The stupidest thing you've ever done building a PC

[Belize]

I've forgotten to plug the PCI-E cable on my GPU and forgotten to plug my HDD in too.

[Deleted]

Mounted a Corsair H-series water pump upside down because it fit in the case better. In fairness, Corsair said it would work either way. All depends on your definition of work; around 30 degrees difference.

[-aiko-]

Ugh, this is so embarrassing but here we go anyway.

On my first computer build ever, I mounted the motherboard directly to the case instead of on standoffs. >< So, ofc, the motherboard kept shorting. I was so young....

[Remilia]

Painful derp.
Fan was spinning and a wire was making obnoxious sound by getting slapped by the fan. So I decided to move it and got hit by the fan and did a little cut.

Building derp.
First build took a few hours to assemble cause I was just going durrrrr. So the bigger durr was I didn't plug the CPU power connector and was wondering why it won't power on. Took a while to figure that out...

[Deleted]

Around 15years or so, on a P2 (i think) i was having cpu overheating issues or so i thought. Took that cooler out and what do i see! Almost no paste! The cheap bastards didnt put enough paste on it i thought and obviously i go nuts and place paste for corner to corner covering the whole damn thing. Put the cooler on top and thought damn i am good. Turned the pc back on to make a....

[potis]

Not a huge thing, the biggest derp moment for me was when i was building a PC and it would turn on and shut down instantly,of course i panicked and then a few minutes later i realized i forgot to plug the CPU 4/8pin >_>.

Mostly i panicked because it never happened before and i hadnt done anything wrong building wise so it made no sense since i had built quite a few before.

[Pancha]

Several. But the most costly was that I forgot to de-electrify myself (not sure what the english translation is) in order to remove static electricity. Having a rather large hair while also wearing wool socks, you could pretty much guess the outcome. Static electricity is bad when it comes to hardware components

[Deleted]

Several. But the most costly was that I forgot to de-electrify myself (not sure what the english translation is) in order to remove static electricity. Having a rather large hair while also wearing wool socks, you could pretty much guess the outcome. Static electricity is bad when it comes to hardware components

Same here, shorted my psu & brandnew mobo that way.
motherboard was stuck in a bootloop afterwards & the psu was completely dead, both had to be replaced.
always ground myself now before doing anything to my pc ;o

[Deleted]

Just yesterday, I spent about 30 minutes just figuring out why the hell I couldn't get into BIOS. Was almost at the point where I'd go and buy a new MOBO when I noticed that I'd only plugged in 20 pins of power into the MOBO, instead of 24. I had mistaken them for PCI-E plugs. Facepalm.

[Deleted]

Well, when I was building the computer I'm using right now, needless to say it was my first build, I didn't put in the RAM firmly enough, so the PC would shut down some seconds after booting. It took me several attempts and about 2 weeks of seperating the parts and putting them back together to realize I just had to push in the RAM a little bit harder...

[Djinni]

Flipped the 110V switch while connected to a 240V power outlet. yay pop + smoke!

[Xuvial]

Don't recall any huge blundering mistakes while PC building, besides the old RAM-not-seated-properly thing.
But goddammit I hate it when I'm poking around the PC while it's on and my hand happens to touch one of the spinning fans. It's like "BZZZFRFRFFJFFR" and I literally JUMP like 10 fucking feet in shock. Not because of pain or anything (slow RPM plastic fans lol) but it's the sheer jump-scare of it...some kind of automatic reaction to the feeling + sound...I can't help it o_O

[FlawlessSoul]

Years ago, back when floppy drives were still in common use, I plugged the 4 pin power to one incorrectly. Cheap PSU, shorted to case and blew while I was still touching it. Ouch.

Since then, not done anything quite that bad

[Idrinkwhiterussians]

I don't even remember the components that went into my first build.

It was about 20~ years ago though, so yeeaaahhh... Lots of stuff between then and now.


Edit: I mean, I remember the CPU was a 386. Yep.

[Spalding]

Forgot to install the flux capacitor... =(

[Epicbawler]

On my most recent build, I forgot to take the plastic off the bottom of the heat sink. Turns out they aren't nearly as effective with that on.

[Uncle Julian]

I was using a SATA II cable when I put together a dual SSD RAID-0 setup. After reading up on it, there apparently are different cables to use for SATA III so I was gimping my pimped out storage for a few months heh.

[Asphyxiate9]

Pulling over the fan latches on my Noctua CPU cooler and slicing my fingers on the Noctua's blades. Blood went everywhere and I was so lucky none hit the motherboard.

[lockblock]

I was servicing a friends laptop and forgot to remove the battery. While disconnecting the LVDS cable I heard a pop and some smoke came out.

[Triginhil]

First time I attempted to build a PC, i laid my motherboard on the carpet and plugged everything into it and powered it on to check if i had made all the right connections. it went very well