Just a fun thread of some of the worst things you have personally done to a computer. I think I have 2 good ones... 1. My first computer, budget build. I thought power supplies were all the same, so I got the cheapest one with enough wattage. I didn't leave any headroom and didn't check to see if it had any safety features. It worked great until I decided to try overclocking. Even that was fine until I turned on counter strike. Then there was a loud pop and a flash, my computer instantly shut off, and smoke started rising from the back of my computer. 2. I had a virus scan already on my computer, but when installing a program it asked if I'd like to install another. I thought "2 is better than 1" and clicked yes. Ran the install and rebooted. When it comes to virus scans, 2 is not better than one. 2 is not better than none. In fact, 2 virus scans at the same time is worse than most malware. The two ate up every bit of processing power scanning each other that I couldn't even load Notepad, let alone play games. Well, those are my 2 stories. What stupid stuff have you done to your computers?
trying to boot a PC without a Heatsink, ruins the CPU. trying to use a underpower PSU, burns PSU up and corrupts data, install new PSU, everything works trying to install RAID on 2 different speed HDD. Data Corrupt not pushing RAM sticks into the crappy motherboard properly. Ruins Stick. forgetting to connect any power connector for fans, HDD, Cards...
I chipped a corner of a processor putting on the heatsink. It didn't seem to do anything except that in OpenGL games, the colors were completely out and everything was mostly green and purple, so I had to play everything in DirectX. This was just when DirectX started getting decent, so it wasn't too big of a deal. I don't know why it only affected OpenGL, but maybe it had something to do with AMD's 3DNow functions? One time when I was moving my computer to a new case I was installing the Hard drive. This was still back before SATA so it was an IDE drive with like 36 pins. I was a little misaligned with the cable and it wouldn't go in, so I pushed a bit harder and wound up bending all of the connector pins and ripping some right off of the controller board. Flashing a motherboard with the wrong bios.
put just a tad too much thermal paste on the cpu and when I tightened the fan to the cpu....tiny little bit out the side - not a problem to touch up until i didn't check the other side. My gloves touched the extra amount on the hidden side...then gloves touched the pins on the underside - put it back in without knowing - womp womp. Gotta love newegg, though, as they replaced the MB and chip even though it was obvious what I did...
Hmm. I've never accidentally destroyed my computer's hardware, but I have used one of these: Did it outside on the driveway, of course. No, most of my mistakes are in circuits I build. Solder bridges on QFPs with their damn 0.3mm pin pitch, and SOT-28s are the bane of my existence. Not to mention 0805 and smaller resistors. "I'll hand assemble that prototype, it'll be faster and cheaper!" Bad idea. But when it's for my own hobby stuff, it IS cheaper, but definitely not faster...
Cheap PSU, I guess it's the most common error...I was running crossfire at that time, when it first came out. One VGA burned after 3-4 months and the other one after 2 years
About the only mistakes I have made are with GPU's. Not checking for the correct pci express type and such. Oh and only installing 32 bit windows and then realizing it takes 4Gb of ram to run my graphics card properly.
