# Post your first FAIL



## Norton (Feb 5, 2012)

Most of us have been building our own PC's for a long time and we all know with any success there is a near certain chance for *FAIL*

Post up your first big* FAIL *and the lesson learned from it....

Here's mine:

  I was running a Socket A system with a 1Ghz Athlon at the time. In the middle of playing a game, Unreal I think it was, I heard a snap inside my PC followed by a rattling noise and a crash.

  I was just at the wtf moment when the PC shut down and wouldn't restart??? Pulled the side panel off and realized that the CPU cooler had snapped off the socket and fell off into the bottom of the case.... burned the CPU out in like 10 seconds 

Lesson learned:
  I always ensure my CPU runs as cool as possible and the cooler is mounted securely


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## entropy13 (Feb 5, 2012)

Not that much of a fail though in my case. Forgot to reconnect the PCI-E connectors to the HD 4870.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Feb 5, 2012)

Was overclocking an Athlon X2 4400+ to 3.4ghz when my MSI Nforce 570 board caught on fire. I put the fire out reconnected everything and kept on trying. eventually succeeded so i backed it down to 2.8ghz and its run fine for 5+ years


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## JrRacinFan (Feb 5, 2012)

Socket + wires = death. No need to say more. LOL


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## Yukikaze (Feb 5, 2012)

Cheapo MSI P45 Motherboard + Q6600 (B3) + 1.45v = FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIREEEEEEEE.

Next board was a DFI P45 which could deal with the heat...heh.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 5, 2012)

Norton said:


> Most of us have been building our own PC's for a long time and we all know with any success there is a near certain chance for *FAIL*
> 
> Post up your first big* FAIL *and the lesson learned from it....
> 
> ...




Do I happen to have that mobo now lol 


Mine would be I was updating the bios on a Shuttle AI6 slot A board and forced the wrong bios file and that spelled the end to that bios chip. I actually still have the bios chip but not the board.


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## DonInKansas (Feb 5, 2012)

My professor told me a story about a girl in his class who tried to remove RAM from a computer that was still turned on.


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## slyfox2151 (Feb 5, 2012)

Shitty PSU + motherboard screwed directly to the case (no spacers) = massive electrical sparks flying out.


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## JrRacinFan (Feb 5, 2012)

DonInKansas said:


> My professor told me a story about a girl in his class who tried to remove RAM from a computer that was still turned on.



What's wrong with that?!


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## phanbuey (Feb 5, 2012)

DonInKansas said:


> My professor told me a story about a girl in his class who tried to remove RAM from a computer that was still turned on.



ive done that - it just shuts off.

My first fail was when I was trying to overclock my voodoo banshee and forced too high of a refresh on the monitor... pop.

Then I tried to setup a raid system with old used drives on my emachines rig and a customg gfx (9550 pencil modded) with the stock PSU... also pop.   Or that time I forgot to hook up my water pump after rebuilding wc loop on my q6600 almost melted the block's plastic fittings.  Or the time one of the tubes popped off after leak testing and drenched both gtx 260's in the system.  Or that time that the base of a CPU cooler touched a resistor and litterally burned my board on the back....

man... there was a lot of times.


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## arnoo1 (Feb 5, 2012)

Alot of years back i rebuild a p3 rig and i connected it wrong, luckely the psu had alot of Security features so only the psu burned


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## Widjaja (Feb 5, 2012)

Installing a faulty PSU into a customers PC while he stands there watching.
I plug in the PSU and noticed I was getting a sharp pain where my forearm was touching the case.
Suspect electric shock.

I walk away for a few seconds and the other tech turns on the PC to find the PSU starts smoking infront of the customer.


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## AlienIsGOD (Feb 5, 2012)

My first AMD build, I forgot to properly push the arm down on the CPU socket.  Bent about 10-12 pins on the X2 240 >_<   My friend had to straighten them out and has never let me forget about it.  lesson learned?  Buy Intel and not have to worry about pins as much


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## jpierce55 (Feb 5, 2012)

Mine lead to me finding this site. It was a high end system when I built it. I had a 2800+Barton a friend got for me before its official release, a 9700 pro, 512mb of ddr400, a Shuttle mobo I can't remember, and a Hercules cooler. All in a Black Dragon case.

Where did it go wrong? In 2006 the HEC PSU failed and took everything out but the g-card and ram. Those I sold since AGP was a forgotten thing by that point. That is when I found out all psu's are not what they claim or of good quality.


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## Outback Bronze (Feb 5, 2012)

Some of my biggest fails, well shit.....hmmm Memory not in, cpu heatsink not on, gpu card not in, cpu power not in, atx power not in and hard drives not it. Never fried anything though. Lucky ey!!  mmmmmmmm beer!


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## Sasqui (Feb 5, 2012)

Pulling out an AGP video card with the system still running.  D'OH!


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## newtekie1 (Feb 5, 2012)

When mounting a Thermalright socket 478 cooler on my first custom build I built entirely myself I put the mounting bracket on the cooler upside down.  So when I tightened the mounting screws they bottomed out but didn't actually put enough pressure on the cooler to have it hold down to the CPU.

The machine ran fine for a day when I had it sitting on its side while I was finishing up the cable management, gravity held the cooler down to the CPU.  Then I turned the PC upright and the machine turned itself off almost instantly.  It took me an hour to figure out why it was turning itself off when standing upright and working fine on its side.  Then one time when I was turning it upright, I saw the CPU cooler "pop" off the CPU and instantly knew...


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## bbmarley (Feb 5, 2012)

forgetting risers and wondering why pc wont say boot up


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## Norton (Feb 5, 2012)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> Do I happen to have that mobo now lol
> 
> 
> Mine would be I was updating the bios on a Shuttle AI6 slot A board and forced the wrong bios file and that spelled the end to that bios chip. I actually still have the bios chip but not the board.



The board you have is either that one or its replacement
- check the the CPU socket... if one of the cooler tabs is broken off then you have the one

  Luckily an aftermarket cooler's hold downs are different and I was able re-use the board with a different cooler. 

  The burnt CPU spent some time sitting on my desk with the blown connecting rod from the first and only engine I bought that I didn't rebuild myself before installing in my ride. Over the years both items seem to have disappeared.... only the memories remain.

*Thanks to everyone for the responses and keep them coming*


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## cadaveca (Feb 5, 2012)

The only part I have ever broken was an ASUS X800XT that I had hardmods on. The mod was acting really weird, so I cut it off the card...wit hthe system running.(oops). Cutting the mod with metal cutters lead to the mod being bypassed, and the memory fried.

Blown a few fan headers on boards..but they all still worked. Hardware is actually pretty resilient as long as you are not pushing it too hard.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 5, 2012)

Norton said:


> The board you have is either that one or its replacement
> - check the the CPU socket... if one of the cooler tabs is broken off then you have the one
> 
> Luckily an aftermarket cooler's hold downs are different and I was able re-use the board with a different cooler.
> ...



And that will be it. (Norton I will take special care of it since you have memories attached to it and if you need it back let me know) That exact board Norton was referring to is now the foundation for my win 98 build. The board still runs great.


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## _JP_ (Feb 5, 2012)

Can't remember my first fail...so long ago, but I sometimes have some FAIL moments.
Just three days ago, I was trying to revive my NF7-S (because of Abit's site going down) and the darn thing wasn't POSTing. Constant long beeping (usually RAM related).
Took me a while before I noticed the floppy cable wasn't properly connected (upside down). 












Btw, typing this in said machine, via remote desktop on my laptop.


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## Norton (Feb 5, 2012)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> And that will be it. (Norton I will take special care of it since you have memories attached to it and if you need it back let me know) That exact board Norton was referring to is now the foundation for my win 98 build. The board still runs great.



That board found a good home- I get to see it when I check your progress on Project Old School


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## mlee49 (Feb 5, 2012)

I touched my video card to see if it was warm, accidentally shorted something out because of my wedding ring.

Turned off instantly but rebooted just fine.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 5, 2012)

mlee49 said:


> I touched my video card to see if it was warm, accidentally shorted something out because of my wedding ring.
> 
> Turned off instantly but rebooted just fine.



Oh hell I done that without the shorting part but I hit the fan and took some skin off.


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## redeye (Feb 5, 2012)

wrecked an ATi xt800 aiw, due to the zalman silent cooler clamping it too hard, causing ram issues and so received a new one from ATI, but because didn't want to get up for pliers, used a screwdriver, it slipped knocking off an smd resistor wrecking the card.  dead card!, in the dead parts pile...

wrecked a Ati 9700 because a capacitor was to close to the agp release lever, so I pushed off the capacitor, didn't RMA It because i modified the cooler, voiding the warranty., in dead parts pile...

because i didn't know that there was fan control software for an Asus 4870 dark knight, i cut and modified the fan cable for the card(voiding the warranty),  and the spring from the scythe Cpu HSF fell on the card shorting the power section of the 4870, so that the it wouldnt allow the pc to post because the 4870 said "hook up the power cables to the card" but they were. in dead parts pile...

killed a "pc power and cooling  ultra silent  psu" (ROFLMAO over the title.. so untrue)  (way back in the day) when a screwdriver bit  fell and shorted the power supply (sparks)... in dead parts pile...

killed the cpu fan header on a m3a32mvp, buy shorting it. not in dead parts pile...

lost a 3200amd cpu because of a bent pin. in dead parts pile...

almost lost an PNY 560ti card because of the arctic cooler extreme II  clearance issues... i say almost because i had set it aside for months thinking it was toast, but then a got a 990fx sabertooth with SLI anddecided to see if the pny along with a gigabyte 560ti if it would work... it did (the PNY) no display, but it worked in SLI,  so i went back put the arctic cooler back on, bolted the backplate to the card, and it's working now. not in the dead parts pile.

finally, in a stroke of back luck, my sabertooth 990fx has to be RMA'd (not due to my fault!) because the first pcie slot is stuck at 8x, the onboard audio does not work (it was working through my monitor but just stopped working.)
now the PCIE slot one will not recognize nvidia cards (9800gtx, 560ti) but will recognize my AMD 6950!... not in the dead parts pile. yet (but needs rma, is it will be in asus's dead parts pile...)


