to see what was under it. I did... found out it was an old phenom thingy (i still have it now and i think im going to try and get a 4ghz oc) soo after that i just put the heat sink back on with only the thermal paste on the cpu cooler... it still works, but i never really knew how hot it was getting while i was using that computer afterwards...

[deafboy]

Bent a few pins in the socket, took me about 2 hours sorting that out.

Other than that I just really bad luck with components. Had to send half of them off to get ones that actually worked.

 

Was, was that your knee?

 

Nope that was my ankle.  Well a little higher up technically, was right on the medial malleolus (the boney ball section on the inside)

 

[mindfreak]

Took stock heatsink off an Amd Phenom 965 BE and when i pulled up on heatsink the processor came out stuck to the bottom of it..... Luckily i pulled it up straight and no bent pins!

[AddonCustoms]

Worst thing I have done is swapping a CPU between 2 systems and ended up killing the CPU.

 

The most recent though, is when I was cleaning my system I went to remove the CPU heatsink to change the thermal paste, and it pulled out the CPU bending the pins, managed to bend them back, and still works perfectly.

[mindfreak]

Worst thing I have done is swapping a CPU between 2 systems and ended up killing the CPU.

 

The most recent though, is when I was cleaning my system I went to remove the CPU heatsink to change the thermal paste, and it pulled out the CPU bending the pins, managed to bend them back, and still works perfectly.

Same with me, wow stock thermal paste is garbage

[mikeman902]

My X-wife threw it across the room.... X-Wife

[AllstaRawR]

Worst thing I have done is swapping a CPU between 2 systems and ended up killing the CPU.

 

The most recent though, is when I was cleaning my system I went to remove the CPU heatsink to change the thermal paste, and it pulled out the CPU bending the pins, managed to bend them back, and still works perfectly.

 

Done that. Scares the crap out of you when you bend the pins, huh?

[AddonCustoms]

Done that. Scares the crap out of you when you bend the pins, huh?

Hell yeah, especially when the CPU was only a few months old. Needed a clean after I sorted my room, made my system very dusty, in case you were wondering why I cleaned it after only having the system a few months.

 

 

 

 

Same with me, wow stock thermal paste is garbage

 

Its actually happened twice for me, once with stock thermal paste, and once with Arctic Silver.

 

 

 

But I think its down to my motherboard having a crappy CPU lock.

[Shakaza]

Myself, I've never done too many terrible things to my PCs. Oh, I've dropped a screwdriver in a motherboard, dropped a RAM stick right out of the same motherboard when I was moving it to my new PC, I lost and found several screws when I was building Anubis, my shaky hands probably nearly destroyed my motherboard...you know, small stuff like that.

My friend's mom, on the other hand, actually dropped a computer on her foot, which, obviously, broke her foot, but I think the computer was okay. Also, she gave me one of her old computers with a Pentium 4 era Celeron at 2.8 GHz and 256 MB if DDR RAM. It was smothered in dust infused with cigarette smoke. It wasn't a "disaster", per se...well, okay, it kinda was. The computer would shut off because the CPU was overheating; there was NO airflow or anything on the CPU fan or heatsink. I cleaned it up and gave it back.

But, other than that, I don't have anything significant to say.

[TheMidnightNarwhal]

I built mine last saturday and it was my first build. I dropped 3 screws on MOBO, scratched/dragged MOBO on the counter, but that's pretty it. 

[minimoose]

I built my first pc a week ago, I dropped a screw inside of the asus thermal armour, I lost a screw, I broke my hard drive.  I broke the optical drive lock.  

 

I also dropped the cpu heatsink, so its all scratched

I feel awful for you!  It won't always be that hard!  Keep trying, don't give up on the master race!  Also isn't your brand new shiny PC worth it!  LTT runs much better I am guessing (the real benchmark)

[Akolyte]

I feel awful for you!  It won't always be that hard!  Keep trying, don't give up on the master race!  Also isn't your brand new shiny PC worth it!  LTT runs much better I am guessing (the real benchmark)

dude my only stable PC before was an AMD a4 at 1.9GHZ!  It runs SO MUCH FASTER! 

[Konasumi]

I do not have much experience working in my PC, but I once dropped a screw on my motherboard when installing a fan. I had to get a tool to safely remove the screw from the motherboard. Thankfully, no damage was caused.

[Norwegiantweaker]

I built my first pc a week ago, I dropped a screw inside of the asus thermal armour, I lost a screw, I broke my hard drive.  I broke the optical drive lock.  

 

I also dropped the cpu heatsink, so its all scratched

really? ur unlucky bro hahaha

[Akolyte]

really? ur unlucky bro hahaha

but it works

[marioo1182]

I broke 3 standoffs on my first case ever... but it was the cheapest case in existence

 

Other than that, it's been smooth sailing because I'm careful. I've dropped screws under chipset heat sinks and stuff, but they always come out before anyting gets powered

Ya I've found that on cheap case's its actually the taps that are poor.

Just bad quality not the User.

 

I've learned to never cheap out on stuff now haha.

[Maslofski]

while taking my 9800 out of the imposible v9 (literaly, you need to bend stuff to be able to space whise) i accidentaly knocked over a capasitor or something like that. i quickly bend it back and acted as ive it never happened

[Dopey]

Had tea short out a gpu an then almost had the replacement gpu short out with cream soda. The tea got spilt and poured into my case, i was surprised i didn't kill anything else. Found dried tea on spare psy connectors behind the mobo tray, there was tea just millimeters from going into the cpu socket, small pools on the i/o components, even the ram sockets had some tea around them. About after 2 months the cade everything began to small really bad, and i had to buy a new one.

I spilled tea on one of my older rigs and didn't notice how far it went down until I saw dried up tea all over the wall/back of the rig a couple days later bahaha.

 

I also find myself continually reaching into my case while my rig is still on and my knuckles always have a little skirmish with the case fans.

[Rageodontist]

Was helping a friend build a PC over christmas break. A few days before buying all the parts the case went out of stock completely so me being the idiot I am suggested a case without checking the video card link, he had a gigabyte R9 270x . Right before putting in the GPU I saw my mistake so we had to take everything out of the case, saw off the bottom of the 5.25 inch bays to let the video card fit. Genius.

[Stigs]

When I built my computer...I shocked one of my sticks of RAM.  Had to RMA it...it wasn't a disaster, but it was annoying.

[frostin1990]

Going full ninja and catching my own drop of sweat before it fell on the motherboard

[theelitegamer]

I was building my computer, and you know how you pick up the parts and admire there beauty, I was sitting down *I'm like 6'2 so I could build a computer sitting down* and looking under the motherboard admiring it's black PCB... my pitbull thought I was playing with her, and jumped on me and made me drop the motherboard.... I was scared to death

[Joshua Ondangan]

I do remember spilling mountain dew on my gtx 460 back then. it worked after cleaning it a bit and letting it dry off for 3 or 4 days.