Your Stupidest Custom Computer Build Mistakes...

Misplaced a pin on front panel xfi when i first built my computer 2 years ago and wouldn't even boot due to that short. RMA'd 2 motherboards before I figured it out. Man did I feel dumb.

I once forgot the separators between the motherboard and the case, so all the pins where making contact with the aluminium surface. The computer never booted and It took me 2 days to figure that one out xD! i was lucky the motherboard didn't short-circuited.

Well the 1st PC I ever built was a P3 with 64MB ram oor so, but thats not the funny bit.

I had all the parts, and all the room to lay everything out and all the screws, cables, etc.

So I opened up the case, and I found it was like 5cm deep or so, so I put the motherboard and everything else in. Then I was figuring out how to attach the HDD cables and the CD drive cables. It was on the other side, or something.

Then I realised that I had opened the case on the wrong side, there weren't any easy latches or anything with those cases, they all had screws back then. At this stage I was at about 3 hrs "builddng" or should I say being stupid. I then spent another 6 hrs re-building everything. I didn't want too make a mistake, it was my 1st PC and it cost like $2500 back then.

Now I know why the companies that make cases don't use screws anymore.

BTW I was only 8 back then, I liked building things, I spent my whole day building this, then found out I had to go to bed, I didn't even get too play it.

damn, 8 and your parents bought you a 2500 dollar computer?

damn, 8 and your parents bought you a 2500 dollar computer?

shadow1988

Well it wasn't just for me, it was a family PC, and my dad supervised so I wouldn't kill anything, like damaging pins or short-circuiting the m/b.

I wasn't upto using power yet so only damagin would be done with pins, and as u can see spending 6 hrs, I was very careful, I took an hour installing the cpu correctly.

Now I build a PC in about 20 mins, 30-35 mins with extra cooling.

I spent like 4 hours trying to figure out why my new PC wouldn't boot up, only to realise i forgot to put the power supply in. ( Actually it was still sitting at the post office i hadn't picked it up)

dared3vil0

Indeed. -Teal'c

This happened to my friend: He was relativly new to computers and i was helping him over the phone for his build. I told him to apply the thermal past to the processor. Since i have never heard of this problem before, i didnt think to specify that he needs to apply it to the top of the processor..........he coated the pins on his processor with thermal paste

This happened to me: Once upon a time, i recieved my brand new FX5200 to upgrade an old build. It was late and i was very tired. I spent 2-hours and 4 PSU screws trying to figure out why they wouldnt come out before i figured it out. I had been twisting the screw driver the wrong way for 2 hours. That may have been one of the most embarrasing moments of my life.

I tried to run 8800GT without connecting the PSU. :D

I tried to fit my Athlon x64 cpu in a AM2 mobo and DDR ram in a DDR2 slot... i fried the slot. these were my first building days. haha ahh im so glad im over those frustrations.

When I did my first watercooled PC I was screwing the fans to the radiator and not thinking screwed it in to far and hit the water channel. When I filled everything red liquid starting dripping from the radiator.

i bought an ATI crossfire compatible mobo and tried to SLI with it... didn't figure it out till i read through my specs.

my buddy bought an xfx 9800gtx+ OC and a) had no psu 12v rail and b) had an agpx8 slot for his gpu haha pwned

First dumb mistake, screwed the mobo in without standoffs. Fried my 680i, but that board sucked anyway, and I got an awesome P35 board out of it. Second one, and I'm still kicking myself for it, frying my blackops. Actually, to add to that, when I was setting up my water cooling loop for the first time, I screwed the radiator directly on to the case with the long screws that are supposed to be used for the fans, so that went right through and it leaked everywhere when I was filling it. Thankfully, nothing was on, so no harm done. I took the mobo apart and let it dry. When I put the NB/SB heatsink on though, I forgot to put the washers between the heatsink and the board, frying a trace by the CPU power. It can probably be fixed, but I don't have a soldering iron, or trust myself with one on a motherboard. Managed to get a nice 790i though, but it doesn't overclock as well as my blackops, and has a lot more VDroop, compared to none at all on the blackops.