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## Sir B. Fannybottom (Feb 5, 2012)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> Oh hell I done that without the shorting part but I hit the fan and took some skin off.



Back when I was waiting for my A770DE+ to be RMAed I had only my laptop, and I didn't want to spend money on a cooler so I took a bunch of fans and zip tied them together. One day I was picking my laptop up and my finger grazed a fan... That hurt like a mofo it cut my hand and broke a blade off the fan..


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## Zen_ (Feb 5, 2012)

Hmm...first piece of hardware I destroyed due to user incompetence was an 800 MHz Duron in my father's computer. It was overheating because the stock HSF's used when AMD switch from slot A to socket A had useless thermal tape, so I took it off to put thermal paste on, but forgot to put the paste on! Started up, smelled a tinge of electrical burning, and that was the end of that Duron. 

Shortly after that I also ruined a Soltek KT266A board trying to do a v-mod, even after practicing on a junk board. Thankfully that was right about the time that Abit and EPoX started offering far more aggressive voltage stettings out of the box.



Norton said:


> I was running a Socket A system with a 1Ghz Athlon at the time. In the middle of playing a game, Unreal I think it was, I heard a snap inside my PC followed by a rattling noise and a crash.
> 
> I was just at the wtf moment when the PC shut down and wouldn't restart??? Pulled the side panel off and realized that the CPU cooler had snapped off the socket and fell off into the bottom of the case.... burned the CPU out in like 10 seconds



I seem to remember a couple stories when Thermalright first introduced the all copper heatsinks of people that had the whole CPU socket ripped off the board


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 5, 2012)

I have a socket A hsf I bought because it looked cool at the time. A thermaltake Dragon orb 3. Needless to say it has never been removed from the package due to how much it weights. I though that exact thing was going to happen if I installed it. Here's a pic 








Solid cooper base. things feels like it weights 5 pounds. lol Doesn't look it though.


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## Black Panther (Feb 5, 2012)

Once I was checking temperatures inside my case using my fingers, got too distracted and hit the cpu fan with my knuckles, got startled and hit them again against the rear exhaust fan. Today I know that apparently innocent plastic fans are as sharp as rotating blades while running..

But the worse one was on one of my older pc's. The RAM was really hard to click in place, I had the pc on its side and was afraid of using to much force. So I kinda tried to massage the RAM very firmly up and down. 
Suddenly I saw blood pouring over the ram and onto the mobo. I had cut my fingers quite deeply. I cleaned up the ram and mobo with alcohol and they worked.


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## Norton (Feb 5, 2012)

Black Panther said:


> Once I was checking temperatures inside my case using my fingers, got too distracted and hit the cpu fan with my knuckles, got startled and hit them again against the rear exhaust fan. Today I know that apparently innocent plastic fans are as sharp as rotating blades while running..
> 
> But the worse one was on one of my older pc's. The RAM was really hard to click in place, I had the pc on its side and was afraid of using to much force. So I kinda tried to massage the RAM very firmly up and down.
> Suddenly I saw blood pouring over the ram and onto the mobo. I had cut my fingers quite deeply. I cleaned up the ram and mobo with alcohol and they worked.



Now that's _bleeding edge_ hardware 

I found out that the fan on my 4870 Dark Knight Top can take off part of a fingernail and not stop- ouch


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## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 5, 2012)

I just got a 1055t about 2 months after they came out and I was in a hurry to try it out....
I didn't feel like taking the time to remove the mobo to change out the HSF bracket to a bolt on enzo type something that I modded and instead used the provided AM2/+/3 kit...Turns out the bracket to hold the HDF was razor sharp...The TIM I used was this and formed a perfect vacuum seal...

But that's not all....

After I realized that the bracket cut the nub off and destroyed my cpu I destroyed my HSF with a hammer out of anger...


Here is my original post afterwards...














I just bought a brand spanking new AMD processor which I will not name and when I put my Xiggy on it I used the AM2 bracket that came with it....

after getting it seated and whatnot I checked out the New cpu in the BIOS and made sure everything was fine..

I then set off to load windows when I heard Snap bam dat dat dat.... and My screen instantly went black..

I opened up my case to find my Xiggy had snapped my retention Bracket and ripping my new cpu out of the socket leaving 7 pins behind and bending half of the Remaining pins...

I blacked out for a bit after that waking up with the hammer in my hands and completely sick to my Stomach...
I will never buy a heavy CPU cooler ever again..even though that Xiggy was a good cooler I don't regret smashing it up...
Instead of just losing a CPU I flipped out.


Not my first FAIL but the most expensive and epic.


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## PaulieG (Feb 5, 2012)

The first time I attempted a complete build, I destroyed a MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard by installing the motherboard without using standoffs. I was just being impatient. Complete FAIL. However, it was my only fail. I learned to be OCD like when building.


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## jpierce55 (Feb 5, 2012)

Black Panther said:


> Once I was checking temperatures inside my case using my fingers, got too distracted and hit the cpu fan with my knuckles, got startled and hit them again against the rear exhaust fan. Today I know that apparently innocent plastic fans are as sharp as rotating blades while running..
> 
> But the worse one was on one of my older pc's. The RAM was really hard to click in place, I had the pc on its side and was afraid of using to much force. So I kinda tried to massage the RAM very firmly up and down.
> Suddenly I saw blood pouring over the ram and onto the mobo. I had cut my fingers quite deeply. I cleaned up the ram and mobo with alcohol and they worked.



I nailed one of my current Scythe fans and found it surprisingly powerful as well. I would have never suspected those plastic cpu fans could take skin that easily.

I was cut a few years back on some VERY sharp OCZ Platinum DDR2. I pushed and it sliced me like a razer. I ended up pushing it in with an eraser that it also sliced.


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## Strangerz (Feb 6, 2012)

*Yep, the fans hurt*

I remember when i was much younger and i was watching my father work on his desktop PC. He stepped away and i curiously stuck my finger into the fan thinking that its just a weak plastic fan... ouch

Quickly pulled my sliced finger out and covered so he wouldnt know hah


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## Velvet Wafer (Feb 6, 2012)

I installed a Socket A processor for the second time, and this time, placed the thermal diode of the cooler on top of the die...fried proc.
After that i was much more careful, for sure


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## El_Mayo (Feb 6, 2012)

jmcslob said:


> I just bought a brand spanking new AMD processor which I will not name



Blatantly Bulldozer!


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## LAN_deRf_HA (Feb 6, 2012)

My first fail was an on going one. All my cases at first had bumps so there was no need for stand offs. Didn't really get why all the following builds needed to be screwed in very lightly to boot.


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## qubit (Feb 6, 2012)

jmcslob said:


> Not my first FAIL but the most expensive and epic.



Damn, that _was_ epic!  Especially the pictures of the smashed up cooler with the hammer beside it.


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## El_Mayo (Feb 6, 2012)

I dropped a CPU cooler on my CPU before
Bent all the pins  badtimes
ever since I've been sure to wrap up a cpu or put it in a tin instead of lying around (upside down)


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## trickson (Feb 6, 2012)

My first FAIL was when I took my AMD 4000+'s IHS off. Took the the CPU off with it! What an epic fail!


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## ensabrenoir (Feb 6, 2012)

hp wal mart special P4.......something made my first raid....impressed by the speed ....back then.  Took one hdd out wiped it to use in another rig.  Could never figure out why first machine wouldnt work anymore  got so ticked ...did a running overhead,  gorillia slam into a dumpster with it.  Then weeks later....dooooohhhhh!!!!!


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## Wile E (Feb 6, 2012)

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38153

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41746

Take your pick.


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## AsRock (Feb 6, 2012)

My first fail would of been when my parents brought a PC for my bro back early 1992.

Well i have always been one of those people who has to look in side some thing same with my younger brother which we thought we would fuck around and check out how a Intel DX computer worked.

Some were along the lines we managed to screw up the OS ( Win3.1 ) b trying other hardware and shit like that.  Anyways when good ol dad found out he went crazy on us but mainly me due being the elder and should know better blah blah..  

Well he said you better get it back working or a buying a new one which i did get to fix which today i am still messing with in shit that i don't need too even had my HDTV apart lol.


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## v12dock (Feb 6, 2012)

My 4850x2 caught fire while trying to fix it


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 6, 2012)

Some great stories here. Lets keep it up.


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## Jetster (Feb 6, 2012)

My biggest fail is a bad habit I have with reaching in a case when its running and feeling the cpu temps. Ive caught my finger a couple of times on fan blades. It ether puts a gash in my finger and blood everywhere or a blade breaks off running a Heat sink and fan combo


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## Velvet Wafer (Feb 6, 2012)

Jetster said:


> My biggest fail is a bad habit I have with reaching in a case when its running and feeling the cpu temps. Ive caught my finger a couple of times on fan blades. It ether puts a gash in my finger and blood everywhere or a blade breaks off running a Heat sink and fan combo



same habit, just with diverse locations of fans... im just not careful enough around them!
(one time, a fan blade of one of my EBM papst entered my finger thru the top of the tip, and came out right beneath the nail, on the top... man that did fucking hurt! )


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## Norton (Feb 6, 2012)

jmcslob said:


> http://img.techpowerup.org/100618/ouch.jpg
> 
> I just got a 1055t about 2 months after they came out and I was in a hurry to try it out....
> I didn't feel like taking the time to remove the mobo to change out the HSF bracket to a bolt on enzo type something that I modded and instead used the provided AM2/+/3 kit...Turns out the bracket to hold the HDF was razor sharp...The TIM I used was this and formed a perfect vacuum seal...
> ...




