What is your most expensive (or painful) computer disaster?

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Some of us are more prone to disasters and accidents than others and i have my fair share.

i had a quiet think last night about the kind of problems i have had and managed to identify a pattern with my cock-ups.


i cant help fiddling with my pcs while they are plugged in and it has proved to be moderately costly over the years. I thought i would start this thread as a salutory warning to others to UNPLUG YOUR STUFF.

I was fiddling inside my case the other day and managed to dislodge a wire going to a molex connector on my H100 watercooler. Frantically in a panic i shoved it straight back in to the nearest available hole and POOF....that distinctive smell that sticks in your nose for days eminated from my system.....no more H100. I only paid £ 25.00 for it but its something i cant afford to replace so, for me, its' an expensive mistake.

Playing with fans is a penchant of mine and yesterday i came close to another calamity.....i dropped one onto my GPU (which doesnt have a backplate). Someone was smiling down on me because luckily the fan fell on the "correct" side and the screws holding it together didnt make contact with the GPU. If the screws had made contact i am sure my GPU would have shorted.


My most expensive mistake cost me a mobo, Intel S5520HC. Its a 2p board that i was using for crunching. I couldnt afford a case so i decided to make another custom one out of treadplate. I have used treadplate for various projects including my current pc case and am pretty good with metalwork.....years of carpentry have given me similar skills so i started the project with confidence.


My PC accessorized with treadplate

Then my dog Jess got involved.

Picture the scene.
i have a large work area and my bench is about 3 metres long.My plan was to build a wooden frame, clad it in treadplate and site the PC in my daughters room as supplemental heating through the winter.
Everything was going well, plans drawn, bits and pieces sourced, bought and delivered.

The board was running, crunching like a hero with 2 x E5620 doing their thing at stock.....great. All my bits were spread across the bench, screwdrivers, spanners, tape...the lot.....including my metal ruler.

Then my dog made an appearance. Shes a Welsh sheepdog who we rescued and we love her. Shes full of fun and is always happy to see us. One flick of her tail was enough to send my metal ruler almost the whole length of the shiny worksurface ( think kitchen top) and twat the bottom of the board.

In what looked like a planned manouvre, the ruler made contact with the back of the mobo ( which was sitting on Lego) and landed smack bang on the back of the 24 pin connector. This time there was actual smoke and swearing.....lots of swearing.

of course i couldnt blame the dog...it was another one of my cockups and yet another reminder to UNPLUG YOUR STUFF.

I will probably never learn my lesson but if typing all this works to remind just one person....for safetys sake

UNPLUG YOUR STUFF

 

[tabascosauz]

I think I documented this before, but I had quite an expensive mistake involving continuously failed boots and a Radeon card. I swapped CPUs ($0 cause I owned both but I had to go halfway across the world to do it), bought a board (£99 I think), and bought a 16GB kit (£60? £70?) before realizing that it was the GPU and had to buy a stopgap 750 Ti (£89.99).

If I hadn't skimped by buying the absolute cheapest (and flimsiest and badly designed) card at that performance segment that I could find, I could have saved all this money. Sure 16GB is nice to have now, but I was doing just fine (I keep my open Chrome tabs low in number). Lesson learned.

 

[P4-630]

Once shipped my desktop from Bangkok to Europe, when it arrived I unpacked it and tried to start it up, nothing...
Thought I saw some slightly bend pins in the PCIE lane, was bending the pins a bit and I screwed up, ordered a new 775 asus motherboard.
When the board arrived I put it in the case and connected all hardware, still nothing.
Bought a new HD4870 and after that it was done and starting, I think the previous GB motherboard was still good afterall before I started messing with it.
Anyways it's still running and my dad is still happy with it.

 

[Jack1n]

Ran Furmark on an Asus 4890 Top about 5 years ago, it did not end well.

 

[hertz9753]

Border Collies look the same as the Welsh Sheepdog but the Collie is a bit smarter. Did that answer the question?

Molly is a Heeler/Lab cross and she chewed up GTX 960 when I left on her chair.

 

[RCoon]

I accidentally pulled an R32 inductor off of my 1 month old GTX 780 when changing a waterblock. £550 worth of disaster right there. After 3 months NVidia got me a new replacement though.

 

[INSTG8R]

Built a new rig with new case and I hooked up the USB case header "backwards" Took out a brand new 16GB flash drive AND a Logitech G25 Wheel "testing" it...needless to say that I bought a new G25 and the dead one has been a great "parts wheel" Actually it's the same case I still use now but those USB ports are long dead and gone and removed from the case.

 

[EntropyZ]

Tried to run a Core Duo E8500 with a Gigabyte EP45T-DS3R (great P45 mobo btw, it's a shame it had some bugs though), I had all RAM slots populated which already was too much for the board, also two 320GB hard drives. I had all that connected to a cheap 400W power supply which had already worked for longer than it should have. When I turned the system on both hard drives went to heaven and were confirmed dead after hooking them up to a different power supply.

I had to replace the HDD's out my pocket since I was building a computer for someone while re-using the guy's existing hard drives.

This is the second time I had trouble with a cheap power supply. The first time I had trouble was trying to get through the intro scene in Crysis 1 with a so called "600W gaming" PSU, which was black and looked cool but was completely off-spec, when the computer would shut down due to the safety measure working in the PSU. I'm lucky it didn't fry the GTX 460.

Ever since then I bought an XFX Core Pro Series 650W, and never looked back, the unit is amazing and has been running several of my systems perfectly. It did come at a £70 price point if I recall correctly, but it was every bit of penny worth it. A shame I never had the chance to try using 2 graphics cards with it.

