Have you had any silly moments when building a pc?

[Citrusflavour01]

For me, I had a few moments Forgetting to plug in the power connector and stressing overnight over nothing. I also forgot to turn the power on for the PSU a few times... Once I left the sticker on a CPU cooler but luckily I didn't come across any issues.

[filpo]

Front panel connectors 

[Budget DIY]

Trying to add a screw to screw the GPU onto the case. While it was turned on. (even back in those days, PC's were always supposed to be powered on) It dropped on my mobo, sparks, smoke and an power outage. It had burned several traces on the back of the mobo, but it would power back on. Turned out the traces went to the onboard audio, which got totally fried. Turned onboard audio off in the BIOS, added an PCI soundcard, and used this board for about 10 years.

 

Damage was horrible, and it wasn't a budget board back in those days. (mobo was at least 3x the cost of the CPU I ended up using) But considering how it happened: silly moment.

[WereCat]

First time plugging in the USB C front panel connector. 

I thought I plugged it in all the way but it was not working. It turned out that I only had to apply very unreasonable amount of force. 

[PDifolco]

Some years ago a friend told me that after some years I should repaste my cooler, was a 120mm Corsair AIO

At the time I didn't build anything only got prebuilts

Did the repaste and then temps were atrocious, thought it was dead and got a replacement!

When I started installing the new AIO I realized I forgot to plug the pump back...

[Citrusflavour01]

4 hours ago, Budget DIY said:

Trying to add a screw to screw the GPU onto the case. While it was turned on. (even back in those days, PC's were always supposed to be powered on) It dropped on my mobo, sparks, smoke and an power outage. It had burned several traces on the back of the mobo, but it would power back on. Turned out the traces went to the onboard audio, which got totally fried. Turned onboard audio off in the BIOS, added an PCI soundcard, and used this board for about 10 years.

 

Damage was horrible, and it wasn't a budget board back in those days. (mobo was at least 3x the cost of the CPU I ended up using) But considering how it happened: silly moment.

Oh wow! The fact you went on and used the mobo for another 10 years is amazing. 

[Budget DIY]

23 minutes ago, Citrusflavour01 said:

Oh wow! The fact you went on and used the mobo for another 10 years is amazing. 

It's currently @ my GF's. It technically still works just fine. However, the BIOS did kinda die. When you turn it on, it can take up to 15-30 minutes, to actually post. Like, literally. Turn it on, and nothing will happen. Leave it be for 15-30 minutes, and it would eventually post. Used that board (Asus M2N SLI Deluxe, which was AM2 IIRC) for that entire time, 24/7. Btw, it would instantly start up, if you would just put the PC to sleep mode.

[hollyh88]

Yup changed the cpu (2600x to 3800xt) which required a bios update. I did that. And it got into the bios. And all seemed fine. But when trying to boot into windows it didn't work. So I tried desperately to search for the issue for hours. Until by dumb luck I was just like, fck it ill try to push the USB cable in harder and that was it. The cable just got a bit loose for some reason. So hours wasted trying the most complex crap only for it to be a simple issue. I learned from that to just first try the simple solutions before trying the difficult ones.

[cooky560]

My very first build probably 20 years ago now, was before cases came with the motherboards spacers pre-attached, having never built a PC before, and having limited internet access at the time as smartphones weren't really a thing yet. I bolted the motherboard directly to the back panel of the case without thinking anything was wrong.

 

Next thing I knew something was very wrong. 

 

Now for those last 20 years I have double and triple checked everything in a build before pressing power.

[Citrusflavour01]

2 hours ago, cooky560 said:

My very first build probably 20 years ago now, was before cases came with the motherboards spacers pre-attached, having never built a PC before, and having limited internet access at the time as smartphones weren't really a thing yet. I bolted the motherboard directly to the back panel of the case without thinking anything was wrong.

 

Next thing I knew something was very wrong. 

 

Now for those last 20 years I have double and triple checked everything in a build before pressing power.

 

Nothing is wrong with double and triple checking things before powering on!

[rrats]

I've cut SATA when changing drives. Do not ask

[DeerDK]

Not exactly building, but after relocating my pc and upgrading to windows 10, I started hearing a clicking noise from the pc cabinet. 

I ended up taking it apart and going over it with an empty toilet paper roll in order to locate the sound. That's when I realized the clicks still came from the cabinet after I took out the pc. It turned out to be my powerbar clicking.... 

[Dabombinable]

On 5/1/2023 at 5:12 PM, filpo said:

Front panel connectors 

It is always made worse when they are stuck behind the mobo...and due to through hole components the board has to come out to retrieve them.

[AltReality]

Just yesterday tried to seat the GPU failing for half an hour. Called my brother for help and he noticed it required three slots to be removed

 

 

[Morris_lee_9116]

one time i accidentally put the piezo beeper on the RGB header because the header is at the place where my last board's beeper header is(both are MSI board)

[thrasher_565]

i killed a few pci slots by plunging in a audio cable wrong i guess... i refuse to plug em in now...

 

another time i ripped out my old asus rampage 2 extreme and put it in a different case and black screen. so i ripped it part and still nothing turns out the bios chip was slightly out...

 

 

Edited May 6, 2023 by thrasher_565

[TetraSky]

My "silly moment" was basically blanking out for a second while in the process of putting the CPU in the socket. I ended up inserting my CPU sideway, corner first, into the LGA socket. Wrecked that brand new motherboard.

I don't even know what happened for sure. I still regret destroying that board 13 years later... man. $300 in the trash.

These days I make extra sure to go super slow with LGA.

[Egon3]

My silly moment was when I was building a PC with a friend and we had the motherboard in the case, applied the thermal paste, then realized we didn't put the back piece on for the CPU cooler. So we flipped the case upright to put it on and droooop the thermal paste gets all over the motherboard and in the cracks directly below the CPU. Tried to clean it up but after everything was together the system wouldn't boot.

 

Since we weren't sure whether or not the mess of thermal paste actually caused the issue, we just returned the motherboard as defective to Amazon and got a replacement!