I was installing a new graphics card into my loop last weekend, and went to hook up an external power supply to power the pump like I’ve done a dozen times before. But this time, for whatever reason, it didn’t occur to me to unplug the pump from the motherboard (this board has a port that powers a pump). Even when I heard the power supply fan ramp up to full speed, and watched the case fans try to start, it never occurred to me for a single moment that that was a problem.
By the grace of the cosmos, I think the only thing I fried was the ax1600i psu. Not a cheap mistake, but far, far better than if I had cooked the rest of the hardware in the system. Popped the psu apart, and there isn’t a big obvious fuse like I was hoping to find, and the self test button is completely unresponsive. I’ve never had any luck repairing power supplies anyways.
What’s the biggest / most expensive hardware you’ve smoked? “I know a guy that. . .” stories are welcome, they are just as likely to make me feel better
I did the ole “use a random PSU cable to power my SSD” thing. That fried a perfectly fine SSD. In today’s prices that was a pretty expensive mistake
Now, I have labeled all of my PSU cables to avoid the same mistake in the future…
Well, I’ve been pretty lucky until a few years back, I had a 750Watt Thermaltake PS Unit fry, it smoked itself with a loud zap.
It however took out an older FX8300 CPU and the motherboard, a Gigabyte model.
Since this was on an older AM3 board I basically just replaced it with an AM4 system, all new hardware as I didn’t want to test all the components.
The other thing it took out was the circuit breaker that was covering the AC circuit, it would not reset and kept popping even with that computer disconnected from the AC circuit.
So had to replace the circuit breaker in the panel.
Hmm, I blew a hole through the PCB on my GTX970 back when it was still relevant (too much OC, under extended load the VRM blew). I also had a bad SATA power connector melt a 3TB disk and scorch the shroud of the Sapphire RX580 Nitro+ that replaced the aforementioned GTX970. Probably my worst kills, but I’ve definitely had more over the years.
I had just built a PC around an AMD T-bird 1.4 ghz. One night came back to the room and roommate had said they had to unplug the computer because it was smelling up the place–looks like the CPU fan had quit, and it got hot enough to melt a piece of plastic off of it (the smell source). Me, through my ignorance, wondered if I could see anything if I turned it on without the heatsink on– lasted about 6 seconds before I heard a SNAP and just a little wisp of smoke came off the CPU die.
In terms of dollar amount it’s probably not that much (a replacement CPU/Mobo/RAM cost ~$350-400 if I remember right), however, it was pretty devastating, at least mentally, lol. Was just a [stupid] college freshman.
Old one: Went cheap on a PSU, lightning storm smoked it because of an old surge protector. That was an old Athlon XP mobile Barton build with an Abit nForce 2 motherboard. Worthless now, but replacing that system with a Core 2 Duo rig was ~$1000 in yesteryear dollarydoos. I don’t want to do the inflation math
Recent one: Smoked a fast-fail fuse for the backlight on a Thinkpad T470 when upgrading the screen on it. “Disable built-in battery” only applies to the internal powerbridge battery, and I hadn’t removed the external hot swap battery because it wasn’t in the path of what needed to be removed to replace the screen. Fortunately I had two of them that I’d gotten in an eBay lot for ~$100 for the pair, and I had already decided one was to be the good one and one was for parts. Just wasn’t planning on having to reverse all of the pick-and-pull into the other one. Luckily, the rest of the system I smoked the backlight fuse on still works, so it’s still living life as a headless server. Low power always-on node ftw, I guess?
The X11SDV-4C-TLN2 that lived in one of my servers got a bit too hot and I didn’t notice until a few weeks later, when I noticed that I couldn’t get in to my Unifi controller. Got it for ca. €780, but replacing it will cost me ca. €1320, if I choose to go that route.
This is relatable for me. Around that time I had a Duron 700 which I managed to overclock to ca. 900MHz, but the pencil marks that I used to unlock the multiplier didn’t last forever and I had to reapply that every half a year or so. One time I managed to chip the corner of the die and it led to errors. I was a student at the time, so money was not around in quantities that allowed for instant replacement.
I’m surprised no one is talking about what they’ve broken at work
I may not have destroyed any hardware for work (outside of optiplexes, nothing special) before but I have knocked out entire systems that resulted in many thousands of thousands of dollars worth in losses!
I broke an onboarding script for a 14k+ employee sized company that prevented any new employees from being able to log in for about a day and the losses from them being at work but not being able to do much or having to ask someone else for sign ins and whatnot probably cost us over 100k USD, if not more than 500k.
well, My Gigabyte c246 WU-4 arrived with bent pins and newegg refused to return it. Coulda been me, but I don’t think it was, I still have it to this day and occasionally look into how to fix it…
Got cables mixed up somehow in a computer build, reusing an old system. BANG from the PSU along with the blue smoke leaking out! PSU was dead, bought a new one and thankfully and by sheer luck, system was still perfectly fine.
Honestly can’t remember how I screwed up with cables that can’t conventionally be mixed up!
Plugged it in and my 750W Corsair PSU exploded. So I had a dead GPU and a dead PSU. I had to buy a new 850W PSU (Thank goodness Micro Center had it on sale) and plugged my 3060 ti back in. Lucky for me, everything else still worked.
Amazon refused to refund me the cost of a new PSU to replace the one their “refurbished” GPU destroyed. They wouldn’t even refund the bad 4070 until I sent it back and they verified it was DOA.
Last year I bought an Asrock 9070XT on day 1 at MSRP.
It cost less ($600) than the 3060 ti did ($700 - I bought the 3060ti during a crypto mining boom because it was the ONLY one in stock on planet earth.)-
Oh yeah I forgot I literally smoked something way more expensive.
My car.
We had a HUGE snowstorm in February. I got stuck in deep snow. But I drive a turbo 4WD Subaru WRX. I revved the snot out of it and I wasn’t stuck anymore. Unfortunately revving an ice cold engine can be detrimental to your car’s longevity. I needed a $1,500 turbo replacement.
I don’t recall if it was technically me or my dad (most likely we were both complicit), but as we were setting up his big telescope for astrophotography, someone started the positioning motor without unlocking it. instant pop and smoke. blew up one of the capacitors.
we were able to fix it in the end, but replacement boards are hard to find so we had to re solder the one we had.
Had a PSU shoot off a big spark and die once. I think the pin of a molex connector touched the metal case somehow, but not sure. It was a long time ago. That’s the first thing that comes to mind that literally smoked.
Back in 2020, I had a pair of LG UltraGear 27GL83A-B monitors mounted on a cheap VESA dual-monitor crossbar. I was moving the entire rig from one room to another when the single nut holding the whole bar together decided to call it quits.
Result: two screens, face-first onto the tile floor. Zero chance of survival, unfortunately
My dad’s 4GB hard drive containing a bunch of irreplaceable recent and (scanned) historical family photos on it. Somehow I got the molex backwards and somehow pushed it in and the key didn’t save me. Send 12v to the 5v rail and the magic smoke came out. I had the same drive so swapped the boards but the magic smoke came out of that one too.
Once I started making good money in tech I sent it to a data recovery outfit. I spent about $1k with no luck, and it would be $1.5k to go further with no guarantees of course but Dad told me not to bother at that point.
Luckily, the rest of the system I smoked the backlight fuse on still works, so it’s still living life as a headless server. Low power always-on node ftw, I guess? 