 My Xig doesn't look anything like that.... just 

   I know exactly what you mean about that AMD clip for that cooler... it was always a pain to center it on the CPU and when I installed it with the mobo in the case I always checked it 4-5 times to make sure it was in the right place.

   I now use that little adapter Xig puts out to convert from AMD mounting to Intel style. I drop the cooler over the studs using the Intel brackets and the spring nuts then hand tighten... perfect every time and turned in the right direction 

  The only thing that sucks is that you pay like $12 for two pieces of plastic :shadedshu

If I didn't start using that little device your Xig may have had a twin by now except I would have used my 3lb mini sledge


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## Nocht (Feb 6, 2012)

I remember my first attempt at overclocking was an Intel Pentium 233 MMX. Smoked it playing Quake with my Riva 128 (still not sure of the root cause, would boot, but very slow).  Made a nice key-chain/conversation piece, but turned me off of overclocking for a good while.  Upside was my replacement was a K6.


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## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 6, 2012)

Nocht said:


> I remember my first attempt at overclocking was an Intel Pentium 233 MMX. Smoked it playing Quake with my Riva 128 (still not sure of the root cause, would boot, but very slow).  Made a nice key-chain/conversation piece, but turned me off of overclocking for a good while.  Upside was my replacement was a K6.



Oh man that was back when you had to OC by switching pins in the mobo....


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## LDNL (Feb 6, 2012)

Rebuilding my x58 system with a watercooling loop I forgot to reattach the power to the pump. I went down stairs thinking ill let it run for a while to let all the bubbles out. It didnt take long when I heard some whining noise and ran back up and pulled the power plug from the wall. So after removing the molten waterblock I checked the mobo and the prosessor and it has to have been my lucky day since both of them survived


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## Chicken Patty (Feb 7, 2012)

Not my first fail but something similar to the above.  Swapped mothjerboards on my 2nd PC, forgot to connect the fan from the radiator to the board.  The only thing I had in the loop was a GTX295 which was folding on both cores 100%, temps.  Thank god the loop cooled pretty well passively and temps only got up to 102º, but it sure was a scary moment.  I was starting to sweat inside my room when I'm usually freezing.


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## Norton (Feb 11, 2012)

OK to sum it all up..... 

When you're building/working on your PC keep the following in mind:

- Stay clear of spinning blades- fans hurt
- Motherboard standoffs are not optional if they are supposed to be used in your case
- The strength of a CPU socket may not be equal to the clamping force of cooler hardware
- Fires are possible- keep a fire extinquisher nearby
- Water cooling loops only work with flowing water in them
- Rings (wedding, etc...) are best taken off before working in your rig
- Turn PC off when removing/installing parts
- Keep hammers as far away from your PC as possible
- A CPU IHS is not designed for removal
- Don't let ants eat your hard drive*
   * Sorry had to add that one (see post #60 & #78)

   I think that should sum up everyone's experiences here so far- if you have any other stories or tips of *FAIL* to post... feel free to add them on.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Feb 11, 2012)

My first big fail was-

I had a loop in my pc, with a water block on the graphics card and CPU, stupidly i did not put no clips on the blocks. Well I was using my PC and the screen went all funny, like a major artifact, so i looked in my PC window but could not see anything wrong, so I just rebooted. It came back on and got to windows, and just did the same thing, so I thought mmm and got my torch and looked into the case. There was water covering the graphics card and running off the edges into the case. Oh shit, I pulled the power lead. The CPU block was leaking from a barb. I let it all dry and it was OK luckily. I used clips on all the connections after that.


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## mjkmike (Feb 11, 2012)

My first big fail was-

Selling my TRS-80 when I was 15.  Bought it with my own money @ 13 and my dad almost killed me for buying the thing.  Stayed away from computers for 25 years.  Glad too be back!!!


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## BarbaricSoul (Feb 11, 2012)

Only fail I've had(knock on wood) wasn't even my fault.

I was using a prebuilt AMD XP1600 system for the longest time. The CPU was definently showing it's age. I had a few online friends that wanted me to upgrade so I could play BF2 with them, but I was broke and unemployed at the time. A few of them gave me the various parts I needed to build a faster computer, P4 Northwood 2.6ghz cpu, ASUS socket 478 mobo(don't remember the exact model), 4 gigs of RAM, Old Cooler Master case and a PSU. Turns out that some of the RAM that was sent to me wasn't the right type of RAM.. Once I assembled everything and powered up the system for the first time, something on the board immediately fried shooting a stream of smoke out of my case. I believe some of the RAM sent to me was SD as two of the sticks looked different than the other two and the MOBO needed DDR, but considering this was my first custom build, I didn't know any better.. Never could get that system to boot on that board. I ended up trading my XP1600 system to my mom for a new MOBO for the P4 set-up. That P4 with the MOBO I got trading is still working to this day(eventually gave it to a friend that is still using it)


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 11, 2012)

Now be honest here. How many of you have crushed the core on a Axp? For me, I never did out of the hundreds of times I have installed coolers on Athlon Xp's. Never used or owned a shim either. Now I just got one in the last load of parts I got. I threw it in a box of spare parts.


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## Velvet Wafer (Feb 11, 2012)

could use a shim for a naked 939 dualie, sadly i never saw one for sale anywhere


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## silkstone (Feb 11, 2012)

Had a peltier cooler fry on me, but luckily i caught it in time and only 1/2 of it stopped working. That was on and old intel celeron 333.

I dropped my 8400 when lapping it and broke a corner off, again, luckily it still worked after.

I also let ants eat one of my hard drives and lost about 500gb of data 

I'm sure there have been other things, but i am struggling to remember atm.


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## Norton (Feb 11, 2012)

silkstone said:


> Had a peltier cooler fry on me, but luckily i caught it in time and only 1/2 of it stopped working. That was on and old intel celeron 333.
> 
> I dropped my 8400 when lapping it and broke a corner off, again, luckily it still worked after.
> 
> ...



How did ants eat a hard drive???


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## SaiZo (Feb 11, 2012)

My first build ever, had system running for about 1 month, lightning struck down in house and I was so smart... didn't connect it to a grounded wall socket.
The system never ever started again, CPU, GPU, MoBo..everything gone in a 'flash'.


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## catnipkiller (Feb 11, 2012)

Buying a rocket fish power unit and thinking it would last.


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## Strangerz (Feb 11, 2012)

Norton said:


> How did ants eat a hard drive???



Thats what i was thinking. I did a little google research and apparently certain ants are attracted to electronic devices or it may be due to the magnetic field of certain devices... anyway it sounds like they eat some of the rubber and plastic parts. 

Now im scared of ants in my house


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## eidairaman1 (Feb 11, 2012)

Strangerz said:


> Thats what i was thinking. I did a little google research and apparently certain ants are attracted to electronic devices or it may be due to the magnetic field of certain devices... anyway it sounds like they eat some of the rubber and plastic parts.
> 
> Now im scared of ants in my house



I believe all insects are attracted to the flux waves electronics produce.

My First fail would have to be removing a P4 Northwood B with a Coolermaster heatsink, bent pins on CPU.


----------



## xBruce88x (Feb 11, 2012)

my first fail... not putting a sticky note on the comp that i was repairing in school saying "do not turn on this computer" as i hadn't finished assembling the cooler. although the rest of the system was ready to go. At was an AMD-K6 system running at 500mhz... beleive it or not these were the computers my school was STILL using in the Technology class... in my sophmore year.. about 2004-05. well anyway another student decided he also knows stuff about computers, and turn it on to finish installing windows... his class period was right after mine. mine was 1st, his 2nd period, each being 90min. well i met him at lunch during 3rd period. he said he saw the computer i was working on and that i was doing a good job with it but it ran slow as hell... i took it as a compliment tho seeing as he was 2 grades above me and i figured he already put the cooler on and was just being picky that it was an old 500mhz rig. well aparantly the comp had been used during 3rd and 4th periods by other students trying to run emulators.... well the next day when i come in, the teacher said students were complianing about slow performance... i figured ok... its probably the video still using the basic video driver.... well i was right... but... it was also b/c there was no heatsink or fan on the cpu! it had been running 20+ hrs with only the cpu's integrated heat spreader! now if that isn't a burn test i dunno what is! well surprisingly the computer was still running fine, although VERY slowly. I shut it down, let the cpu cool, put the fan and cooler on and booted it back up. ran fine and MUCH faster in windows (was win98se). I installed the video driver, and played some SNES emulators haha. now the sad part... THIS WAS NOW THE FASTEST COMP IN THE LAB! it even performed faster than the 1.8ghz celeron rigs with xp (they only had 256mb ram and "intel extreme grapics 2").

Moral of the story... put idiot labels on stuff when idiots are nearby. the rest is a TLDR part of how that FAIL turned into an EPIC WIN for my high school career.



