Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[N1C2010]

My friend decided to build his first gaming PC. I was there with him when he built it along with another friend, who helped me build mine. This friend of mine who was building his computer lets call him Max. Bought a G1.Sniper Z87 Mobo and with all his wisdom purchased an i7 4820K, I didn't pay attention to the box so I assumed he got the matching socket. At first it wouldn't fit and he was a bit suspicious so my other friend, lets call him Luke, decided to have a go at putting it in meanwhile I was sitting back watching and decided to check the box. As I realised what CPU he bought Luke called out "Did it!". Most of the pins were completely bent or snapped and would never work again. He lost $400 AUD. Max then ordered an i7 4770K 3 weeks later, only I was invited to help this time and I assembled all the parts outside the case and it posted. Max wanted put the components into the case so I let him and first he forgot the I/O shield no biggy we fixed that. Then the second time he put the Mobo in he practically dragged it across the bottom of the case. It didn't post,  I immediately suspected what was wrong ( I was right) and turns out his CPU Cooler was to tall for his case as well...

 

Money Max Lost: $750 AUD

$400 for i7 4820K destroyed

$225 for G1.Sniper Z87 destroyed

$125 for NH-D14 because it was cheaper to replace this rather than the case

I'm happy only I actually worked on my PC. Which worked first time no problems.

[Legion]

I once managed to get superglue on one of the Cherry MX red switches of a Max Keyboard Nighthawk X9 keyboard (don't ask). After making my best effort to remove the glue, the switch, while loosened from the glue, no longer functioned. The entire keyboard became a $150 paperweight, but it wasn't the first keyboard I had rendered worthless. My first ever mechanical keyboard was a Razer BlackWidow Ultimate before I learnt how crappy Razer products are. I had updated the firmware on the keyboard and I did not like some of the changes Razer had made. I went to roll the firmware back and bricked the keyboard in the process. I damaged a third mechanical keyboard when I attempted to tighten what appeared to be a loose screw on the back only to discover that the screw was made of plastic, so overtightening caused the screw to snap. To my credit, it has been some time since I have harmed any innocent keyboards and I take much greater care these days.

 

Superglue spilt onto my htc one while I wasn't paying attention, just went and borrowed some nail varnish remover from my sister. Cotton swab + acetone = <333

[llama16plays]

Using my old shitty iMac G5 and in an attempt of sorting applications in a better manner than mac OS comes in, I accidentally deleted half of my stock applications that is vital to the computer functioning. I took that piece of sh*t, sold it to my sister and got a mac mini, which was also a stupid idea because it has to be the most underpowered piece of shit in existence... After being fed up with the mac operating system, I sold my mac mini to my sister and got a core i7 2600k with a gtx 560ti and here I am.

Thats Apple for ya.

[JoshK]

Asking my dad to hold a screw to hold my H100i waterblock on and then having him drop in on the mobo tray

 

Plugging the HDMI cable into the motherboard and not the graphics card and then calling my mobo manufacturer and asking y it wasnt posting

[DEA]

how long ago was this?

it would be lik 4-5ys now

[Simmytu]

I've made couple of mistakes now.
One is, kept advising my parents to buy Packard Bell computers when I was young and I still have a bad feeling for the wasted money on replacement parts. Agh €600+ on HDD, reformatting HDD and RAM, are they so greedy?
Second is, bought a Samsung Chronos laptop which costed my about €1200 since I thought that Samsung is a quality brand and it broke after 5 months of usage. Literally in every single month there was some serious issue 

Third, bought Trust Tytan 2.1 speakers, I had luckily solved the ground loop issue that annoyed me more then anything else. 

Forth, gave my trusty Corsair USB to friend of mine and he broke it  :mellow:

 

Luckily I've got my purchase money back from Wehkamp and now I'm waiting till the summer for buying the parts  :lol:

Hopefully there will be no shenanigans around when assembling the build. :rolleyes:

Edited April 21, 2014 by Simmytu

[Gicu]

Upgrading too often!

It is best to wait for a few generations.

