Biggest mistakes made while building a PC

I'm just curious to know what most people have messed up on while building their PC, mines was with my current build where the sound wasn't working right (I figured out the cause after the damage had been done) I tried to change the sound chip because Gigabyte sent another with my mobo, well what happened was that when I tried to insert the new chip I bent one of the contacts and it didn't go in right, I then tried to switch back to the old one and ended up bending that one... I had to buy an external sound card and then it turned out that the cause for the sound not working was because I had it set to send sound through hdmi rather than the jacks... so yeah that's the biggest mistake I have ever done while building a PC... if you guys wouldn't mind, could you tell your stories?

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TL:DR I bent a contact on a sound chip

Common mistakes that I have seen others make over the years, let's see:

  • Too many motherboard stand-offs or too few (Shorting out the motherboard or the motherboard flexes inside the chassis)
  • No thermal-paste or too much in between the CPU and the heatsink
  • Wrong screws being used (coarse thread screw in a fine thread stand-off)
  • 3.5" HDD installed a 5.25" bay using only two screws
  • Using a DEER built power supply to build a gaming system
  • No bleeding of a water-cooling system.
  • The use of regular tap-water in a water-cooling system.

I've seen quite a few screw-ups, but it's been so long that I have forgotten most of them. My one worst mistake; Sending a static discharge through a power button to a motherboard. It left the motherboard with only half of its memory controller functioning, but it still booted and worked.

I never have made a mistake with building a pc, but when I was overclocking a newly built pc, I got too far ahead of myself and hit the clear cmos button on the mobo while the computer was still on.

It messed up the bios pretty good.

I've never had a problem really, but one of my friends had a solid one. When he was building his and it must have been at least the 9th time he has built a computer he forgot to put the standoffs on the motherboard so obviously as soon as he turned on his computer for the first time everything on the motherboard was pretty much connected and he heard a pop and then saw smoke. It was fried.

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Have seen some pretty spectacular fails but I think the only brain fart I have done would have been when I was volt modding an old 4850 and I didnt clean up the board too well and there was some solder gunge left and BOOM, pop, fizzzzzzzzzz!

Forgetting to plug in CPU fan... and booting.

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Very first pc i ever worked on (I would have been about 12 at the time....) The expansion card i had to add joystick support didnt fit properly - so I trimmed it with sidecutters until it did

TL;DR You CAN make a pci card fit in a pcie slot........ but it wont work lol

A friend asked me to help him on a CPU repaste on his laptop. We did It. Turned the laptop on an the screen was blank. Thought I put too much paste and there was a short in the circuit. He bought another laptop. A few years later he found out that just the display cable was disconnected.

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Back in the mid 1990's I was in the middle of my first build. Trying to remove the ribbon cable from the 5/14" floppy drive, pulled too hard and the cable snaped! Had to walk to PC World in Brentford, Middlesex to get a new cable.
In the early 2000's building my umpteenth PC, got the system built. Turned it on... Fans spun and that was it! Spent ages trying to work out why the system wouldn't boot??!!! Gave up and went to bed.... Following day I found out what was wrong! I had forgotten to plug in the 4 pin power connector for the CPU!

Buying an AMD FM2 A-10 5700 APU and then getting an Nvidia graphics card.

Much bottleneck.

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  1. Buying a cheapo PSU (thing fried my mobo, had to RMA it and swapped it out with a CX600)
  2. When I built my current system, I got an 8GB G.Skill DDR3 kit for about $100... And just a month or so later, the same thing dropped to about $50... If I would have waited I could have gotten a 16GB kit for the same price... or put that money towards a slightly better GPU... or a WiFi card... or saved it...

1 was a waste of time... But 2 was really annoying.

Buying refurbished ssd's two of them have died on me after about 1-2 years so now I need to buy a 3rd and new os. Kind of waiting for Windows 10. Or just get lniex for the time being. Other than that refurbished mother bord. Ram lane 2 don't work.

Just don't buy refurbished is what I learned.

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double and triple count how many fittings you need for your custom loop, it sucks dummy fitting your parts and finding out your 1 short then having to order it from the USA and paying $30 shipping for one $20 fitting, then find out your 45 degree fittings wont line up so you need to order 90 degree fittings and pay another $30 shipping for 2 more $10 fittings.

but this was from a mate building his rig at the same time as me

"How's this for a kick in the teeth. Had the motherboard ready to send in
for a warranty jobby because it was seriously just not working.. Was
about to go to bed and thought, hang on, I haven't tried forcing Windows
8 to update the "Windows Basic Driver".. Rookie oversight.. So got the
mobo box and put the thing together on top of that.. Boot into windows..
Update the driver.. Bam.. It all works fine..

Omg. Miracle. Perfect. No more drama.. Disconnect the video card (cause
it's heavy and ready to fall over) and, being midnight, I resign myself
to doing it tomorrow (today) after work. 1:30am comes around and I'm
wide awake in bed, can't sleep.. So I think, screw it, I'll do it now..
Get up.. rescrew the motherboard into the case..put it all together..
video card..etc etc.. fill the loop.. no leaks.. I'm a seasoned vet at
this stage (plus I only had to disconnect one tube to get the vid card
in and out)..

