Topic: I have been the most stupid cunt ever - computer related disaster inside (Read 3642 times)

By some absolute miracle ( at least from my point of view ) the computer is working again! I didn't even have to re-install windows 7 and can access all my stuff again! HURRAY! Now I am going to have to test it out obviously and make sure it all works but it seems that the only thing that went wrong for sure was the pins and the thermal paste just caused a mess and made the problem worse.

Oh a nice big resolution is much easier on the eyes LOL

i know that. shit happens. some years ago i wanted to update the bios of my new mainboard.....dont do it....just dont try it...


anyway: merry christmas 

<30 minutes means any amount of time under 30 minutes, sigh. I didn't want to specify as it was pretty quick but I didn't record my own time on the latest SSD.
A custom copy on an older SSD could take more time.

Possible hopeful sign here, the said family member of mine builds/repairs computers for a living and managed to unbend all the pins on the processor and cleaned it up even more, the computer turned on and there was a good bios beep with the computer coming on normally and not detecting any hard drive.

I MAY have gotten away with it, I'm probably still going to save up for a new motherboard and processor just to be on the safe side just to make sure everythings shiny lol and of course I'll need to get a proper case that fits the motherboard neatly. If it's only the processor and motherboard I really need to worry about then that's likely very good as they're not too expensive to replace.

Damn dude.
that really sucks. I did the same a few years back and ruined my rig.
I also one made a watercooling loop myself and fucked it up ruining a rig. that was fun.

@bolded, shit, more like 12-15 minutes . Ever quicker with a USB install stick rather using a dvd.

Exactly. These are minor software issues. You could actually probably fix the windows but you're not qualified enough to do so. Last time I had a BSOD which prevented me from booting into Windows (didn't have a backup, that was the problem), I ended up manually fixing a driver via a LiveCD (painfully slow).
Hardware problems are much much worse than software!
Installing a new copy of Windows on an SSD takes <30min.

Pfft that's nothing, at least you didn't fry your computer parts, then again a family member of mine did that with a plug and it ended up melting the motherboard somehow, so you were pretty lucky there you could even keep windows running.

You didn't lose the wallet. Take that HDD, hook it to another PC, browse the files and get the wallet.

No thanks, I still love my baby

Only one thing left to do.  Sell the baby.   

My baby pull the plug while I am trying to restore my window to earlier version. Well, window fail completely after that and I have to re-install the whole window. I have bitcoin wallet inside and.....

Yeah, I know, but knowing my luck I'd somehow manage it, I'll stick with nice safe air cooling

Haha. Well you can't really electrocute yourself unless you are touching the machine while it is running and the water leaks. Over the years the water cooling solutions have improved, so I wouldn't worry about that though (if properly installed).

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 

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

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.

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

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.

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 

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.

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

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


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..

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.

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

No.  That would make you my ex-wife.   

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

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

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.

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  

Well first off where I live there aren't really any nearby.
Secondly, even though with all parts in the case, it's in the 15-20kg range indeed. But, the case has a very good "handle" and carrying it with it is pretty easy.

Which one?

Just thought I'd mention I think I've found out why my bloody tower case wasn't switching on and it was a classic of forgetting to check whether I had the molex connector plugged in, I had also not put it into the new modular PSU I had bought as a replacement.

sorry for your loss, takes me back 20 years when i did the same 

can always send me the parts and ill see what can be saved

take some pics. the worst thing iv ever done to a pc was drop a cpu into the socket smashing all the pins. took me a week to straighten 100 or so pins (socket 1366) and thermal paste is hard to get wrong unless its conductive but then using that stuff your asking for trouble. a good normal thermal past dosnt matter where you get it as there non conductive for this very reason.

I prefer minimalist mATX designs these days, and yes it fits the humongous video cards of today.


Don't need a gazillion hard drives, and if you do you should have a file server anyway.

Somehow I doubt you go to many lan parties with that thing. 

Well why not?
I have a CM Storm Stryker.



It's amazing and strong (steel build - heavy).

Wait what? I built my first PC in 1996 and as long as I remember if you have even a little brain you can't fuck anything really. If you connected something in the wrong way your PC simply wont start.

Gaming cases? What's the difference between a normal case and a "gaming" one?
I used to build my computers since I was a teenager and never damaged a single component. That was back in the days when you really had to know what you were doing with all those IDE cables and sharp case edges that made your hands bleed

How do your parents feel? 

And sorry to hear you broke your computer. Must have really sucked.

No no, mines a Novatech seriously, don't fucking buy gaming cases lol learn from my mistakes you want a simple one that just uses screws and so on. RAM was 8GB corsair vengeance and PSU I think was between 640 - 740 watts.

Well in regards to the connectors I've always looked at the manuals and guessed at times. It's hard to get it right sometimes. I hate these connectors. Why don't they replace them or integrate it somehow all into 1 cable? So outdated..

Well I'm assuming that 350D is your case. You seem to have an medium build. RAM, Storage, PSU?

Thanks, I'm just having a vent really, very frustrated with myself

Speaking of which, do you guys know how you're supposed to tell the positive and negative side of the connectors for those stupid motherboard pins?

Edit: Well I'll be damned - http://forum.corsair.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121758

off the top of my head since I don't have it with me now LaudaM.

Asrock motherboard ATX as it turns out
8 core 4.0ghz CPU
6970 HD Radeon Lightning

The computer worked absolutely fantastic, I could play Star Citizen and Battlefield 4 at max settings, so there was nothing wrong with the build, just me and my stupidity to blame that's what makes it so frustrating, I'll tell you one thing about this build though, I know I should have bought an ATX case now because then everything would properly fit, I got it all working but it was a bit haphazard because I had to take off the motherboard protector on the case and so on but again, what killed it was the thermal paste.

Sorry to hear about your PC. Hope you can patch together something decent until you can afford to upgrade again. 

Haha you don't have to stress too much about it. Things happen. When I was a child, I had done something in my OS and killed my motherboard. To this day, nobody knows how I did that. 
I'm just curious to what motherboard and CPU you ruined.
Also I'm interested in your current build, maybe I or someone else could give you some advice. 

No point in me even posting up the specs genuinely, that's how much I ruined it, just having a vent now I just need to remember how to put the stupid pins in right on my old motherboard and it should hopefully work again, no reason it shouldn't >_< I think my graphics card and hard drives are fine because looking at them they don't seem damaged at all, the new RAM I bought also seems to be safe so it's not a total loss at least from what I can tell from the physical side.

Also, the ATX cable fused into the motherboard, so it's definitely ruined, on the bright side, I'm obviously a proper tech guy now, I fried a computer!


Yep, I learned that now, I also learned something that should have been obvious and it's that my case is useless for the motherboards I have and it's poorly designed lol, learned a lot on this build, a hell of a lot.

If your stupid then so am I. Whenever I build a game PC I cross my fingers at boot. There have been issues.  

Sorry man.  

Well 'Extra can't hurt' can't be applied in this case. Since extra paste, extra voltage..etc. is potentially damaging.
I'm sorry to hear that. What were your specs?
You ruined your CPU and Motherboard?

I always put only a little thermal paste, better safe than sorry.

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?