Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[Ja Krispie]

Maybe my CPU choice honestly.

 

I could have gotten a 4670k for almost the same price but i saw that plenty of games were beginning to recommend 8 cores so I panicked last minute.

I did the same thing when the specs were released for BF4. I was out of the game so I wasn't sure who was better at the time, so I looked for 6 core CPU's and bought the FX6350 for the price thinking it'd be better than a 4 core intel. Boy was I wrong....

[Mush Brain]

I pood on it

[asim1999]

When I upgraded my GPU, I went from a 560Ti to a 650Ti BOOST SC expecting a massive performance boost. Nope. I knew next to nothing about video cards at the time, and really wish I would have done research. I probably would have had a 580 right now had I crunched my numbers and done my homework.

I might tell my maths teacher to rip out the 580 from his server and give it to you 

JK

[MblaZe7run]

I might tell my maths teacher to rip out the 580 from his server and give it to you 

JK

 

Please do! Not really though, I have an HD 6950 now, and it runs great. Only problem is heat, but that will be fixed soon!

[Techteen14]

I was browsing Task Manager today trying to free up some RAM when I saw "File Explorer" was using 200MB of it. I somehow got it in my head that that was the app when it was clearly labeled as a background process. I hit "end task" (which I assume stopped the file system) with NO WARNING DIALOGUE BOX TO BE FOUND and my screen immediately went red (my theme color, so basically my Start screen background). I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del and restart, which brought me to a blue screen. I booted into Windows 8.1 and all was fine.

You know, for all my consistently higher-than-average IQ and tech-savvyness, I can be an idiot sometimes.

In my defense, even just disabling the touch screen keyboard gives you the "Windows may become unusable blah blah blah" box, so why doesn't shutting down the entire file system show some kind of warning?

[foist]

First build I bought a 40GB SSD boot drive. I was able to make it work, somehow, but I imagine the performance was massively gimped. In the samebuild I got the CP1000 as a package deal with my Antec1200. After about a year it starting randomly shutting down my computer and surging. I haven't cheaped out on a PSU since.

 

With my new PC I somehow managed to plug in the H105 pump incorrectly (I blame it on the poor lighting in my basement ). I don't know what it looked like, because while trying to figure it out I unplugged it, looked at the header, and plugged it back in. Powered up again to take a quick look at the BIOS and see if the header was recognized and the Corsiar logo lit up.

[EthanTheFrogMan]

I was browsing Task Manager today trying to free up some RAM when I saw "File Explorer" was using 200MB of it. I somehow got it in my head that that was the app when it was clearly labeled as a background process. I hit "end task" (which I assume stopped the file system) with NO WARNING DIALOGUE BOX TO BE FOUND and my screen immediately went red (my theme color, so basically my Start screen background). I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del and restart, which brought me to a blue screen. I booted into Windows 8.1 and all was fine.

You know, for all my consistently higher-than-average IQ and tech-savvyness, I can be an idiot sometimes.

In my defense, even just disabling the touch screen keyboard gives you the "Windows may become unusable blah blah blah" box, so why doesn't shutting down the entire file system show some kind of warning?

If you restart the File Explorer task it fixes it too

[Raven45XE]

I tried to use cables from one modular PSU to another. 2TB HDD literally caught fire.

[Royal Vengeance]

A shop plugged a 8-pins ATX connector on my brand new 780. And the 6-pins PCI-E connector on the board. They called me saying my 780 (that I bought online but did not want to mess with) was defective. After walking in the workshop where they installed my card and examining the cables (watching LTT teaches a few things), i just slapped the guy behing the head , took my PC and walked out without a word. After a lovely conversation with the owner of the shop, the technician was fired and the owner took care of the RMA for me. I learned to build a PC myself and made several systems for friends and family. 

[n.ZERO_g]

i bought a crappy motherboard at first, and had to deal with regular crashes..blue-screens...
and also made a ghetto solution for an extra fan on top of my case...that fan is just attached by 1 screw jutting out the top of the case...and supported on the other side by the corsair h80i radiator...
hahaa

and when i had my 1st pc (in the athlon 32 days), i used to press the on button...it never used to start...so i had to slap the cabinet...and then press the on button...and it started automatically...
no wonder it end up dying

[szomeret]

I bought an Apple product thinking it'd be better.

It's just different, not better

[MblaZe7run]

Bought a motherboard with 2x DDR3 and 2x DDR2 sockets, then bought an 8GB 4x2GB RAM for it. I was looking for a new motherboard for my spare PC (that my buddy is using for rendering) that I got from my tech center. Rocking that Core 2 Duo E6550.

[DarkRift5]

Why is every other story about vodka?

I bought an Alienware laptop once. *shudders*

[Kamil]

The only real mistake I've done is I bought a motherboard without checking its SLI compatibility. Turned out it was only compatible with Crossfire. Not a huge deal since I only had one GPU anyway, but I had been intending to just throw in a second one down the line as an upgrade rather than needing to completely replace the GPU or the motherboard and CPU.

[Admiral Naismith]

Buying a GTX 970. Seriously, its the only purchase I truly regret. Awful coil-whine and an absolute **** overclocker (got unlucky).

 

I mounted a H60 too tight and slightly off center. Instead of taking it off and reapplying paste, I just unscrewed it a bit and centered it.

Also forgetting to buy rubber fan mounts. 7 fans are loud.

[dylandylandylan]

I was browsing Task Manager today trying to free up some RAM when I saw "File Explorer" was using 200MB of it. I somehow got it in my head that that was the app when it was clearly labeled as a background process. I hit "end task" (which I assume stopped the file system) with NO WARNING DIALOGUE BOX TO BE FOUND and my screen immediately went red (my theme color, so basically my Start screen background). I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del and restart, which brought me to a blue screen. I booted into Windows 8.1 and all was fine.

You know, for all my consistently higher-than-average IQ and tech-savvyness, I can be an idiot sometimes.

In my defense, even just disabling the touch screen keyboard gives you the "Windows may become unusable blah blah blah" box, so why doesn't shutting down the entire file system show some kind of warning?

 

Easy way to remedy this

Windows key + r

Explorer.exe

 

Solved

[Cactu]

I bought an alienware while barely doing any research......

[Cactu]

Tried to defrag my SSD.

the shame

That's amazing

[Ptopman]

I would have to say upgrading from the GTX 480 to the GTX 670, All in all, it was not that much of an improvement and that I could have waited another 6 months for the GTX 7xx to come out. Other than that, I am very happy with every single component in my computer.

[Compl3xity_]

I changed all of my exe files to run on winrar. I had my cousin go into the CMD and BIOS and he magically changed with some blue smoke magic.

[Scoggs]

Bought a 2600k and overclocked it to 4.6

 

Now I really wanna upgrade because... upgrade.  And can't justify the price due to minimal increase in performance vs. price.

[firehunterxs]

Tried to clean inside of a case with a vacuum cleaner rather than blower. Afterefects; a burned graphic card sloth, my 7500le is still waiting inside of a box.

[GregButcher]

I bought a crossfire-only cheap mobo and a 650w psu. I approx saved ~50 in total and I denied myself the future(now present) upgrade of buying a 2nd card for SLI. I know i could've just do crossfire but i don't have trust in AMD products because of  a previous experience.

[VirtualNinja]

This is easy, buying Samsung 840 EVO drives.

[Sir Asvald]

Adding a hard drive that I've had for 6 years. So slow takes for ever for my stuff to load. (I've got an ssd for windows)