Spoiler



however, it did turn into a win... instead of having to do all the other BS class work, all i had to do was fix the comps up lol. The teacher had a parts bin somewhere and I managed to get all the comps working (2/3 of the comps wouldn't even post on day one of class). I also had my first run-in with a slocket adaptor... that was interesting to say the least... i saw the jumpers on the card and managed to overclock the cpu from 500 to 733, installed a radeon 7500, and loaded up Aces High. of course i did have to do one project,... the final exam project. it was easy tho... build something. yes... that was the assignment... "research and build something"... obviously school appropriate. well i decided to build a scale Ferris wheel that was motorized... apparently i did soo well with it that to this day (to the best of my knowledge) the tech teachers still have it in their office as an example. i also still hold the record for longest strand of paper cut from a standard sheet of printing paper. 

 that was fun. I also found a way into the school network, and copied the "spawned" version of starcraft to the network... i could then play starcraft no matter what class i was in (well so long as there was a computer lol). I also set up a proxy at home to bypass their friggin firewall so i could use (sadly to say) myspace and gametrailers.com along with arcadetown.com and miniclip.com

well i apparently got attention from the rest of the teachers that did the tech related classes. i pretty much got a free A in those classes as long as i did the final exams and fixed all the computer issues that came up. things from helping students figure out how to network windows ME machines (yes... windows ME!... i went as far as to make a custom boot screen calling it windws Special ed. with a picture of a short bus lol) it stayed as the boot screen until they had to re-install windows lol. well after doing so much work with the tech classes the local IT department for the school system decided to "hire" me in a youth apprenticeship class. it was more or less a free A. i was paid $6.15 an hr.... minimum wage. which i guess was fair since i got a free A for a grade as well... an also pretty much got to do what the hell i wanted my jr and snr years in school lol. it was enough that i got about $165 a month to spend on my computer for my jr and snr years lol. i had the right to brag about my rig in school since i actually earned the monies and wasn't just givin a free comp by rich mommy and daddy and ironically mine was better than most of those anyway  well my performance doing work for the school also led up to my first job. I ended up landing a job as an assistant system administrator for Akins Ford Corp in the town i live in. had that job up until Q4 of 2009. been unemployed since pretty much with an occasional odd job here or there and working security night shift for the Petite LeMans at Road Atlanta. I plan to do the other race events as well... can wait for the Drift competitions!

believe it or not... that's the condensed version! all of that and i managed to help run a gaming clan. lets be honest here.... most gamers on this site was big into the clan thing back in the days of starcraft, warcraft III, and CS1.6... and we all felt like accomplishing something when we climbed the ranks. i managed to get up to 4star general and help organize events while keeping up with homework and school related tech problems. Does anyone here that played on USEast servers for starcraft and the like remember Wolves in Exile? hah found my old xfire profile http://fr.xfire.com/profile/xbrucewx/ i usually closed xfire when playing CS and SCBW so the hrs aren't all there lol.


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## qubit (Feb 12, 2012)

Well, this certainly won't be my first fail (I can't even remember what it was) but never one to be slow to take the chance of humiliating myself in public, here's one I just made right on this very forum:



qubit said:


> Yeah, it's PCI-E, my bad.
> 
> That blue ICE-Q card looks nice.



Yeah, click on the link, go back a few posts and you'll see that I mistook a PCI-E slot for an AGP one!


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## LifeOnMars (Feb 12, 2012)

I seem to fail constantly, I can never seem to get all games that are installed on my system playing smoothly. 1 or more them always has issues!!


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## qubit (Feb 12, 2012)

LifeOnMars said:


> I seem to fail constantly, I can never seem to get all games that are installed on my system playing smoothly. 1 or more them always has issues!!



Welcome to PC gaming!


----------



## Velvet Wafer (Feb 12, 2012)

SaiZo said:


> My first build ever, had system running for about 1 month, lightning struck down in house and I was so smart... didn't connect it to a grounded wall socket.
> The system never ever started again, CPU, GPU, MoBo..everything gone in a 'flash'.



You have ungrounded wall sockets?
That seems like medieval times to me!

Here in Germany we can pull about 2200w per socket, everything is grounded, and triple protected, and power outages are so rare, they happen maybe once, or twice a year...

i cant understand how the US can have such a third country power distribution net!


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## xBruce88x (Feb 12, 2012)

the usa is screwed up in that regard... a house can have ungrounded 10A lines, or it can have over engineered 40A grounded lines with GFI plugs lol. edit: a good 40A line will let you safely pull 3680w at 115v. (it can do more... but my electrician friend said its not good to load more than 80% of the actual capacity)


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 12, 2012)

Velvet Wafer said:


> You have ungrounded wall sockets?
> That seems like medieval times to me!
> 
> Here in Germany we can pull about 2200w per socket, everything is grounded, and triple protected, and power outages are so rare, they happen maybe once, or twice a year...
> ...



Hell man we are a third world country.


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## xBruce88x (Feb 12, 2012)

actually, i think your lucky to find 30A lines, good for 3450w, or a safe 80% of that being about 2800w. my trailer has a bunch of 15A and 20A lines sadly... with the main breaker able to handle 200A. the most power we could possibly use at a time is 18.4kW!


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## tttony (Feb 12, 2012)

My first PC was a PIII 600E in ~2000

I remember that I had my programs on a CD and I just wanted to install a program so I take the CD and I saw a little crack around the center of the CD

Well I just meh!! it's nothing so I put the CD in the CD-ROM drive and a few seconds later the CD-ROM BOOOM!!! 



The top of the CD drive flew away with pieces of the CD 

I had to open the CD drive to clean it up 

The CD-ROM drive worked fine without the top but sometimes had problems to read some CDs 

So, kids don't put CDs with cracks in the CD-ROM drive 

PD: sorry for the english


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 12, 2012)

Oh I remember back in the day some sire was doing some test on exploding cd's. It was cool watching them. They said something like if you put labels on cd's off center and stuff the will go up in a blast of shrapnel.


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## specks (Feb 12, 2012)

I had a crappy 4 year old generic psu that burnt the 4pin on my previous mobo. Pics coming later.

Lesson learned: Avoid crap PSUs as much as possible. My current PSU is still crap but i have a bigger wattage headroom to avoid possible problems


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## xBruce88x (Feb 12, 2012)

about the CD-rom issue... reminds me of my old copy of roller coaster tycoon... it has a crack too... i figured maybe i'd copy it and then not use it anymore... well the drive dicided to spin up to max speed during the cd copy process... and BOOM! i had to take the cover off and pick all the parts of cd out... drive worked fine ever since. so i just went to TPB to get an .iso haha. I later ended up buying another copy tho along with RCT2


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## silkstone (Feb 12, 2012)

Norton said:


> How did ants eat a hard drive???





Strangerz said:


> Thats what i was thinking. I did a little google research and apparently certain ants are attracted to electronic devices or it may be due to the magnetic field of certain devices... anyway it sounds like they eat some of the rubber and plastic parts.
> 
> Now im scared of ants in my house



I'm not sure why they were attracted to the HD. These were tiny little things, i had seen a line of them going into my case for a while. I tried killing them with raid (outside the case) but the little line would always come back, so in the end i just ignored them. a couple of weeks later, my hard disk fails and so i open up my case, remove my hard disk, and notice that my hard disk is swarming with little ants. I see that the have burrowed right in to the disk as there is a pile of silicon debris on the top from their "excavations"

They also got part way through my second disk, but i killed them all and filled my case with raid before they did any real damage.

Edit - I just remembered that i also had a family of mice set up a home in a pc a few years ago, too. But i managed to get them out before they caused any trouble.


----------



## Chappy (Feb 12, 2012)

I baked my corsair dominator RAM ddr2 into a oven hoping it would get fixed, after that all the thermal pads leaked and become smelly. The ram still boot-ups but still with errors.


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## silkstone (Feb 12, 2012)

Oh, I remember i once got a brand spanking new AMD duron and was using a aftermarket cooler. I hadn't affixed it properly before turning it on and "poof" i fry the chip


----------



## DarkOCean (Feb 12, 2012)

I tried to bake in a microwave oven the pcb of an remote control ;the second i started the oven 4th july was in there.


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## silkstone (Feb 12, 2012)

DarkOCean said:


> I tried to bake in a microwave oven the pcb of an remote control ;the second i started the oven 4th july was in there.



lol, you can't bake in a microwave!!


----------



## maxritz (Feb 12, 2012)

*Call it ultrafail*

I bought an FX8150 after I had already build one for a friend.


----------



## stinger608 (Feb 12, 2012)

ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> I have a socket A hsf I bought because it looked cool at the time. A thermaltake Dragon orb 3. Needless to say it has never been removed from the package due to how much it weights. I though that exact thing was going to happen if I installed it. Here's a pic
> 
> https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/i...vkg9V9J7x2JgUVqmlzduZjoiIBEjssqpNxWwOgAnRioz7
> 
> ...



I actually purchased, and used, 3 of these coolers. They made two different versions, one with an aluminum base and one with the copper base. All three that I purchased were the copper base and as you mentioned are damn heavy. The positive point is that the Dragon orb 3 has the 3 pin retention bracket so there never was an issue, at least with me, of the cooler popping off. However, they are insanely loud unless they are run through a fan controller. I think, if I recall correctly, the fan runs full bore at over 5,000rpm's. Ear bleeding loud. 




ThE_MaD_ShOt said:


> Now be honest here. How many of you have crushed the core on a Axp? For me, I never did out of the hundreds of times I have installed coolers on Athlon Xp's. Never used or owned a shim either. Now I just got one in the last load of parts I got. I threw it in a box of spare parts.



Only one time that I did. It was on an old Duran 750. Was installing the chip and cooler and heard a faint snap sound. Pulled the cooler off to find one edge of the chip broke. found little pieces laying by the socket. Cleaned it all out and figured I would give it a try, since I had just spent almost a hundred bucks on the chip.  Got the system motherboard together and poof it fired right up! Used that damaged 750 Duran for almost 2 years.


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## ThE_MaD_ShOt (Feb 12, 2012)

stinger608 said:


> I actually purchased, and used, 3 of these coolers. They made two different versions, one with an aluminum base and one with the copper base. All three that I purchased were the copper base and as you mentioned are damn heavy. The positive point is that the Dragon orb 3 has the 3 pin retention bracket so there never was an issue, at least with me, of the cooler popping off. However, they are insanely loud unless they are run through a fan controller. I think, if I recall correctly, the fan runs full bore at over 5,000rpm's. Ear bleeding loud.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Yes the dragon orb is painfully loud. I hated that thing, but for some reason I still have the one I got back from rma. lol. So that one has never been used.