[Grimsfire]

Reinstalled Windows on my HP Labtop after COMPLETELY reformatting the harddrive. Then finding out that approx 20% of the drivers are proprietary and HP doesnt have the ones i need on their site. To this day i only have 1 usb 2.0 port out of 2 and no usb 3.0, as well as network speed is limited to approx 500KB/s. Windows is now recognized as counterfeit because the key that came with it doesnt work... 

[Gicu]

@Grimsfire

You need to send a e-mail to them explaining the whole thing, I am sure they can help you.

[Grimsfire]

@Grimsfire

You need to send a e-mail to them explaining the whole thing, I am sure they can help you.

Nah already built my main rig i use all the time. Only use the laptop for ROG connect in the 1 USB port that works anyways haha so not worth the hassle

[lWindowsl]

When I was about 9, I got my first computer until I took it apart and ripped the CPU along with the heatsink without pulling the little lever. It was an AMD CPU so all the pins on it were bent. Here's the fun part: I jammed the CPU with all the broken pins into the socket and broke even more pins. Wasn't allowed to mess with computers for a good three or four years before I could build my current rig.

[CAKEwasTRUE]

When I was about 9, I got my first computer until I took it apart and ripped the CPU along with the heatsink without pulling the little lever. It was an AMD CPU so all the pins on it were bent. Here's the fun part: I jammed the CPU with all the broken pins into the socket and broke even more pins. Wasn't allowed to mess with computers for a good three or four years before I could build my current rig.

 

MFW

 

[Guest nightowl21]

i once messed up a pc that had Ubuntu and window xp  by trying to re install Ubuntu on it. that caused it to no longer boot up

[Doxxy]

So here's a school story! F*ck.

Well, me and my friend Danny were messing around in the ict room sending each other emails and sh*t and he sends me an email containing: "8==D"

I clicked "Forward" and made him look at my screen where the recipient would of been the head of ict, also one of the deputies.

Anyway, I decided to write a reply saying "lol, is that the size of yours because it's tiny"

Oh. Sh*t. It was still forwarded to my ict head and I already sent.

Sh*t f*ck fuu.

He came down 15 mins later and we got f*cking bollocked.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

I thought the SSD I bought was broken and almost returned it before someone told me to plug it into a different Sata port and it worked.

[TheNinjaNextDor]

Here's some more:

 

I was installing OS X and I completely wrecked my Windows install.

 

I was using a tiny USB drive so I had to use a wrench to get it out since it was so small and ripped my IO shield. The USB port still works though.

[D3LTA9]

I have done a few stupid things over the years, one that stands out was when I fried my 7800GT.

 

It was late on a cold winters night and I was about to watch a movie in bed, I had forgotten that I had unplugged the, what must have been at the time, VGA cable going to my tv. It was dark and cold and in the frantic fumbling reaching over awkwardly to the back of my PC I managed to somehow dislodge a metal PCI slot blanking plate which promptly fell on top of my 7800GT's exposed PCB while the pc was running. The card shorted and I had to go pick up a really terrible 8600GT untill I could afford a proper replacement,on the plus side the 8600GT produced lovely DX10 slide shows.... <_<

 

On a more recent note when I was ghetto mounting my SSD the other day I thought I had somehow fried it because after I had remounted it I could not pick it up in the bios. Checked the connections again and the sata cable was out a little bit, pushed it back in a bit more and still no action. Started to panick a bit but turns out a cable was just knocking out the sata connection everytime I closed the case back up :rolleyes:

[samosnik]

Once i put so much therminal paste on a cpu. When i removed the cooler the cpu was stuck on the cooler. it just got riped out. but it worked fine after

[Cwazywazy]

Once i put so much therminal paste on a cpu. When i removed the cooler the cpu was stuck on the cooler. it just got riped out. but it worked fine after

These are just because old thermal paste acts as glue. I've had to use a flathead screwdriver to pry old P4s off their heatsinks before.

 

I sliced into the chip of one of my old 8800GTSs trying to delid it. Killed the card.

 

One time I was really angry and my poor netbook was the only thing within reach at the table. Smashed screen and dead HDD. I want to install XP onto a flash drive or SD card and use it for something but it doesn't let me. (Something along the lines of "BIOS cannot access this device to boot" or something.)

