I have been the most stupid cunt ever - computer related disaster inside

[donseptico]

Never done anything like that... honest  

I think one of the biggest disasters was about 20 years ago... started a build, went to bed halfway through only for my brother to come home pissed and, somehow, mistake it for a lavatory  

[Lethn]

At least that one's funny donseptico lol I realise it wouldn't have been at the time, but yeah, I had never messed with processor before so of course I didn't know things like, the heatsink comes with thermal paste already applied and you should always take off thermal paste before applying new stuff.

Just an expensive learning experience really ;S

Oh and lauda it's a corsair modular so pretty solid and everything, I'm thinking a lot better now that I've recovered from the piss take of screwing up my PC lol.

Edit: Guys I wanted to ask what might be an obvious question to all of you, if I really have short circuited my computer is it possible that the tower case has been busted as well? I have the molex connector in properly now and the pins in the right way but nothing is happening, thinking of moving everything to a much older tower case.

[egghead123]

Warning: This is just me having a bit of a vent because I'm feeling extremely infuriated with myself right now

You know that fantastic gaming PC I built that was working great and let me do everything faster? I went and fucking ruined it, being the idiot that I am despite having carefully researched all the parts I needed I realised the stock heatsink was too loud I bought a heatsink fine, but I watched some twat on youtube put way too much thermal paste on and I assumed it would be fine ( not knowing of course that the thermal paste would already be on a new heatsink which I know know in hindsight ) and didn't check other videos which pretty much screamed at me about using only a pea sized amount. The stuff of course went all over the processor and bits of it on the motherboard, I tried cleaning it off with isoprophyl alcohol as much as I could but it was clearly a lost cause because there was just that much paste everywhere and because the processor had gotten stuck to the heatsink some of the pins were bent.

Thankfully I had the good sense to keep all my old parts etc. and hopefully I will be able to salvage my old computer and recover most of the stuff and be back to normal but FUCKING DAMNIT, perfectly good powerful computer gone down the drain!

I should fucking know better as well but let this be a warning to all of you thinking about building your own PCs, I'm sure you guys have had disasters like this right? I'm not alone right?

Its good to vent now and again.I bet your pc wishes it could vent too.It could cool down and get angry with you at the same time.Expensive mistake but at least you wont spread the thermal paste like peanut butter the next time

[Lethn]

I'm getting an outpouring of sympathy from the internet, this isn't normal

[C10H15N]

I have been the most stupid cunt ever...

No.  That would make you my ex-wife.   

[Lethn]

I have been the most stupid cunt ever...

No.  That would make you my ex-wife.  

LOL! oooo Lets not bring the ex-wives into this thread lmao.

[Lethn]

After getting out the old computer and even the old tower case it looks like to me that anything that was in my new computer short circuited because the computer refused to boot up when I finally put in the old HDD drive I use for my OS and this is just by process of elimination. So what I'll do is put in a HDD I had lying around which was also untouched by the thermal paste disaster and that should finally boot everything up so I'll have a computer again, I just need to go and get a stupid HDD tray because the one I have has no screws for it and the screws I do have don't fit properly.

What was very interesting was that the bloody motherboard and everything all fitted properly, so it just goes to show I bought the wrong case, I had originally bought it because my knowledge about components amounted to "Need more space for big graphics card" and I bought it without realising I could have probably gone for something cheaper and also something that fitted all my components a lot more snugly.

When I think back, I'm pretty sure either during applying the thermal paste or when I was trying to fix my heatsink problem I did hear a spark so it probably was a short circuit that finally killed everything.

[tattooist]

Sorry to read about your loss Lethn.
I know you were exited to get it build 

When I think back, I'm pretty sure either during applying the thermal paste or when I was trying to fix my heatsink problem I did hear a spark so it probably was a short circuit that finally killed everything.

Just asking.. you were messing with the heatsink while the power was on the board?
If that was the case you might have shortcircuit the damn thing..

[Welsh]

Sadly this is a vital part of learning...fucking things up.

[Lethn]

Sorry to read about your loss Lethn.
I know you were exited to get it build  

When I think back, I'm pretty sure either during applying the thermal paste or when I was trying to fix my heatsink problem I did hear a spark so it probably was a short circuit that finally killed everything.

Just asking.. you were messing with the heatsink while the power was on the board?
If that was the case you might have shortcircuit the damn thing..