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## Morgoth (Feb 12, 2012)

2 broken msi elcipse boards 600 euro wasted..


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## DarkOCean (Feb 12, 2012)

silkstone said:


> lol, you can't bake in a microwave!!



lol, i know that now.


----------



## user21 (Feb 12, 2012)

plugged the monitor cable into the builtin vga of motherboard while running a discrete gfx card.waiting for display.............................FAIL............................... plugged it into the gfx card now waiting again...............EPIC FAIL...........wait WTF forgot to connect cpu 4pin power connector.


lesson: check all connectors properly before powering up


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## Sound_Card (Feb 12, 2012)

Bolted down my AM2+ Epox board without standoffs. Turned it on, quick flash of blue light inside the case, panicked, then cried, and cried more after I found out what went wrong.


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## The Von Matrices (Feb 14, 2012)

My first major fail was when I irreparably damaged my nearly new ATI 9800 Pro back in late 2003.  I had applied copper heatsinks to the memory chips with thermal tape as soon as I got the card.  I planned to replace the tape with Arctic Silver 5 thermal adhesive, so I pried off the heatsinks with my hand.  Seven of the eight heatsinks came off without a hitch; but the eighth pulled off part of the memory chip.  I didn't know the tape's adhesive was that strong!  The card still booted, but it generated memory errors and yellow lines on the screen.  I ended up having to buy a 9600 Pro to replace it since I didn't have the money for another 9800.


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## NdMk2o1o (Feb 14, 2012)

Left a screw I couldn't find loose in my case, it shorted a 4850, may have bent a few pins in a 1366 motherboard...oops, put +0.5v offset into a 2500k as opposed to 0.05v (damn vodka + buggy efi bios fail) and fried it, must have hit 1.85v or close to when it booted  << this was only a few months ago...

Broke lots of mice, headphones, gamepads and keyboards etc in anger too, I try not to do this these days as it costs me $.... lol


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## GC_PaNzerFIN (Feb 14, 2012)

Not a single fail caused by user actions and I have been overclocking stuff since AMD K5-2. K6-2 was close to dying but that was completely intentional and doesn't count. Still works tho


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## silkstone (Feb 14, 2012)

ahh... i just remember another fail.

It was quite a long time ago and i had an old 400mhz laptop. I had upgraded the cd-rom to a dvd-rom and it didn't work that well. The cd-r function would never work properly and i assumed it was down to the memory.

Anyway, i was had a couple of borrowed dvd's that i wanted to watch. i put the first one in and got about 60 mins through the film and it started badly skipping making the movie un watchable. So, i went ahead and started watching the second movie. I got 1/2 way through and the same thing happened. I was so pissed off at the laptop i ended up throwing the speakers at it and smashed the LCD.

The next day i went to watch the movies on a regular dvd player and the same thing happed, i realized that the issue was the disks being too scratched, not the fault of the laptop.


----------



## Dolph (Feb 14, 2012)

Overclocked an AMD athlon 3400+, HSF wasn't on properly, overheated, started smoking, cpu shut down instantly. Couldn't even getinto bios.  Reseated the CPU HSF, computer bios started spouting out words about CPU FAULT CPU FAULT.  Ended up buying a new CPU/Mobo.  Over a year later, tried to put that same cpu/board on a testbench and it booted up, not realisng all i had to do was reset the CMOS and it would have been fine .... herpderp.


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## yogurt_21 (Feb 14, 2012)

Can't remember my first fail exactly. 

do remember dumb moments when slapping together my first k6. Damn that thing was slow. Felt like my 386 was faster.


My most blatant fail comes from my first experience with volt modding. Now I had overclocked gpus for years and had used water, peltiers, and phase change by the time I first encountered my Built by ATI (read built by sapphire) x700pro. 

But I had never volt modded a card and the x700pro's disapointing performance compared to the 6600gt's of the time was frusterating me. 

I knew if I threw more clock speed at it I could compete.

So I decided to start with a pencil mod and see how it went. At 515MHZ a 21% overclock I was pretty happy and finally able to compete. Then after a round of torture tests screen goes blank, unable to get it back. "Damn... I just fried my first gpu, blatantly fried it too."

OH well RMA, get a new one from ATI. (no questions asked back then, loved the built by ati rma process)

Thinking it was the pencil mod I decided to go full vmod this time and got out eh soldering iron. Did a nice little job on the card and overclocked it to the max, this time hitting 535MHZ or a 26% overclock. Nice. This card was being water cooled on the core and had nice big ramsinks on the memory....but no additional vreg cooling.

lasted a month then again after a torture test of benches, screen goes blank, won't come back.

"Damn, I just fried another one!"

OH well RMA, get a new one from ATI.

This one wouldn't push as far as the last, getting stuck at 525MHZ or a 23.5% overclock. Throws more juice at it, still no vreg cooling, gets to 530MHZ, torture test..... screen goes blank, can't get it back.

You know at about this time you'd think the warranty center at ATI would be suspicious. Now sure I cleaned the cards up all nice and pretty, but 3 cards all had their vregs fail? 

Nope, ATI sends me a new card.

At least by this time I had learned my lesson and left it alone. But it wasn't until my X1800XT that I figured out "oh yeah those thingies need cooled too"

so not my first fail, but certainly my biggest.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Feb 14, 2012)

Today? I woke up.


----------



## de.das.dude (Feb 14, 2012)

never had a fail


----------



## Horrux (Feb 14, 2012)

My first fail was while installing my first DDR memory onto a mobo. That little notch was so close to the middle...  I installed the RAM the wrong way and pretty much ripped the ram slots off the mobo when pressing down to fit it in...

My second fail was with the first ever (in my experience) auto-overclock motherboard I knew about. After putting the PC together and installing windows XP, I run that little software for all of about 10 seconds. PC shuts down and never posts again. CPU was burnt out from too much overclock. WTF.

Oh yeah... Spilled a full glass of water on my Logitech G-15 2nd gen. Opened it up, blow-dried it, let it sit open overnight, blow-dried it some more, put it back together, now it worked... Minus the LCD buttons...


----------



## yogurt_21 (Feb 14, 2012)

Horrux said:


> My first fail was while installing my first DDR memory onto a mobo. That little notch was so close to the middle...  I installed the RAM the wrong way and pretty much ripped the ram slots off the mobo when pressing down to fit it in...
> 
> My second fail was with the first ever (in my experience) auto-overclock motherboard I knew about. After putting the PC together and installing windows XP, I run that little software for all of about 10 seconds. PC shuts down and never posts again. CPU was burnt out from too much overclock. WTF.
> 
> Oh yeah... Spilled a full glass of water on my Logitech G-15 2nd gen. Opened it up, blow-dried it, let it sit open overnight, blow-dried it some more, put it back together, now it worked... Minus the LCD buttons...



had a friend who had a similar experience with his first auto-clocking motherboard, was a 939 socket amd FX-60, booted it up the first time and the clock speed was reading close to 3.5GHZ (compared to 2.6 stock)

morinically he goes "sweet" failing to think about the stock cooler he just installed, benches it instead of immediatly shutting it down and modifying the settings. Halfway through the bench... burning silicone.


----------



## Horrux (Feb 14, 2012)

yogurt_21 said:


> had a friend who had a similar experience with his first auto-clocking motherboard, was a 939 socket amd FX-60, booted it up the first time and the clock speed was reading close to 3.5GHZ (compared to 2.6 stock)
> 
> morinically he goes "sweet" failing to think about the stock cooler he just installed, benches it instead of immediatly shutting it down and modifying the settings. Halfway through the bench... burning silicone.



Yep, mine was a socket 939 too... It was a lowly 3000+ and the overclock was something like 300mhz, nothing I would have thought would fry my CPU, especially after all I had heard about how GREAT overclockers they were. But an FX-60, now that is another ball park. Ouch.


----------



## Horrux (Feb 14, 2012)

mjkmike said:


> My first big fail was-
> 
> Selling my TRS-80 when I was 15.  Bought it with my own money @ 13 and my dad almost killed me for buying the thing.  Stayed away from computers for 25 years.  Glad too be back!!!


Oh I remember that one. I had one. It wasn't even good for its time, but hey, it was a computer!  Had tons of fun with it...


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Feb 14, 2012)

qubit said:


> Well, this certainly won't be my first fail (I can't even remember what it was) but never one to be slow to take the chance of humiliating myself in public, here's one I just made right on this very forum:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, click on the link, go back a few posts and you'll see that I mistook a PCI-E slot for an AGP one!







xBruce88x said:


> the usa is screwed up in that regard... a house can have ungrounded 10A lines, or it can have over engineered 40A grounded lines with GFI plugs lol. edit: a good 40A line will let you safely pull 3680w at 115v. (it can do more... but my electrician friend said its not good to load more than 80% of the actual capacity)



All I know is that in Australia, the maximum is about 3000-4000W. the other week I was running my DJ sound system (four 15 inch speakers + two 18s, 2000W+1000W power amps) at max volume PLUS the air conditioner through a single socket... all of the sudden everything shut down.. wiggled the plug a little... ZAP! I got shocked from the wall socket! 240V; I thought It'd be alot more painful to be honest...  

Socket no longer works... the cord to the power board was getting quite warm also...


----------



## BrettRuthnam (Feb 15, 2012)

My biggest FAIL was when i wanted to remove ram heatsinks on my gtx260 (i wanted to put the stock cooler back on). Anyway i checked the "internet" and decided to freeze the card and "pop" off the heatsinks that were held on with thermal adhesive. Oh well that day i was very sad, the heatsink "popped" out with the ram chip , luckily that gpu was going to be my physx card and not my main one


----------



## Towly (Feb 15, 2012)

I had alot of epic fails. Always forget to insert the 4pin power at the cpu or power to the hdd. One was way back when i installed a zalman gfx hsf on a asus nvidia 6200. the card slipped out of my hand. Put it in, boot up. nothing. RMA time. Got a new card. Now working extra carefull when working with parts. Forgot plugging in the cpu fan header. Lucky.