 

On the note of old Geforce cards my P4 rig (I rebuilt it and it's on my desk next to me) had a 7600GS that has been to hell and back. It's never failed despite being overclocked a lot (I think one time I almost got double the VRAM clock or something.) and one time a push-pin on the heatsink came out when I was putting it back in. I didn't notice for a week that the card was severely overheating. (250+ F) Still working perfectly fine. The P4 that's currently in the rig is a 3.2GHz that has a good heatsink on it. (I've pushed it to over 1.7v and it still doesn't overheat. In order to not overheat the fan has to be on max and it sounds like a jet engine..) While I have gotten high voltages I haven't gotten over 3.7GHz. (I remember when I used this rig all the time I got the 3.0GHz CPU to 4GHz but it wasn't very stable.)

[terrytek]

These are just because old thermal paste acts as glue. I've had to use a flathead screwdriver to pry old P4s off their heatsinks before.

 

I sliced into the chip of one of my old 8800GTSs trying to delid it. Killed the card.

 

One time I was really angry and my poor netbook was the only thing within reach at the table. Smashed screen and dead HDD. I want to install XP onto a flash drive or SD card and use it for something but it doesn't let me. (Something along the lines of "BIOS cannot access this device to boot" or something.)

 

On the note of old Geforce cards my P4 rig (I rebuilt it and it's on my desk next to me) had a 7600GS that has been to hell and back. It's never failed despite being overclocked a lot (I think one time I almost got double the VRAM clock or something.) and one time a push-pin on the heatsink came out when I was putting it back in. I didn't notice for a week that the card was severely overheating. (250+ F) Still working perfectly fine. The P4 that's currently in the rig is a 3.2GHz that has a good heatsink on it. (I've pushed it to over 1.7v and it still doesn't overheat. In order to not overheat the fan has to be on max and it sounds like a jet engine..) While I have gotten high voltages I haven't gotten over 3.7GHz. (I remember when I used this rig all the time I got the 3.0GHz CPU to 4GHz but it wasn't very stable.)

250F?? I coulda fried an egg.

[flibberdipper]

These are just because old thermal paste acts as glue. I've had to use a flathead screwdriver to pry old P4s off their heatsinks before.

 

I sliced into the chip of one of my old 8800GTSs trying to delid it. Killed the card.

 

One time I was really angry and my poor netbook was the only thing within reach at the table. Smashed screen and dead HDD. I want to install XP onto a flash drive or SD card and use it for something but it doesn't let me. (Something along the lines of "BIOS cannot access this device to boot" or something.)

 

On the note of old Geforce cards my P4 rig (I rebuilt it and it's on my desk next to me) had a 7600GS that has been to hell and back. It's never failed despite being overclocked a lot (I think one time I almost got double the VRAM clock or something.) and one time a push-pin on the heatsink came out when I was putting it back in. I didn't notice for a week that the card was severely overheating. (250+ F) Still working perfectly fine. The P4 that's currently in the rig is a 3.2GHz that has a good heatsink on it. (I've pushed it to over 1.7v and it still doesn't overheat. In order to not overheat the fan has to be on max and it sounds like a jet engine..) While I have gotten high voltages I haven't gotten over 3.7GHz. (I remember when I used this rig all the time I got the 3.0GHz CPU to 4GHz but it wasn't very stable.)

I got one of my old LGA 775 P4 EE's to 5GHz at 2.3v...

[Brazsty]

My biggest mistake must have been to buy a pre built acer. God damn it cost me 1000usd and sucked c*ck. Everything have been upgraded since and i will NEVER buy a prebuilt again. Thank god i know how to build a computer now.

[hobsonshah]

Did not plug in one of my 6pin cables on my gpu and the psu sparkled while playing bf3 and it also took my mobo, ram and cpu. Somehow my 6950 survived.

[LDG]

Installing windows xp in OS mode..     

[GokuLy]

This happened to my cousin. When I was a little kid my cousin had a computer running on that good ol' windows 98. Instead of properly shutting it down, he would pull the cord...It also had so many viruses from random games he played. Even had the nerve to blame me for them even though I was never at his house. LOL Yeah that computer didn't last long.