Turn it on.. 3 seconds pass.. switches off.. turns back on..switches
off.. turns on.. Weird.. Some sort of memory error.. Load bios
defaults.. computer boots.. all good.. Video card not at all detected..
screwed around for 2 hours..nothing..no video card... disconnect it..
re-attach stock cooler.. put it in my old computer.. now the video card
isn't working in my old computer either.. Go back to the new one.. now
both rams aren't working.. One works... fine.. the other works... fine..
but together, it dies..

This started at 1:30am..fast forward to 7am.. I'm exhausted.. Go to work..

Duck home for lunch..reading about symptoms of the boot thing and the
memory thing.. Could be bent cpu pins... noooo. I'm not that dumb am I?
Seriously..

Take CPU off.. HALF.. LIKE LITERALLY HALF.. ARE BENT DOWN.. I must have done it in my tired haze last night..

So not only am I now out an R9 290x 4gb.. I can't even get a warranty
jobby on this mobo because I fecked up the pins in a sleepy daze..

I've now since bought a 780 ti + water block + MSI mobo from PCCG..
Another $1250 or so on this rig..sigh (not to mention the $279 for the
mobo and the $600 for the R9...goooo team..)

Been an expensive 24 hours.. Maybe I should start a patreon campaign - "I'm a stupid pc builder"
Subsequently I'm selling the R9 290x waterblock and back plate if anyone
is interested.. literally used for only a few minutes.."

THE 2 DAYS LATER

"So another update..
My new parts arrived today

"MSI Gaming 5 z97 board.. really nice look - black PCB ..good overclocking features..
Gigabyte 780TI Windforce3 Video card.. average 780TI.. not the best..not the worst..
XSPC 780TI Waterblock and Backplate
So another $1250..
Wait a second, you might say, isn't the Gigabyte 780TI Windforce3 a custom PCB? HOW THE EFF WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT..
So I have the headsink and fans off the video card and I go to attach
the waterblock.. weird, it's not sitting right and the pictures in the
guide look different.. Hmm.. Well, maybe if I detach the waterblock from
the aesthetic XSPC plastic bit.. No..that's not working either..
IT DOESN'T EFFING FIT..
I literally just went straight back on the PCCG and ordered the EK 780TI Gigabyte custom Waterblock..
Another $139..
Remember how I was saying that watercooling is a money pit..

Sigh.

Here is the thread for the XSPC 780 TI Waterblock I'm now selling

(For anyone interested, I'm selling it for $110 including postage.. It's
$139 from PCCG not including the $15 shipping for outside of
Melbourne.. That's not a bad deal considering I literally just opened
it).. I'm including some Antec 120mm fans for free (brand new) because..
well.. I can..

Caution: Waterblock is wet with my salty tears from the continuous disappointment that this project has fed me..

P.S. Before removing the heatsink etc from the video card, I tested
mobo, cpu, ram, video card + hdd outside the case and it all booted up
perfectly.. So there's that I guess"

was a sad day

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I've done that one myself. Left me confused for the longest time.

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Not exactly a problem with my 'handy work' but another time I was buiding 3 PC's! One for my Dad, one for my eldest brother Brian who lives in Australia and the 3rd for my other brother, Steve.
My Dad had ordered 3 AMD Athlons from DABS (here in the UK.) I built the three systms ONLY to find that they wouldn't boot! Turns out that the 3 CPU's were DOA!!! Got them RMA'd and had 3 new CPU's sent from AMD direct...... Amazing what happens when your Dad writes a sitnking letter to the top manager!!! Got the new CPU's within a couple of days with a letter of apology!!!!! I've never lost faith in AMD! I guess it was just a fluke that we had 3 duds sent to us!!!

I was messing inside one of the old CRT monitors. I accidentally touched the tube. I had time to realize the error and I followed the cable all the way to the socket with my eyes before all I saw was a white flash and I was send flailing through the room. Im pretty sure that took 10 years off my life. My heart was beating like a gabba tune.

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I have had a Brisk iced tea in my tower for 4 years now, not really a mistake. I just find it amusing that it's in there.

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tired to fit 2 pin fans on my crosshair iv formula mobo upon firing it up i fried my mobo. lesson learned with a $250 price tag.

  1. Tried to use the wrong screws... Luckily i didn't broke any screws or stand-offs
  2. After building everything worked but sometimes the system just hangs but not that often. One time i worked at energy saving mode so that the watercooling unit will work passiv and i went for shopping. After coming back the pc had a black screen so i rebooted it just to see that it shutted down due to CPU-Overheat because the Waterpump went off. After sending about 10 mails to the vendor of the motherboard, RAM and PSU i realised that the ATX-Powerconnector wasn't well connected -.-''.