----------



## Joe Public (Feb 15, 2012)

Hmm... Not sure.   I think it must have been when I replaced the fan in a PSU a long time ago and I mounted it fan facing the wrong way.   I didn't notice, put the PSU back in, turned the computer on and played some games.   Suddenly the CPU temperature alarm went off (a loud squeal from the internal speaker) and when I touched the computer case, it was really hot.   Realized my error, took the PSU out and turned the fan the right way and situation was normal again.


----------



## mauriek (Feb 16, 2012)

my first fail, bought a very expensive Quantum Hard drive for my 386 iirc only to destroyed it during installation when i decided using longer screws, tightened it in the casing, turn the PC on and cant detect the new hard-drive and finally found out that screws was to long that it cut through the hard-drive bottom PCB.

my latest, when i accidentally squeeze Power Glue tube to hard in front of my Sharp LCD monitor, the glue dried within first minutes on the screen.


----------



## Yo_Wattup (Feb 16, 2012)

This thread makes me feel smart.


----------



## Lochban1088 (Feb 20, 2012)

My first major bollox was back when i was still using my 486 dx4 100 i had opend the case to replace a hard disk and managed to cross the mother board wires arse about tit insted of black to black i put red to black... the moral of this dont mess with pc,s at 5 in the morning when dog tired and not thinking strait... and yes it poped most of the caps on the mobo took me the better part of a week to replace em all before it would power back on... sigh we live and learn


----------



## specks (Feb 24, 2012)

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2544793&postcount=76

Here are the pics:


----------



## Norton (Feb 24, 2012)

specks said:


> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2544793&postcount=76
> 
> Here are the pics:
> 
> ...



Ouch! 

What happened?


----------



## specks (Feb 24, 2012)

Norton said:


> Ouch!
> 
> What happened?



Damn generic PSU crapped and took the 4pin with it. I should have known better. Good thing it was the only thing damaged.

The PSU and mobo 4 pin fused from the heat that i had to use pliers and a stripping knife to get it off.


----------



## Norton (Feb 24, 2012)

specks said:


> Damn generic PSU crapped and took the 4pin with it. I should have known better. Good thing it was the only thing damaged.



Lesson learned:
Once you get a bitten by a crap PSU all future ones will tend to be much better quality models


----------



## specks (Feb 24, 2012)

My current one is still crap but a lot better than generic ones.


----------



## hat (Feb 24, 2012)

I was overclocking a Phenom x4 9500 on the same board I'm using now (Biostar TF720 A2+). I forget exactly what settings I was trying to run, but I do remember doing some math and figuring the CPU power draw to be right around 125w. The board can only handle 95w according to spec. Ran OCCT Linpack and blew up the board, along with my 9800GT. RMA'd the board and just threw the processor away, didn't bother testing it.


----------



## Sir B. Fannybottom (Feb 24, 2012)

xBruce88x said:


> about the CD-rom issue... reminds me of my old copy of roller coaster tycoon... it has a crack too... i figured maybe i'd copy it and then not use it anymore... well the drive dicided to spin up to max speed during the cd copy process... and BOOM! i had to take the cover off and pick all the parts of cd out... drive worked fine ever since. so i just went to TPB to get an .iso haha. I later ended up buying another copy tho along with RCT2


 Exact same thing, with exact same game happened with me! 

My most recent fail was when i was applying some new TP to everything in my rig, and I forgot to plug the 6pin into my 5770. It started up and the fan on my 5770 was on 100% and I'm like wtf? I check and luckly ATI had me covered by using the fan as a sort of alarm  No harm was done!

I would have to say my biggest fail was trying to flash an OEM mobo with an hacked one so I could overclock my CPU. The flash failed and that mobo died, and the 2 after it died.  I realized a standoff in my case was shorting them out, put some black tape over the standoffs and it ran fine


----------



## BenHoliday (Feb 24, 2012)

I remember back in the WinNT days when this canuck took pity on me and decided to teach me how to repair pc's. He decided to teach me how to swap out psu's.

Step 1 unhook the power cables from inside the pc. I grabbed the first cable yanked and watched about a foot long arc of electricity go from the cable to the box. We looked at eachother for a moment and he said. Step 1 unplug the pc.


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## eidairaman1 (Feb 24, 2012)

BenHoliday said:


> I remember back in the WinNT days when this canuck took pity on me and decided to teach me how to repair pc's. He decided to teach me how to swap out psu's.
> 
> Step 1 unhook the power cables from inside the pc. I grabbed the first cable yanked and watched about a foot long arc of electricity go from the cable to the box. We looked at eachother for a moment and he said. Step 1 unplug the pc.



LMFAO.

I had a system powerup because I plugged in an AGP card while the machine was still plugged into the wall, it scared the crap out of me, lucky the components were not damaged


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## jgunning (Jul 4, 2012)

My worst problem was probably with a cheap 650W psu, sitting there playing some games and i hear some zapping sounds...quite alarmed i turn my pc off, and there is a smell of smoke.quickly unplug my pc and open it up, there is smoke coming out of the psu...one of the resisters fried itself and nearly caught fire..FAIL

_#Note to self..spend the extra bit of money and buy a reliable psu _

=\


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## Akrian (Jul 4, 2012)

Couple of Fails:
one of earlier builds with Athlon X2 - mobo caught on fire due to overtighting a screw.
1090t build - MSI NF980-G65 board caught on fire during Linpack run 0_o, replacement didnt.


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## Cold Storm (Jul 4, 2012)

My first fail didn't come from myself but from a member on TPU... See.. I was the guinea pig for the 3870 mod... So.. I let RM mod mine first.. blew it up.. then, when he resodered the whole thing, popped it in the computer, and boom, windows was saying my new os was bad.. so what he do? installs it on the wrong drive losing all the anime I converted from DVD... Yeah... I say he's my best friend too...


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## xenocide (Jul 4, 2012)

I actually just remember a big fail I had not to long ago.  I had a really old 200GB External HDD, and bought a 1TB External with USB3.0 and everything, went to format it in Windows and figured the list was in order of drive letter, it wasn't.  Ended up formatting over my 200GB Seagate that was literally filled with ripped music, movies, and some other precious documents.  I just sat there awestrucken for like an hour.


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## Millennium (Jul 4, 2012)

I have popped a monitor with too high a refresh rate. This was in the early 90s when a monitor wasn't too cheap either. 

It was a daewoo though (best I can recall) and they did free collect and replace next day in home service. I couldn't believe it! I just said it stopped working


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## micropage7 (Jul 4, 2012)

umm....

first fail when the first time i bought vga card, its radeon x500
its brand new, but after i switched on
theres something not right, the screen is blank. check and recheck, everything is normal so i guess the err from the card then RMA it
later i realize that if you plug the card first then setting the bios you gonna have blank display
so its not the card fault

2nd. when  i cleaned processor hsf and forgot to plug in the fan. thanks God it didnt burn


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## Millennium (Jul 4, 2012)

eidairaman1 said:


> LMFAO.
> 
> I had a system powerup because I plugged in an AGP card while the machine was still plugged into the wall, it scared the crap out of me, lucky the components were not damaged



I've done this too when I worked at MSI. 
I've also had amusing flames results plugging the wrong version of AGP into a mobo (they had different voltages, and the keyed versions with lower volts still fit a lot of the wrong mobos).


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## t77snapshot (Nov 17, 2012)

*thread bump *

One of my first n00b experiences was when I attempted to remove a dvd/cd optical drive while the pc was still running and can you guess what happened?? 

Yup, I shorted that bad boy instantly!!

Lesson learned.




Norton said:


> I was running a Socket A system with a 1Ghz Athlon at the time. In the middle of playing a game, Unreal I think it was, I heard a snap inside my PC followed by a rattling noise and a crash.
> 
> I was just at the wtf moment when the PC shut down and wouldn't restart??? Pulled the side panel off and realized that the CPU cooler had snapped off the socket and fell off into the bottom of the case.... burned the CPU out in like 10 seconds
> 
> ...



OMG! That is crazy!!! Good thing you didn't destroy a video card too. That is a harsh lesson learned Norton.


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## Sir B. Fannybottom (Nov 17, 2012)

"It looks like the same socket" 
*sigh* to be young again.


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## Doc41 (Nov 17, 2012)

Hmmm, too much n00b fails happened to me to remember my first, all the bent s478 P4 pins, fan blades accidental finger wedge, shorted components etc... but i remember a few

*-Once i thought it was a good idea to remove all heatsinks on a gfx card and "re-paste" them ,card was a leadtek winfast geforce3 and yes the ramsinks were glued on :shadedshu
the chips didn't come off with the heatsink but there was enough force to make a few pins come off tho, the card worked but all i saw was stripes on the screen = dead card.

*-Another mishap with a gfx car was when a screwdriver slipped and snapped a capacitor off, it was an MSI geforce 4Ti 4800se but that was fixed and it worked fine,
 another time with the same card i was putting it in a different pc and apparently didn't mount correctly, it wouldn't boot so took it apart to find out that the 3.3v lines on the 20-pin mobo connector got so hot that the wires got crispy and browned the socket,
luckily nothing got damaged but had to re solder a new 20-pin to the psu and everything worked, but last year i tried to run that card and it showed a messed up screen= probably dead too 

*-7300GT + Ramsinks i glued on + tried to remove = ram chip in my hand

*-Was going to replace TIM on a mobo chipset, original was all over the chipset and while cleaning it noticed a few hard spots and like an idiot forced my way into them for later thy turned out to be small surface mounted caps on the chipset :facepalm:
tried to solder couple of them but lost one or two, strange thing it worked fine without them?

lesson learned too late? be extra "paranoid" careful when working on a PC and do a redundant check when finished.

