This debate is just out of Game Debate’s morbid curiosity. It’s hard not to meet someone, especially if you enjoy computers as much as the GD community, who hasn’t made an absolute doozy of a balls up with a PC somewhere along the line. There’s some real ways of flubbing up a PC, no matter how beasty they get. They are just metallic boxes filled with electricity at the end of the day. A lot can go wrong. So that’s why we’ve gathered you all here, how better to cheer yourself up whether you’ve gaffed or not than to hear someone else's goof. Roll up your sleeves and tie back your hair, it’s about to get messy.
So what could possibly go wrong? Turns out a lot. Water damage is a biggun, you just rest your beer on the laptop for a second or celebrate too hard and spill your glass of Lucozade all over your desk and your rig gets a sticky bath. You probably know what happens there. It’s a heartbreaker, usually the end game for most computer components and the biggest fear of many of us. 5 metre no drink zone right? Have you ever spilt something on your PC? Or even worse has someone else?
It doesn’t even have to be with water that makes your PC blow up either, it could just be plugging the wrong thing in the wrong place, or even just switching the wrong switch. I know I’ve done that one. Lotta smoke, lotta burnt plastic and a lotta surprised face.
Maybe you’ve decided that your fridge magnets look so good they'd be the perfect accessory to your hard drive? It definitely gives them a new purpose. Or maybe you’ve just ballsed up getting the right hardware for your build? It’s easy to get sockets mixed up and real easy to forget that size is actually quite an important factor for GPUs, I know we at GD have made these mistakes in our early days.
But that’s enough from us, now we’ve got the ball rolling on what could go wrong, tell us about your flummoxes. Tell us about your flub-ups, your faux pas, your faults and your fluffs. Also tell us why so many of these words to do with messing up begin with f. We’re really excited to see where this one goes.
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PC Specs
Bought an nVidia 8400GS for gaming in freaking 2010. No one can top this lol
PC Specs
using a cheap PSU...
PC Specs
When i was young, i tried to clean my pc on my own. First clean after 5 years of usage. I was curious how the cpu socket felt. I ended up burning the cpu when I put the parts together and switched it on. R.I.P
PC Specs
played amnesia a machine for pigs on a very outdated graphics card... burned up the fan cause of overheating
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Used an air blower to clean my CPU. Damaged SMPS and 2 500 GB HDDs.
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I melted a Macbook Air first and rebuilt it. Then, I melted a Dell Inspiron Zino HD trying to play Total War: Empire. Suffice to say...I will continue to have cheap computers on the side to experiment with, since apparently that's my thing.
PC Specs
I've seen on youtube people cleaning their mb with water and detergent, tried it, cried for it :')
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About a year ago, while cleaning my old PC, I decided to not care about static electricity, and used a vacuum cleaner to get the dust off the coils in my PSU. 2 months later the thing was roaring like a tractor on steroids, and I got electrocuted every time I touched the case. Fortunately, all the components survived.
PC Specs
Yes I did the same but my case never gave me shock, it just roars like "tractor" whole day and night! How can I make it silent?
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Bought an Alienware X51 a long time ago. Had a "GTX 745" and it could barely run games at 720p. Oh, and it cost me $900. Terrible mistake and it was my first time going into PC gaming too.
PC Specs
Buying Alienware is generally a mistake, yes.
PC Specs
For me could be either buying a muskin 800w psu that broke just one year after,
Or could be with my current cpu, that when i tried to install it, i mistakenly bended some pins, and had to go to my little brother with not shaky hands to bend it back, and was lucky that the cpu still worked.
Other then that, im thinking about giving up my 9800gtx sli setup way too soon... continues..
PC Specs
to replace it with a single gtx 260.
The best thing happened to me btw, was buying an ssd, and switching from a normal keyboard to an ergonomic one :)
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When i was a kid i forced in a ddr1 ram stick on a ddr3 slot and fried both the slot and the ram
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Getting an MSI motherboard...
I dont know what i was thinking but i can clearly see a fluid coming out of VRM Heatsinks.
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PC Wizard shows that CPU and MB temeratures are at 199°C.
-Meh, that can't be right.
4 hours later PC dies.
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Didn't think 960M is worse than some 700 series video cards, but the worst mistake was when I thought 6600GT is good (it was I think in 2005)
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Bought a GTX 980ti right before the 10 series came out. I mean, how much of a difference was there going to be between the two? : /
PC Specs
About a 15% difference and the 1080 is like 30$ - 80$ cheaper.
PC Specs
Bought a decent pc thinking it will play well but forgot to buy a Graphics card "So it was at this moment i knew i F..ked up". Sorry for profanity.
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That your current PC? :D
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Removed the thermal paste from my processor thinking it's dust :D
It was a looong time ago when I first started experimenting with that stuff :)
PC Specs
When I bought my 7870 XT that was quite power-hungry and connecting my old low-quality PSU to it and playing games with it.
I could just smell something burning for a minute (thought it was something outside) until I heard ''POOF'' and my whole room shined for a second. The PSU exploded,literally.
PC Specs
I haven't been using my SSD to its full potential, as I have connected it to a non SATA3 port and didn't know about AHCI sata mode and kept it at IDE
But all is well, I was able to switch to AHCI without formatting and corrected the port
PC Specs
Well It didnt happen yet. But I´m about to use the cheapest 600W power supply for like 10$ and pair it with a GTX 980 Strix.. Gonna be fun
PC Specs
Before you do that, please consider that a cheap PSU could possibly damage components in your PC if too much power is drawn from it or, if there is just the slightest power surge.