Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[Max Caulfield]

Forgot to put the I/O shield

[Crunchy Dragon]

I did a couple stupid things,

 

-Put the RAM in the wrong slots

-Forgot to turn on PSU

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Forgot the front panel cables and wondered why the power button wasn't doing anything. 

4 minutes ago, GamingMemeKing said:

Tightened motherboard screws with a screwdriver. 

This isn't a mistake in itself, just over-tightening them is. 

[Lurick]

Didn't do research and ended up with a crappy computer (2008-2009 timeframe) that I upgraded over time.

Didn't plug in the 4-pin CPU power so it wouldn't turn on.

[Firecheetah13]

Forgot to turn on PSU.

[NoxiousOdor]

Well my first board was with a server board, while it had LGA 1366 sockets I learned that it did not use standard LGA 1366 heatsinks. I am now a proud owner of five heat sinks I am not using

[johndms]

2 minutes ago, GamingMemeKing said:

What mistakes or issues did you encounter (if any) when building your first PC?

The first system I actually purchased the parts for online and attempted to build myself was done around 2001-2002. It was an Asus K7V and an 800MHz Athlon Slot A processor. I never got it to work. Even RMA'd the board only to have it returned "working fine". I realize now, years later, that I purchased ECC ram, so that's probably why it never posted. I ended up putting the board+ram+cpu in the box and hiding it in the closet and using my old PC for another year or two. It eventually got tossed in the garbage. So I guess my biggest mistake was not doing enough compatibility research prior to buying.

[Bananasplit_00]

nothing, like seriously not a thing. i have screwed up a LOAD of things since then, but first build? no problems at all lol

[johndms]

I also built a computer for someone and forgot to use the little brass motherboard standoffs. I screwed the board directly to the case, lol. Corrected that quickly before too many people noticed.

[MegaDave91]

The only hitch my first build suffered was a power supply which was not turned on prior to powering the PC.

[Cyracus]

mistakes? I know not the meaning of the word, I thought out every bit of hackery I performed on my case to make things fit the way I wanted... I guess the side panel hole I cut ended up a couple mm wide on one side if you want to count that

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, Max Caulfield said:

Forgot to put the I/O shield

Done this multiple times. Also forgot to plug in the 4 pin CPU power and freaked because it wouldn't boot. 

[Megah3rtz]

didn't plug in the monitor correctly. shortly later I realized didn't install the CPU correctly, was befuddled as to why it wouldn't POST. 

[Hiitchy]

Forced the wrong speed of ram into a really old computer. The computer wouldn't post after the memory scan (think of those old energy Star rated computers and the 256000k scans of memory they would do) 

[A Silver]

Didn't plug in the CPU power connector...

[kelvinhall05]

I completely overpaid for pretty much everything, namely spending $300 on a first gen i5 system with a dead HDD and $110 on a 5870 1GB.

[Ctown0812]

Got about half way through my build and realized I didn't have any SATA cables.  It was 1am, so I couldn't exactly run out real quick and grab some.  

[Paradine Sage]

Figuring out my cable management took a bit of trial and error, and questioning how much force I should apply to get the CPU to lock in the socket.

[Alariel]

6 minutes ago, Paradine Sage said:

Figuring out my cable management took a bit of trial and error,

This. So much.

[Type 2501]

Use the wrong screw(the one to hold CD drive) on mobo. 

Wrongly set boot drive as slave with IDE cable. 

[Type 2501]

1 hour ago, Hiitchy said:

Forced the wrong speed of ram into a really old computer. The computer wouldn't post after the memory scan (think of those old energy Star rated computers and the 256000k scans of memory they would do) 

I did once bought he wrong speed ram that didn't match the other stick. So it will not boot. 

Back in the days, ram capability is a nightmare. Especially those sd-ram.

[Hiitchy]

1 minute ago, Type 2501 said:

I did once bought he wrong speed ram that didn't match the other stick. So it will not boot. 

Back in the days, ram capability is a nightmare. Especially those sd-ram.

Right? Some of them didn't have the stickers on them, I was trying so hard to line up the notches to see if that even mattered, but didn't know that timing and all these other variables made it a nightmare.

 

The other thing I did that was a mistake was buying a new computer and thinking the motherboard came with IDE ports... I was so disappointed because I saved my hard drive with data expecting to be able to move everything to my sata drive...

[chilicheeseburger]

The RAM i received was lower frequency than what I had ordered but I didn't notice that until I added another 8GB of RAM. Apart from that, the build went fine but I had a huge problem with random bluescreens. It took me a couple of months to figure out that it was a BIOS issue and all I needed to do was update the BIOS. It's been running flawlessly ever since.

[elkenrod]

Cutting my fingers on every sharp edge in the case.

[Type 2501]

47 minutes ago, Hiitchy said:

The other thing I did that was a mistake was buying a new computer and thinking the motherboard came with IDE ports... I was so disappointed because I saved my hard drive with data expecting to be able to move everything to my sata drive...

Sometimes rams just didn't get along with other hardwares, even you get the right speed.

 I had a USB to IDE HDD box at my home, it was such a pain when IDE die.

But I have to say it's gone for good.