-Pardon the long story above-


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## vawrvawerawe (Nov 17, 2012)

I haven't had a fail. I am on PC #1, and I did tons of research first so I anticipate success.


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## burtram (Nov 18, 2012)

My first "Fail" had to be, trying to use one of those Ultra X-Connect power supplies....  I think it lasted two days or so before it popped, and took out my fan controller (the controller still provided power for my fans, but I lost all ability to control fan speed). Never again have I used a "cheap" (not to be confused with inexpensive) power supply.


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## jihadjoe (Nov 18, 2012)

Cracked the die mounting a heatsink on an old Athlon. 

In hindsight, I should've mounted the HSF before putting the motherboard in the case, easier to see if it's level that way.


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## natr0n (Nov 18, 2012)

During the AMD Barton days. I sleeved a whole psu with uv orange neon pet. I wired wrong red and yellows on all the molex and killed my a7n8x board, but got an rma got a new board. The psu still worked when I rewired the molex plugs. It recently wore out few years ago.Also was the 1st psu to feature active pfc from thermaltake I believe. cpu still works too.


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## Wile E (Nov 18, 2012)

Eh, I have to repost my fails every now and then.

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41746

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38153


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## cdawall (Nov 18, 2012)

Wile E said:


> Eh, I have to repost my fails every now and then.
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41746
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38153



Ha I remember both of those. The second one makes me nervous about going to TEC's...may end up doing chilled water instead.


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## natr0n (Nov 18, 2012)

Wile E said:


> Eh, I have to repost my fails every now and then.
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41746
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38153



wow, I was looking for a good pc roast recipe.


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## drdeathx (Nov 18, 2012)

I had a Sapphire motherboard take a processor out and said, "It could not have been the board."

Put another chip in and it took that one out too.


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## natr0n (Nov 18, 2012)

drdeathx said:


> I had a Sapphire motherboard take a processor out and said, "It could not have been the board."
> 
> Put another chip in and it took that one out too.



Sapphire boards are the worst , made by pc chips.The lowest of the low quality at that time prolly still are.


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## pigulici (Nov 18, 2012)

First fail? I was born on earth, and now I work all my life to repair that...


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## Wile E (Nov 18, 2012)

cdawall said:


> Ha I remember both of those. The second one makes me nervous about going to TEC's...may end up doing chilled water instead.



All you have to do with TECs is actually install the fail-safes. I didn't, and paid the price. lol.


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## drdeathx (Nov 18, 2012)

natr0n said:


> Sapphire boards are the worst , made by pc chips.The lowest of the low quality at that time prolly still are.




LOL, this was recent but Sapphire replaced the chips.


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## t77snapshot (Nov 18, 2012)

vawrvawerawe said:


> I haven't had a fail. I am on PC #1, and I did tons of research first so I anticipate success.



Then you do not belong in this thread  Why boast about it


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## Jetster (Nov 18, 2012)

t77snapshot said:


> Then you do not belong in this thread  Why boast about it



His day is coming


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## hat (Nov 18, 2012)

My first, and thus far, last catastrophic failure was when I had my Biostar TF720 A2+, a cheap AM2+ motherboard, paired with a Phenom 9500. The board only officially supported up to 95w processors, and the Phenom 9500 was already 95w out of the box. Not knowing this, I attempted to overclock that processor. I don't remember what speed or what voltage, but whatever it was, it amounted to drawing around 125w. One night I ran an OCCT Linpack test on the new settings, and I noticed the computer shut off. Tired, I slept through it and figured I would mess with it the next day.

The next day, I couldn't get the machine to come back on. After some investigation I noticed the area around the VRMs was burned out. After getting an RMA on the board, along with a new processor (simply assuming the 9500 was dead without testing it, another fail), I noticed the failure also took my 9800GT, the fastest graphics card I ever owned at the time, with it. It took a while to recover from that one, not having the money I do now to throw at hardware.

I tell you one thing though, any overclocks I did with that board I religiously checked out with the overclocker's TDP formula and made sure whatever I was running didn't go over 95w. I also had those little blue Zalman ramsinks on the VRMs as a little extra help.


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## Solaris17 (Nov 18, 2012)

straight bolt first systems mobo to the case no risers get on my level


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## Millennium (Nov 18, 2012)

I've killed a DVD RW with a bad flash back when they were a bit more expensive. Also, plugging in AGP 1 cards into later slots (different voltages) was something I used to do a fair bit when I used to work for MSI tech support. Nasty.


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## Techtu (Nov 18, 2012)

My first...

When I first had 2 PC's one was reaching high temperature's and I knew that swapping the CPU fans around on the systems would be an ideal solution, so went ahead and got the first one swapped over to let another family member back on the PC to do whatever they do whilst I go and fit the other fan on the other PC... 

All is well on the 2nd PC, however that family member soon comes to find me saying "your computer won't load" so obviously I ask the basic questions "have you tried restarting" and so on "yes" was the reply I got shortly followed by "It smells like it's burning too", "how long has it been like that" I replied which in response I got "since you left it" bare in mind this is around 15 - 20 minutes later. So I go rushing downstairs to the PC, by the way even at the top of the stairs I could smell what was clearly burnt plastic  

So what did I find? Just my PC stuck at the boot screen with everyone just sat there watching the TV... Clever huh 

All in all I got lucky and it only blown the CPU with a slight burn mark left behind on the motherboard which still worked perfectly until was no longer needed.


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## n3rdf1ght3r (Nov 20, 2012)

I dropped a hard drive off a table, and dented the floor, then while looking at the dent I hit my head on the table and knocked over my other hard drive. I then dropped the first hard drive again while putting the second one on the table. I needed new hard drives after that. DERP


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## natr0n (Nov 20, 2012)

n3rdf1ght3r said:


> I dropped a hard drive off a table, and dented the floor, then while looking at the dent I hit my head on the table and knocked over my other hard drive. I then dropped the first hard drive again while putting the second one on the table. I needed new hard drives after that. DERP



next hard drive use rubber gloves for grip and helmet for head.


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## [XC] Oj101 (Feb 24, 2013)

_JP_ said:


> Can't remember my first fail...so long ago, but I sometimes have some FAIL moments.
> Just three days ago, I was trying to revive my NF7-S (because of Abit's site going down) and the darn thing wasn't POSTing. Constant long beeping (usually RAM related).
> Took me a while before I noticed the floppy cable wasn't properly connected (upside down).



That's not normal, I've done it dozens of times and all that happens is the floppy drive read/write light stays on solid 

My worst was with an old GeForce 6600 AGP card which I was going to LN2. I'd taken the cooler off and insulated the card, put it into the old Barton and booted into the BIOS to make sure everything was ready. The motherboard was on a chair with the PSU on a table just above it. Once I was in the BIOS I saw that some settings were wrong (NB voltage and so on) so I started correcting them - forgetting that the card doesn't have a cooler. A minute or two in, a nice bright FLAME (not spark) came from an SMD just above the core and scorched the PSU wires coming from the table down to the rig - the wires were about 20cm above the rig. The card had a lovey, thick black scorch mark from the SMD to the top of the card, and the PSU wires caught in the line on fire (pun intended ) were also nicely blackened.

Another bad fail was when I first took a Phenom (X4 940 I think) sub zero, my first time "accidentally" using a chip without a cold bug as I was expecting one. Needless to say, I didn't know just how much of the board needed to be insulated, and only prepped it for about -40'c. I didn't have a working temperature probe, so I was planning to take things by ear and kept topping up with a splash of LN2 every minute or two until I realised the pot was full  Awesome, time to do some decent benching  This is the result:







Whoops, that resulted in a dead graphics card not too long after :/

And






A dead network port. Faaaark. It wasn't even my board :/


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## Animalpak (Feb 24, 2013)

I bought my first graphics card PCI EX 16, thinking that the PCI Express x16 merely as a new technology in the graphics card and not that it is the connecting interface ....

I realized only after i got home the new graphics card that i had a AGP 8X only motherboard ...

I just wanted to play Day of Defeat from steam at decent framerates.

Fckin noob !!


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## agent00skid (Feb 24, 2013)

After disassembling my laptop to see if I could clean it, I forgot to reconnect the fan when I reassembled it. My habit of running temp monitoring made me spot it fairly quickly. No damage done fortunately.


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## de.das.dude (Feb 24, 2013)

i didnt have any knowledge related fails as i had my cousin to ask about stuff.

but i did put my finger into the cpu fan a couple of times.


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Feb 24, 2013)

So many Fails but my dumbest was  cutting the extended cone bits off the heat pipes on a hyper 212 hsf cooler,  they were obstructing the 200mm side fan.
Epic fail as the vapour escaped the heat pipes and my cpu temp hit  hyper thermal 265 in bios .I can't believe I was so thick


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## Geofrancis (Feb 24, 2013)

jihadjoe said:


> Cracked the die mounting a heatsink on an old Athlon.
> 
> In hindsight, I should've mounted the HSF before putting the motherboard in the case, easier to see if it's level that way.



 I built my first computer when I was 14 and that was my first fail. My 850 duron never even got to post.


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## Jetster (Feb 24, 2013)

theoneandonlymrk said:


> So many Fails but my dumbest was  cutting the extended cone bits off the heat pipes on a hyper 212 hsf cooler,  they were obstructing the 200mm side fan.
> Epic fail as the vapour escaped the heat pipes and my cpu temp hit  hyper thermal 265 in bios .I can't believe I was so thick



That's a good one


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## tokyoduong (Feb 25, 2013)

My attempt to OC my Athlon XP 1700+ to 3 Ghz was an epic fail


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## Geofrancis (Feb 25, 2013)

Another fail I remembered was when I tried to run my X1900XT passive with an arctic accelero .  the core stayed under 80c but I didn't notice the VRM's burning out.

