Post your silly mistakes with building computers!

Just as the topic says, im sure some of us if not all of us have made a silly mistake once in their life with regards to computers and computer building, so lets hear them, mine was probably on my first build when i was hooking up the graphics card, i plugged in the power cable the wrong way and i was puzzled for so long, i wa close to sending it back because i thought it was faulty, then i just tried switching the pci-e cable around the right way and it worked :), i felt so stupid lol.supras989

i bought an 80+ dollar case thinking it would be good but it turns out that even though its expensive it dont move air at all.hofuldig

i tried installing a new cheap heatsink/fan on my old 4200+ but the thing was so cheap it won't hold so i threw it at the floor and it shattered... there goes my rma.

and then i broke the cpu pins while trying to lock it down... there goes my 4200+.

I built a new PC and when I pressed the power button it wouldnt turn on. I was devestated. I thought something was broke. Then I realised the little switch on the PSU was turned off

On my last build I finished everything and was ready to load up the OS. When the disc wouldn't read I got pissed thinking that I bought a faulty discdrive...but no, I simply forgot to plug in the SATA cord C:22Toothpicks

I think mines worse than anyone. When i first got a modular powersupply, i put the cable in the power supply (molex/sata) in upside down and i fryed 2 hdds and 2 dvd drives....that was a costly mistake.beefdog

Hmm......i can't think of anything really, just fiddling around the PC and then when it doesn't turn on getting all scared, then i realize i forgot to flip back the PSU switch. On my cousins PC i broke part of the socket retention clip thingy, but the heatsink still managed to stay on :lol: [QUOTE="22Toothpicks"]On my last build I finished everything and was ready to load up the OS. When the disc wouldn't read I got pissed thinking that I bought a faulty discdrive...but no, I simply forgot to plug in the SATA cord C:X360PS3AMD05

I think mines worse than anyone. When i first got a modular powersupply, i put the cable in the power supply (molex/sata) in upside down and i fryed 2 hdds and 2 dvd drives....that was a costly mistake.beefdog

You dont have to force it with this psu, itll go right in and you wont know its in wrong until you turn it on.....or if you know that it clicks when they go in.

Fyi im talking about this part:

Couple of years ago I was building a computer for a friend of mine. I decided to put the optical drives in first and work my way down to the bottom of the case so that the wires would be easier to access. After a couple of minutes I realized that it wasn't working out and decided to remove the molex cables from the DVD drive. I pulled lightly but it wouldn't budge. So I decided to pull it a little more and it finally came loose but not without a price. My hand struck the CPU heat sink and cut open my hand. The cut I could live with but the blood that dripped onto the MB was something I could live without. I cleaned it up to the best I could but it seems that there was still some on it when I did the first boot and it shorted the board....Cdscottie

[QUOTE="hofuldig"] i bought an 80+ dollar case thinking it would be good but it turns out that even though its expensive it dont move air at all.ticktocktick201

hmm, took me a sec to remember the mobo needed a psu plug of its own, but i figured it out..

so many things change every generation, since 486's to now, sometimes takes a sec to adjust when building your next rig

I built a new PC and when I pressed the power button it wouldnt turn on. I was devestated. I thought something was broke. Then I realised the little switch on the PSU was turned off

Big_Bad_Sad

My 1st system build (listed in sig below).......When I went to install my cpu in the mobo socket, I had a really hard time pulling the latching arm over to lock it in place. Then when I went to install the Zalman heat-sink, I was bending the board so badly while attempting to screw in down, I thought I was going to break it. I knew something was wrong, so I disassembled everything to check if I had lined up the pins of the cpu with the socket correctly. Everything looked good and I kept eyeing the cpu to see if it was ok. I then turned it over and realized that I forgot to remove the plastic cover on the back that cover the pins.......I wanted to shoot myself !!! .....I thought I had damaged the chip and MB, but as it turned out.....all was fine.....I guess that says a lot for Intel and Gigabyte (Built rock solid)....... :oops:

*+

Never admire a 790g HS over top of a MB, ill just leave it at that.risc-vs-cisc

When I finished my upgrade from my older X2 5200 and ASUS motherboard to a E8400 and Gigabyte EP35 motherboard, I was ready to turn the system on.

So I do so, and wondered why the system wasn't actually booting up. The fans were on, everything was running. I try a second time, same thing.

I look inside my case, checking all of the power cables. Turns out the processor's power cable wasn't plugged into the motherboard. Took me probably 5 minutes to figure that out.

i used slightly wrong screws to fix the motherboard to the brass spacers, so i needed to clamp the gold spacers underneath to mothorboard to unscrew it again

i used my HDD rack wrong i didnt screw from the underneath but the sides like you do with DVD drives, and i wondered why it wouldnt work, so i used blu-tac for a few months.

everything else went fine, booted first time etc etc, no connections were wrong, and considering that was my first build i was happy.