Computers are fickle things. In fact, I’m completely convinced that nobody has any idea how they actually work. They’re like airplanes: there is no reason at all why a big chunk of metal heavier than an entire zoo standing on a dinner plate should be able to fly, yet it does.
When it comes to all things electronic, there’s a certain understanding that the user is expecting it to work without any issues whatsoever for a good long while. Manufacturers are usually so confident that they will offer up a warranty: “if it breaks, we’ll send you a new one” (obviously not that simple, but you get the idea).
But every now and then - a little hitch here, or a faint sound there - something will happen that will give you unwavering anxiety that something, somewhere, has just broken. If your game is still running, then it was probably nothing bad, but if sparks start flying and you have to grab the nearest extinguisher then there’s probably something wrong with your computer.
So today we wanted to ask whether or not you have ever experienced a hardware failure so bad you needed to get in touch with the manufacturer, get your hands dirty, or just find a replacement.
For all the users out there who still think computers are literal magic, this is to make sure we name and shame those companies who have not been great at fixing the issue or helping you with the problem in order to stay far away from them, and also to see what your general experience with a warranty was like.
Because let’s face it, we’ve all been there at one point. Looking online as to why something isn’t working the way it should, only to find out you have something faulty or you broke it on accident.
So with that said, have you ever fried a PC or hardware component? What did you do? And how was your experience with the warranty? Did you get an immediate refund/replacement? Or was the process pretty terrible? Let’s debate!
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Can i apply with a fan voltage increase? the back fan of my rig almost took off like a drone....
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Happened once to my 1st GPU out of 2 GPU ever I owned in Life. Lightning happened that night, somehow I don't understand after heavy lightning and thunder, our shoe-plugs used to gets highly charged, my PC was powered simultaneously with TV and other things on Single Power Outlet using Multiplug. My father Switched ON the TV and somehow there was a smell , burning and both TV's chip and my GPU got wrecked. TV got repaired but my GPU was beyond repair, and I guess I was out of warranty too at that time, maybe not.
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That's why you always buy a UPS.
No longer need to worry about lightning.
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funfact : the plug was actually on UPS (Home UPS)
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I need to add the fact that My PC was connected to TV and I don't know if it was TV which caused my GPU to burn through HDMI.
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If the TV was directly connected to the power outlet with no UPS in between, it's possible that the TV killed the GPU.
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In terms of after sales service, here in my Country, Asus is one of the best, even though other GPUs might be cheaper , I cannot compromise.
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I learned that overclocking can have consequences. I will remember you 6600GT, I have never made that mistake again.
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it was the hardrive
let me explain
lol
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I fried one and only one. GTX1060 3GB. And I tipped over my beer and it went down top of my case onto my GPU and fried it. lol
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alcohol abuse
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No, but nearly did. I powered my gtx 970 and i5 3570 with zeus 650w trash psu... It was unable to play any games and was producing weird buzzing noise.
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Managed to fry mine and brother's radeon 3000 or 4000 series card (can't remember exact models), red blower type card with horrible thermals. It was shortly after warranty so couldn't get it replaced. Also GTX 285 died on me and NVIDIA replaced it with GTX 460. I guess they didn't have 285 in stock anymore...
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Also almost destroyed Cyrix 6x86 CPU, when I didn't notice fan wasn't spinning anymore. But it was no big deal back then, CPUs could run on passive cooling back then.
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Pretty easy to fry components when you are a beginner and try to fix the pc while it is running and you are not grounded.
Nowadays most components have a lot of protections so if a short occurs it will cut the power entirely to save them from frying.
But back in the Pentium era. Oh boy.
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I've only had 1 cpu fry and that wasn't exactly my fault i tried the auto overclock feature on the crosshair v formula and 1090T never touched auto overclock again. Motherboard is still going strong also got a 1100T under warranty.
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What was the CPU?
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I live in Mumbai, India and my room is directly in path of the Sea Breeze, no I am not rich enough to afford the sea view but I get the Full assault of the sea breeze filled with no idea how many liters of Moisture but its good enough to ru
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ruin any electronic device in the house, so yeah I have to get components with the longest Warranty and a brand who can actually deliver it.
My Motherboard or Graphic Card fails rougly every 6-15 months
Sapphire is the worst at warranties
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they took 7 months to RMA my graphic card and when it came it was downgraded from a AMD rx 280x to a RX 270 and waranty ended like 3 days after i received it and then the card promtly died within like 5 months or so. i couldnt afford a GPU
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then and ended up playing alot of really old games all over again. I got a perfect score in Virtual Cop 2 all 3 levels with 100% accuracy so thats a meaningless gamer flex I can claim. Novalink MRF f16 was played alot so was Portal 1,2 and
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battlefield 2142 at 1024x1024 all settings minimized at like 28-43 fps.
