Stupid ways that you or others broke PC components

[newuser]

So that others won't do it...

Working on pc under desk. Removed sound card for access. Placed it safely in front of tower. Decided more light would be good, decided to open curtains. Trod on sound card.

Sold GPU. Pulled GPU packing from top of wardrobe. Forgot socket 939 board and ridiccolus Thermaltake tower cooler stacked on top. Lacerated arm and leg, broke board.

Briefly secondary school IT guy. Found cream cracker in floppy drive.

Gave ISA sound card to friend. Described fitting in a foolproof fashion. Showed him where to plug CD drive cable into sound card if fitted. Worried call, PC dead. He'd managed to jam a floppy power connector into the sound card. Worked fine when disconnected.

What do you have?

 

[mickyflinn]

Tested my mates cpu in my motherboard and found out it truly was faulty, it blew my motherboard.

 

[Grimley]

A few:
Fried a socket A (Duron CPU) because I got sold a copper spacer to help cool the CPU better. That was a con as all it did was not provide sufficent cooling to the CPU die from the cooler, even though there was more than enough thermal paste. No thermal protection or heatspreaders back then so it was dead.

The other - tried to plug in a molex case fan while the PC was on, short circuit & triggered a shutdown. IIRC the PC was OK afterward (eventually, after frantically retesting all components) but didn't do it much good in the long term.

Last one - Managed to melt a (worn) sata power connectors on a old PSU & optical drive Xmas before last. All replaced though.

 

[StarShock]

Very long time ago I was almost done building a pc and was just plugging the sata cable into the hdd and the case which was precariously sitting on the edge of the table slipped and the sata connector on the hdd snapped off in my hand.

 

[montymint]

one of my mates dusted the inside of his pc using a dust cloth.

 

[pp111]

Played golf with a graphics card. Hit it a few times before my brain realised that the problem with the PC was not the graphics card.

 

[Randomface74]

megadrive kept crashing so I retired it with a dumbell to the face.

 

[Angelwolf]

Finished setting up a new rig quite some time ago... Powered computer on, sniffed a distinctive electrical burning smell and promptly yanked out the power cable. Checked components to find that my
AGP 64mb ATI Radeon 7000 was apparently not quite pushed into the slot far enough and the contacts were singed towards the back of the card.

An expensive mistake, and I'm happy to see GPU locking mechanisms on motherboards now!

 

[Dave Burton]

Orchid Righteous 3D, waaaaay back in the day, tried to apply ramsinks using conductive epoxy, failed to spot a tiny splash where it shouldn't have been and the card blew up as soon as I pressed the power on button Expensive mistake that was

 

[d_brennen]

A friend of mine stepped on an Athlon 64 while building a PC on the floor. It was an FX as well, can't remember how much but he actually cried

Don't think I've actually broken anything personally. Had a couple hard drive and GPU failures

 

[newuser]

I don't feel so bad now.

I've got an old tablet that I use to play music in the kitchen. I leave it on top of the george formby grill because it's flat and has a socket close. One day I flipped the wrong switch and came back in the room to a sort of plastic bacon frying smell. It still works but has the worst backlight bleed I've ever seen.

My old boss murdered his ancient PC thinking the insurance would give him a shiny new one. They repaired it using replacement ancient parts. Daft thing was we had enough parts PCs and pulls lying about that I could have done him a decent upgrade if he'd asked.

 

[EsaT]

Despite of 20+ years of hobby have managed to avoid breaking/frying things by accident.
Just normal wear&tear breakdowns.

megadrive kept crashing so I retired it with a dumbell to the face.

Now that's Rest In Pieces...

 

[oldestgregg]

one of my mates dusted the inside of his pc using a dust cloth.

I use a paintbrush with delicate bristles. Probably shouldnt.

 

[Dg834man]

Two weeks ago i had my cpu cooler off an arctic 34 duo, sat it on top of my bed upside down as i hadn't cleaned the bottom, it decided to find a new position on the floor the base plate separated from the heat pipes deforming them in the process.

 

[im4gine3]

hmmm.. i'd say the most obvious one which comes to mind, when i first started watercooling i use to use tap water with a drop of washing up liquid in the loop... forgot i had a port open and ran the system. As you can expect, water went everywhere and fried all the components in my beloved Chieftec Dragon.

Others which i guess still applies nowadays.. screwing too far into a radiator and piercing it

 

[mikehhhhhhh]

I've never broken any PC equipment.

I came close twice;

Once by bending a load of cpu pins, I think it was an A64 3500+ but I painstakingly straightened and aligned about 1/3 of the pins on the cpu.

Second was very recently, I'd just upgraded my PSU and after doing so I needed to temporarily connect a SATA drive to copy some data so I grab a sata power cable from by the new PSU box and plug it in. It make a weird noise and PC died straight the moment it was switched on. Turns out, I'd accidentally used a cable from the old PSU.

I spent the next 5 minutes trying various stuff, leaving it unplugged, removing other cables etc. but it just sprung back into life about 5 minutes later.

 

[Andrew_McP]

1996. I decided to make some pocket money doing PC upgrades. First customer... add a HD to their newish Packard Bell. I decide balancing the new drive on the chassis would be logical for a quick recognition test.

Power on, old school spinning drive with the angular momentum of a steroid-soaked Olympic discus thrower develops life of its own and drops into the case.

There is smoke. There is no longer a PC. There is no longer a pocket money business. There are psychological scars.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Mucking about with my first PC, a Tiny 486SX2-50, in my college digs. Jumper-overclocked it to 66MHz, all was good. Then tried 75MHz...
Was without a PC for about 6 months after that.

 

[DoneADougalOnSofa]

Played golf with a graphics card. Hit it a few times before my brain realised that the problem with the PC was not the graphics card.

I launched a 24" monitor into a wall, after a few frustrating days building a rig from spares.
Plugged in the power lead, nothing. Tried a different cable, nope... It was knocking 30c outside, I was hot and bothered, so Mr Monitor went wheeee-crunch.

It was then I noticed the light on the 4-way wasn't on...

 

[pp111]

I launched a 24" monitor into a wall, after a few frustrating days building a rig from spares.
Plugged in the power lead, nothing. Tried a different cable, nope... It was knocking 30c outside, I was hot and bothered, so Mr Monitor went wheeee-crunch.

It was then I noticed the light on the 4-way wasn't on...