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

[Ruru]

-Thunderbird 1400MHz - the first time installing a Socket A cooler wasn't an easy task to do..
-Hercules 9500 Pro - scratches and fucked up traces on the PCB... dunno how I managed to break it
-Gainward 6600GT AGP - crappy cheap PSU murdered it when I was playing FEAR... grabbed my old GF4 Ti4200 from my drawer and continued with low settings
-Club 3D X1800XL - I guess my self-modified bios (XT PE GPU clocks, slightly OC'd VRAM clocks from stock) wasn't a good idea..
-Pentium D 935 - delidding it didn't go as I excepted, ofc I warmed it up with a lighter - success was 50% since the other core came with the IHS..
-Gigabyte Z68 mobo - the only time when I've overtighten the damn screws.. I guess I took few beers more than I should had when I was installing it..
-Also some screwed up DIMM's when the removal of the heatspreader didn't go like I thought it would.. yeah, the chips came also, like in page 1..
-64GB SSD - somehow I managed to damage the PCB since I had to open it (I managed to break the SATA data connector... dont ask how -.-) since some SMD's took some damage when I tried to solder the SATA connector back...
-iPad 2 - screen broken... well, that's at least still fixable..
-Also some old Asus Socket A board (SDRAM & KT133), I tried to modify it (no idea what, can't remember) but it just died, dammit.. A7V it seems to have been. Luckily I had a P3 platform in my closet, so that wasn't THAT bad... tho still the P3 1GHz @ 1.1GHz was slower than that Athlon 1.2GHz @ 1.37GHz which I had on that RIP-A7V

 

[verycharbroiled]

You could of tried what I did by sniping a pin from any old piece of hardware. Sand it til it's small enough to fit in place of the missing pin in the socket but leave it long enough so when it hits the bottom of the motherboard PCB in the socket it touches where the missing pin was. Worked for me.

i did try some very thin wires of a few gauges i had from electronic projects but never got it to work. looking back the wires were probably too flexible and bent a bit when i pushed the socket lever down to lock it in, thus reducing its length in the socket to the point of not contacting the cpu pin remains. your idea of using another pin im sure would of worked.. maybe if i had kept trying i might of thought of that (er well *cough* probably not).

but that was my excuse to upgrade, so i kinda didnt mind heh

 

[Ferrum Master]

wasn't a good idea..

You should wear this near your PC lol

 

[verycharbroiled]

You should wear this near your PC lol
View attachment 78702

yeah i have one of those. mine is fireproof too. however, my hair is not. and please, dont ask

 

[Aquinus]

I got a 28" HannsG monitor quite some time ago and I had to RMA it three times in less than 1 year. After the first time I got on their case about the shipping cost because it was 80 USD to ship it and shipping it twice was going to be half the cost of the display. By the time they gave me the third replacement, they gave me a nicer model which I have and to this day also still have issues with. Needless to say, they're the shittiest company I've ever dealt with.

 

[SaltyFish]

Not checking the paper towel/cloth when wiping down monitors. Yay for instant scratches! I've managed to scratch two screens like this. You'd think I'd learn after the first.... *sigh* Good news is that the scratches are all minor and barely noticeable unless the screen is displaying white where the scratches are located. Bad news is that I'm still conscious of the scratches being there even if I don't see it. This makes me wish they made monitors with some tough glass like back in the CRT days.

 

[eidairaman1]

Killed a M18 9800 256 for a Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 1 Laptop by thinking i could flash using a desktop bios to unlock the M18s additional pixel pipes to equal a x800s. bricked the card- card was 500 bux at the time