I'm never, ever going to even try using a crappy PSU ever again, even Cooler Master's 400W units are way better than Inter-Tech ones which are rated for 650W, how do I know this? The Inter-Tech Energon could barely run an FX-8350 system (it even had less PCI-E power connectors than a more quality 600-650W unit), it had constant blue screens. The CM 400W had no problems whatsoever.

 

[PLAfiller]

I accidentally pulled an R32 inductor off of my 1 month old GTX 780 when changing a waterblock. £550 worth of disaster right there. After 3 months NVidia got me a new replacement though.

That is only possible in the West World . I really miss that here. I had this occasion some time ago. A friend of mine moved into a new apartment. Still under some repairs - you know how it is. Anyway, she got her internet connected and router from ISP installed ( which will be paid together with the monthly fees ). However, just after the install, my friend left the apartment and came back 2- 3 weeks later and there was no wi-fi. So, I get called to help and I decided to call the ISP's support. They tell me : Unplug it and plug it again. I unplug and plug and then nothing happens. We carry the router to the ISP's office and it turns out it overheated and burned out. According to their data check, the router stopped sending wi-fi signal the next day after the install - technically it worked one day. And guess what, they told my friend, she didn't take good care of it, and then all the left over payments have to be done and meanwhile to get a new router o. I was really pissed to say the least. If I pull apart a brand new GPU here for whatever reason and something goes wrong, I am a toast man .

Most expensive disaster, I bought a cable modem for phone line, right before cable internet was introduced. I think I used it 5 times or so. Next one was a second hand HDD, that was broken.

 

[erixx]

The dog eat that keyboard 'cos it was fucking smelling like true shit!!!!! OMG!

 

[NdMk2o1o]

Bent some pins on the CPU socket of a brand new lga 1366 motherboard back when they were first released in 09 I think?, I did RMA it tho.... A few months back I was being a little bit too heavy handed with my Sapphire 290 when removing the cooler and knocked off a couple of big capacitors with some of the PCB still stuck to them, needless to say I was so disgusted with myself I didn't even attempt to try and power it up and threw it in the bin, I nearly cried also stuck my foot through the case window of my PC many years ago in temper when it wasn't working right and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.... it still didn't work after this

 

[droopyRO]

Decided to delid my 3750k using the blade method, don`t do that if you have a cold and went to work that day. I ended slicing the PCB near the CPU die and bricked the whole thing. It set me back almost half my monthly income back in 2013.
The next time i delided my 3770k with the vice and hammer method, worked like a charm

 

[RejZoR]

That would be a fried HD5850 because I was fiddling with Zalman VF900 heatsink and apparently wasn't up to the task somehow. At least I then had a legitimate excuse to buy HD6950 then, hehe

 

[Frick]

Nothing really expensive, iirc. A router maybe.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Cracked 4850 die I guess... had to replace it...

So far nothing that serious, mostly broken fan blades

 

[Recon-UK]

TBH not really had anything "expensive" go bang on me touch wood.

 

[hertz9753]

Never stick your finger in a fan when it is running, it will break fan blades and skin. I will admit that I have also done that.

 

[Recon-UK]

Never stick your finger in a fan when it is running, it will break fan blades and skin. I will admit that I have also done that.

Did that with my 180mm Silverstones... ripped a chunk from my pinky... good job it was not a delta lol, those 180mm though have serious weight behind them... hurt...

 

[CounterZeus]

Ever since then I bought an XFX Core Pro Series 650W, and never looked back, the unit is amazing and has been running several of my systems perfectly. It did come at a £70 price point if I recall correctly, but it was every bit of penny worth it. A shame I never had the chance to try using 2 graphics cards with it.

I regret buying that PSU. Fan is making way too much noise.

 

[Caring1]

I had a lightning strike which took out a lot of electrical equipment, but luckily only the modem/ router on the computer side of things.
It still hit me hard as I was unemployed and broke at the time.

 

[RejZoR]

Oh and I've bricked a Linksys E4200 with stupid DD-WRT. Don't touch that crap, stick with Shibby Tomato. Was a good router though.

 

[SKBARON]

When Ivy Bridge was all the fuss, I bought myself a z77a-ud3h, a pentium g850(had no funds so had to plan for a replacement) and 4 gig of trancend ram. Long story short, after a routine cleanup i ended up inserting the cpu into the socket slightly out of line. I did not notice that and I had already proceded to clip it in place. Tried turning it on afterwards - no luck. Upon removing the cpu, I noticed that the pcb was bent and cracked in one corner. Swapped my then gf's g620 in and found out that somehow the motherboard died too.

After about 3 weeks got a z77a-gd55 as a warranty replacement. Tried flashing the bios on that thing, it froze in the middle of the process and could not be recovered. The guys at the service center didn't even bother to reprogram it so they gave me a full refund.

Well it actually worked in my favor since afterwards I bought my current board for less than half the refund, spent the other half for 4 gb more ram and my i5 2500s.

I knocked off a smd resistor of my old 8600GT while taking it out of the case, but that was an easy fix.

I killed my 400GB Seagate hdd back in 2008 when it fell from my pocket onto the solid concrete floor.

That's it, so far

 

[R-T-B]

I never unplug my stuff. It's heathen talk.

That said, I separate my animals from my room. Permanently. If they find a way in, they get NO BISCUIT.

 

[RejZoR]

Just remembered one more. It's not fatal one, but it has driven my OCD insane so it's as equally bad as being ruined entirely. I've had Galaxy S2 for a while. Used it with silicone case for ages. One day I've decided to just use it as it is and on that very same day, it decided to tumble from my pocket over few concrete stairs and falling with screen flat on rough (rocky?) sand surface below. Bastard was all scuffed on screen frame edges. To my surprise, screen wasn't shattered or scratched.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

Removing the heat spreaders off 2 ram sticks didnt quite go to plan.