Zotac and ASUS are the best at warranty
Zotac GPUs give 5 years while eveyone els is 3only
asus has the fastest RMA time within 14days but yeah they did give me a Br
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Bricked Motherboard, and then one with a Dead PCI slot and a bunch of dead Sata Slots but yeah got it replaced in time.
Silicon Power rejected my warranty after my NVME M.2 with 5 years of warranty failed within 8 months i fought them sinc
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since december and finaly got the warranty and replacement back in march after I threatened to post online their rejection reasons of SSD rusting (which my SSD had none of) online with zoomed in pics of my SSD, im an occasional photographer
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my M.2 was a 1tb stick so i was out for blood
my Ram sticks used to die often as well but Holy $h!t Gskill is really Durable previously they died alot often now they are made of Adamantanium, HDD keep failing as well but it depends really
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it last for 2 and a half 3 years WD or Seagate it makes no difference they sorta all die eventually and pretty much always after my warranty is over, so never got to claim warranty from either. Never had a PSU fried till date and CPU's are
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durable but yeah if you ever bend your pins your stuck straightening them out. but my case is really unique untill i move this will persist that or i weather seal my entire house and become an Egyptian mummy
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I have a 256gb wd hdd which is 15 years old very reliable
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Dude wrote an essay . Btw, Sapphire, Gigabyte, Zotac doesn't seems to be good choice for PC components in India. Actually, only one Brand seems reliable for after-sales services i.e., Asus. They got good network.
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Thank you for sharing all of that.
Btw is there any way you could put your PC in a cabinet that had filters for the moisture and salt?
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Sounds to me like you should literally cover every pc component day 1 with wd-40 to keep away moisture/rust. Tech Yes City(youtube) uses it on pc components in his used pc component cleans and gives his sold pc warranties might be something to look into.
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omg wd40 has solvent in it. it displaces moisture but solvent is the worst thing for transition metals under electrical loads.
also, rust is the oxidation of iron and carbon (steel is iron with carbon) and i don't know how much steel is in hardware. oxidation is going to happen in an oxygen-rich environment but salty air will corrode the oxidation which removes material, then the cycle repeats
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dielectric grease would be better as long as you have a good contact at all connection points.
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Actually I remember that back in the day, ppl would actually submerse their rigs in mineral oil "for cooling".
The practice has gone out of fashion, but it could be of use to Reddemolisher.
Tho the maintenance can be a bitch.
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Don't know how much time or money you have, but mineral oil could be a way to make your PCs last longer perhaps?
Here's a link for the FAQs.
link
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Never fried a PC component, but i live in an old house. And one day the outlet couldn't handle my PC anymore and burst into flames... Dad got all outlets changed after that
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Yes... my GT 130 fried 2 kills before what would have been my first nuke in MW2...
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Was playing Dark Souls, got hit with the YOU DIED, then my PC shut itself down. Didn't realise till the next day that my water cooler's pump had died mid-game and the CPU basically cooked itself
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I had a PSU pop while I was playing World of Warcraft about 15 years ago. I heard a loud POP, PC went dead. I saw a little flicker of a flame somewhere in the PSU casing, then I smelled burnt electronics. Thankfully, I was able to just swap out the PSU and the rest of the components in the PC were okay. That was a cheap PSU from RadioShack. I ended up getting another RadioShack PSU...but not long after that, I built one of the first PCs I'd put together myself, and I didn't cheap out quite as much with the power supply.
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fried a BFG GeForce 9600 GT OC when I cranked up the graphics on SC2 when it came out
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Fried a 5960X 3 times (on 2 different systems) and got them replaced by Intel every time... :D
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One would have hoped you would learn the first two times :P
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Well, one was not my fault as we had an electrical surge in the house I lived at the time. The house lost electricity for an entire day until fixed, which took my PC down (later I ended up narrowing it down to a fried CPU).
The other two were probably due to the excessive OC xD
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A CPU has died on me very long time ago. I've fried the onboard audio twice, and I blew up a ****ty PSU once by installing a beefier GPU.
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I just recently put two ram sticks backwards on a rig by being careless. Fried RAM sticks and mobo. Was a very old system so not really a huge loss, but still very annoying.
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I probably fried like 3 - 5 GPUs back in my early days. Didn't know jack sh i t about PCs back then, and didn't monitor temps (considering the ambient temperature was sometimes over 35 C, you can guess what happened)