It wasn't on the board but the way I treated it clearly fucked things up, oh well, at least if I can get the old computer running things will be relatively back to normal and next time I'll be exceptionally careful.

Yep, it just sucks that with computers learning through these mistakes can often be very expensive lol.

[tattooist]

Sorry to read about your loss Lethn.
I know you were exited to get it build  

When I think back, I'm pretty sure either during applying the thermal paste or when I was trying to fix my heatsink problem I did hear a spark so it probably was a short circuit that finally killed everything.

Just asking.. you were messing with the heatsink while the power was on the board?
If that was the case you might have shortcircuit the damn thing..

It wasn't on the board but the way I treated it clearly fucked things up, oh well, at least if I can get the old computer running things will be relatively back to normal and next time I'll be exceptionally careful.

Yep, it just sucks that with computers learning through these mistakes can often be very expensive lol.

ahh okay I was confused coz you spoke of a spark while you were messing with it...

true these are the lessons you'll never forget..just too bad we have to learn them the hard way most of the times 

[thejaytiesto]

I've been mounting my own computers since I was a kid and for some reason instictively I thought I would be a better idea to only put a small amount of thermal paste in the middle of the CPU, then as the fan sits on the core the paste would spread. I've been doing it like this forever and never had problems. I dont get how they can put paste all over the socket like i've seen in some pics.

[Lethn]

I've been mounting my own computers since I was a kid and for some reason instictively I thought I would be a better idea to only put a small amount of thermal paste in the middle of the CPU, then as the fan sits on the core the paste would spread. I've been doing it like this forever and never had problems. I dont get how they can put paste all over the socket like i've seen in some pics.

That's easy, by doing what I did and not fucking research it properly lol

[LeoN147]

Well, I fucked up my PC for running it for 47 days without stopping (Well, I wasn't using it the whole 47 days but still)
The processor got fucked and the Fan eventually stopped working - the hard disk stopped responding like a million time in a min. but I managed to save my stuff and sell it (Almost 1/10 of the original cost) and bought a proper one.
I learned one things out of this, Never try to be smartass and watch youtube videos about how to make your PC survive longer, Ask someone who actually knows this shit.

[Lethn]

The computer should run fine for that long, I've had my computers on for days without turning them off, I've occasionally had to restart them but that sounds like a cooling issue to me if it ruined your processor, dust maybe? But yeah

[LeoN147]

When I sold it, They told me that probably the fan started to get a bit broken and stop sometimes (explains sometimes I didn't even hear anything from my CPU) and eventually that would end up with complete stop of the fan which will later cause a heat problems for the processor and everything else which will eventually end up badly 

[Lethn]

Ah in that case that's just down to you not noticing the fan was broken because then you could have replaced it and saved your computer yeah it's all just down to experience isn't it?

[Lethn]

Hurray! I now have whirring and activity on my old computer! I just need to get a tray for my HDD and then I'll be back up and running as normal! >_< never again will I let this happen! It looks like it was indeed a short circuit because I had to get my old tower case out ( which actually fits everything MUCH better ) and scavenge an old 1TB hard drive I had lying around and connect it up without a tray to see if it worked but it did!

I thought something had gone horribly wrong with this one to but turns out I just reset the BIOS and forgot to put the jumper back in the original position the previous night lol.

[HITTI2]

Oh yea, left one thing out. Try delidding an ivy bridge processor or haswell with a vice, hammer and block of wood. LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SFh4LA_byE

shu the first time is some fucking scary... Banging on a $300-$500 processor.

[Lethn]

The reason it happened was because I had pretty much messed with every other part of the computer except the processor and the heatsink. The ridiculous thing is I definitely didn't do enough research on it because I thought it would be simple but I underestimated how much blatant misinformation there is about it because on the youtube comments everyone was screaming warnings about the video I saw and on many others as well.

I have no idea why I didn't check things out more carefully because normally I am careful ;_; lol all the other videos I checked out after fucking up were of people warning against using paper towels and stuff and only using tiny tiny amounts of thermal paste.

It was just purely down to my own experience, I can tell you I didn't take off the thermal paste that came with the processor either and when I put the stuff on I did here a SNAP! so it must have been conductive, ah well, I'll definitely never do that again.

Also, I wouldn't dare touch water cooling, ever LOL who knows what might happen, might somehow end up electrocuting myself.