Worst Tech mistake you have ever made?

[batt3ryac1d]

when I was doing my first build I put the RAM in backwards and broke the PCB on the RAM stick.

How hard did you push it holy shit.

[jtchimesin]

I bought an Alienware x51 R2. Blew $1200 on the system 2 1/2 years ago. Only if I knew to just build one at the time...

[batt3ryac1d]

I bought an OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2. It stopped working after 1 month and OCZ refused to replace it.

Ocz suck my SSD is like 2 years old and it's read write is already down to 100-ish(same as my HDD) from like 500 when it was new.

[Bamferator]

I had my system in pieces, cleaning out dust and the like, and I had taken off my CPU heatsink to clean around the socket.

Everything was unplugged except the fans, which I had just reinstalled, so I jumped the power supply to make sure they were all getting power.

Then I smelled something burning. Needless to say I shut off the power REAL QUICK.

Turns out I had left the 4-pin CPU power connector plugged in and my naked CPU was trying it's best to start on fire.

Whoops.

The CPU survived and I can scarcely believe it. Shoutout to the AMD Phenom ii 955.

[Mikeyj426]

Buying a shitload of hard drives in bulk (for my work) because they ship them to you right off the line, so when one goes bad you can assume that the 5 before and 5 after went bad also, and they did.

[Mikepixx3]

As the title says, What has been your biggest mistakes you've made during your first build?

 

[bry.yyyy]

Broke some pin 

[redhalo626]

Came all over my computer when it booted up for the first time.

[VolkA]

Came all over my computer when it booted up for the first time.

^^ Best answer. Haha.

[Shroomster]

Nothing? I was well prepared and did it right.

[shadowblitz3]

stepped on a screw

[The Crazed Child]

Came all over my computer when it booted up for the first time.

I guess you could call it a "white-themed" build now

[The Crazed Child]

remove post

 

 

[Ekkyekky]

I flipped the switch on the back of a power supply from 240 to 117 volts while it was plugged in... BANG

[daldaren]

My biggest mistake was believing my middle school project of building a computer in a Pizza Box was going to last without fire.

[Williamchan87]

well lets just say I'm a tab hoard, just like Linus. I pretty much killed my cpu. and used all my ram

[The Core 2 Quad Runner]

Fixing a kids Win-Vista laptop... EVERY TIME VISTA HAS A FREAKING ISSUE, HE THINKS I DID IT.

I also charge him, because he makes me work with vista so.

[robinkle]

Buying EVGA Gpu with waterblock. Very expensive and hard to find a buyer.

[bbtgp]

I linked two computers together with an IDE cable (mobo to mobo) hopeing to double the performance in the late 90s. They never worked again.

[DanTheDJ]

plugged usb3 header into mobo wrong way round, broke pin...

[ArticTiger]

During the initial build of my current pc, I did not bother booting the pc up outside of the case to see if it would Post. 

 

Everything was put together and it was looking nice and shiny, so I press the power button, the fans start spinning up, nothing.

 

Decided to call it a day there and after hours of troubleshooting the next day, sent my motherboard out for an RMA. 

 

New motherboard arrives, I start building it again (everything except the motherboard and obviously cpu and ram was still in the case). Power it on, fans start spinning, and nope, nothing.

 

Send the motherboard out again and get a refund, buy a different motherboard. Same deal.

 

I even bought one of those post-diag code pci displays, and it was indicating power isue or something along those lines (this is a few years back now, so it's a bit hazy).

 

I start taking the entire pc apart, and hook it up outside of the case and it boots! I was very happy but confused as you can imagine.

 

Start plugging it back into the case... and you guessed it. A complete no-go.

 

In the end I was sat there for 6 months with a pc that didn't work until I figured out that the screw I used to secure the PSU to the case was too long and it was somehow triggering a reset loop or something.

 

I will never ever forget this as part of my troubleshooting now. 

[Captain Matt]

Mismatched sata cables on motherboards to drives.
Instead of really solving the problem, I just got an ssd and did a new install. haha

[Tony.C]

On my very first build, I bought and used 16 gigs of ram when the cpu supports 12gigs.

 

Forgetting to put the IO shield on the case prior to installing the mobo.

[Locrin]

Managed to plug the usb front port connector into the e-sata plug on the motherboard. USB is 5V eSata is 12V.... RIP, everything I plugged into that port before I realized what I had done. 

[farhanorakzai]

My biggest mistake was forgetting to use hose clamps on my custom loop, so a tube came off the Cpu block drenching my entire system. Also I bought a cyberpowerpc before I started building my own pc's