The best one was sleep walking drunk over to my computer and taking a piss on it.


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## linoliveira (Feb 25, 2013)

Geofrancis said:


> The best one was sleep walking drunk over to my computer and taking a piss on it.



oh man... you just made my day much funnier


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 12, 2013)

This is not my first fail but it sure did hurt! I just got tasered by a cold cathode inverter!


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## de.das.dude (Mar 12, 2013)

hahahahahahahaha. that cathode inverter gave you a really nice little love bite XD


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## [XC] Oj101 (Mar 12, 2013)

Can't. Stop. Laughing  Whahahahahahahahaha!!!


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## Jetster (Mar 12, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> This is not my first fail but it sure did hurt! I just got tasered by a cold cathode inverter!
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/130312/hurt.jpg



Do it again


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## buildzoid (Mar 12, 2013)

I just transferred my system to a custom case and after I finished the leak test I went to turn of the PSU but since I'm rather badly coordinated I managed to get a random metal something on my desk to short out one of the molex connectors knocking out the power in the entire 2nd floor of our house and frying the PSU.


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## stinger608 (Mar 12, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> This is not my first fail but it sure did hurt! I just got tasered by a cold cathode inverter!
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/130312/hurt.jpg



 sorry for laughing Brandon, but damn! That is funny as hell man!!!

I'll bet that hurt like hell bro.


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## Geofrancis (Mar 13, 2013)

linoliveira said:


> oh man... you just made my day much funnier



I don't remember it happening but i was told someone tried to stop me then told me to go to the bathroom so I went to the bathroom and pissed on the door


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## bbmarley (Mar 13, 2013)

about a decade or so ago could not turn my pc on and could not figure out why,a day later noticed there was floppy in that is was trying to boot from

here is another one, upon building 1st pc forgot to put the lil motherboard raisers/jumpers on the case and attatched motherboard to case when trying to turn on lights just went on then off i was baffled for an hour or so
lucky nothing got damaged with my repeat attempt at turning on and off


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## freaksavior (Mar 13, 2013)

865pe chipset with a 478 socket p4, tried to overclock it not having a clue what I was doing, the bios freaks out and the system fails to boot. I didn't realize at that time the bios jumper reset the bios or you could remove the battery. That board sat in a closet for 3 years until one day I realized what I did.

Another time I plugged in the power into the ground on a floppy and that wire heated up a nice orange color.....


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## lyndonguitar (Mar 13, 2013)

I tried to remove the static in the ram by using the eraser trick, didn't remove the eraser dust properly, so the ram got fried


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## Hood (Mar 13, 2013)

crazyeyesreaper said:


> Was overclocking an Athlon X2 4400  to 3.4ghz when my MSI Nforce 570 board caught on fire.



I know MSI boards run hot, but WTF?  Was it just smoke or did you see actual flames?  If so, that's awesome!  Even more amazing is the ensuing 5+ year lifespan.  I rebuilt a P4/778 system (for sentimental reasons) using one of their boards, and whenever you stressed the system like gaming) it would overheat the northbridge at 64c and freeze up the system unless I turned on a very loud Delta fan I had pointed at it.  And that was at stock clocks.  Last MSI product I ever bought.

Unscrewing fans from the outside top of my case, forgot they were holding up the H100 radiator inside the case - you can hardly see the dent in the cores where it hit the video card...


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## silkstone (Mar 13, 2013)

I noticed ants crawling into my case a while ago. After (unsuccessfully) trying to remove them, I gave up and ignored them. A week or 2 later my HDD failed. I opened up my pc and noticed little mounds of silicon on top of the HDD. I took the drive out, I blew silicon dust off off and got swarmed with ants.

It turns out the ants thought the best place to start a nest was in my 500GB Hard-Drive and were not too happy with me disturbing them. I should have taken pics.


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## 1nf3rn0x (Mar 13, 2013)

I was switching to a m-atx mobo and I had tightened one of the motherboard seating screws in the case so tight I had to use a pair of pliers to literally rip it out of the case. That case can no longer support atx motherboards, only m-atx.


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## HammerON (Mar 13, 2013)

Hood - please do not double post. Use the Edit, Multi-Quote and/or Quote feature. Posts merged...


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## de.das.dude (Mar 13, 2013)

my latest fail





bumped into a bench while exiting exam hall. i dont have money for this damnit!


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 13, 2013)

stinger608 said:


> sorry for laughing Brandon, but damn! That is funny as hell man!!!
> 
> I'll bet that hurt like hell bro.



Yes it did hurt badly! My hand smelt like burnt skin for the rest of the day. I was thinking about taking an old cathode and cutting the wires off so I could wire it to my door handle and call a friend over LOL.


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## ste2425 (Mar 13, 2013)

Did an engine swap on my old corsa, swapped new ecu on the engine with my old one as it had immobilizer built and i didn't hsve the barrel lock or door locks for new ecu. Wasn't watching what i was doing plugged in two multi-block connectors on the ecu upside down and they both had different pin layouts. Needless to say the pins were completely nakard. Soldering iron, long nose pliers, an hour and a clenched bottom and she was running fine again.


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## silkstone (Mar 13, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> Yes it did hurt badly! My hand smelt like burnt skin for the rest of the day. I was thinking about taking an old cathode and cutting the wires off so I could wire it to my door handle and call a friend over LOL.



I've done something similar with a van der graaf generator before. The effects can be quite comical. Physics labs can be quite fun when you get to play with giant capacitors, liquid nitrogen and dry ice.


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 13, 2013)

ste2425 said:


> Did an engine swap on my old corsa, swapped new ecu on the engine with my old one as it had immobilizer built and i didn't hsve the barrel lock or door locks for new ecu. Wasn't watching what i was doing plugged in two multi-block connectors on the ecu upside down and they both had different pin layouts. Needless to say the pins were completely nakard. Soldering iron, long nose pliers, an hour and a clenched bottom and she was running fine again.



What car is that in your sig? I never seen many opels in the US but while I was deployed to iraq I got to drive one on our base.


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## ste2425 (Mar 13, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> What car is that in your sig? I never seen many opels in the US but while I was deployed to iraq I got to drive one on our base.



i love it when i get asked that 

Its a ford Capri, technically the pic in my sig is of a die cast model of a ford Capri but still looks pretty damn nice


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 13, 2013)

ste2425 said:


> i love it when i get asked that
> 
> Its a ford Capri, technically the pic in my sig is of a die cast model of a ford Capri but still looks pretty damn nice
> 
> ...



LOL I owned a 1991 ford (mercury) capri (aussy built car)


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## ste2425 (Mar 13, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> LOL I owned a 1991 ford (mercury) capri (aussy built car)
> 
> http://carphotos.cardomain.com/ride_images/3/3260/701/33147850020_large.jpg



Was that an actual variant of the Capri or a comletally different car that they just stuck Capri on the end of. It shares no styling with the Capri lol


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 13, 2013)

ste2425 said:


> Was that an actual variant of the Capri or a comletally different car that they just stuck Capri on the end of. It shares no styling with the Capri lol



Here is the details on it.



> SA30
> Model	Released	Turbo version
> SA Capri 2D Convertible	October 1989	Yes
> SA Series II Capri 2D Convertible	October 1990	Yes
> ...


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## Geofrancis (Mar 13, 2013)

i remember doing something similar with the inverter from a plasma light mmmm burnt flesh


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 17, 2013)

freaksavior said:


> 865pe chipset with a 478 socket p4, tried to overclock it not having a clue what I was doing, the bios freaks out and the system fails to boot. I didn't realize at that time the bios jumper reset the bios or you could remove the battery. That board sat in a closet for 3 years until one day I realized what I did.
> 
> Another time I plugged in the power into the ground on a floppy and that wire heated up a nice orange color.....



hahaha Orange


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## overclocking101 (Mar 18, 2013)

brandonwh64 said:


> This is not my first fail but it sure did hurt! I just got tasered by a cold cathode inverter!
> 
> http://img.techpowerup.org/130312/hurt.jpg



OMFG I have seriously had that happen. been a LONG time but it does tickle.


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## Vario (Mar 24, 2013)

Tried to check my 12v voltage, system running, with a multimeter and it sparked! Everything still works but PSU shut off.


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## d1nky (Mar 24, 2013)

thermal paste in the socket and pins.......what a mess! thank god for non conductive, may even be some still in there hahah!


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## Bunchies (Mar 24, 2013)

when i was building my first pc the power supply i was using only had 1 4-pin cpu power connector and my motherboard had 8-pin (4+4) so i went and bought a 4 to 8 pin adapter and the pc wouldnt boot. long story short i had to take it to frys after a week of testing the crap out of everything to find out the adapter was the cause. at the time i didnt know you can put a 4 pin into a 8 pin lol

stupid story but you asked for my FIRST fail


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## d1nky (Apr 16, 2013)

2200rpm fan just sliced into my finger


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## redeye (Apr 17, 2013)

d1nky said:


> 2200rpm fan just sliced into my finger
> http://img.techpowerup.org/130416/Photo0026.jpg


lol, yes i know that feeling, did the fan blade snap off? only happened to me with the Amd HSF... bit of a pain, because the HSF is broken. Well, the good thing is that i don't use the included HSF with AMD cpus.


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## EarthDog (Apr 17, 2013)

Accidently dropping a CPU into a socket bending several pins...



d1nky said:


> thermal paste in the socket and pins.......what a mess! thank god for non conductive, may even be some still in there hahah!


Wh...How?


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## d1nky (Apr 17, 2013)

the thermal paste was xigmatek stuff and really wet. basically just dripped into the socket lol!

@redeye the fan blades are fine.... luckily as its from the aegir and a fan costs £14


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