Stupid things you forget when building a pc, Things which you should remember from doing a million and 1 times Options

[NukeJockey]

So last time I put my watercooling loop together, which was a few months ago (early january) I put my 2 GPUs on water with 2 Swiftech MCW80 GPU blocks, I also added another radiator to the loop.

It was all working well for a while, until I noticed a difference in the GPU temps, 1 was always 5-10c higher than the other, without fail, I thought it may have just been a dodgy mount or simply the top card running hotter than the bottom card due to slightly higher load and what not.

Last week my watercooling loop shit itself, it already had quite a low flow rate and I daresay something got stuck in one of the GPU blocks, as one of them was hitting over 100c after less than 1 minute of load, I put this down to the flow rate problem, which I had been having troubles with since I put the loop together.

I ordered a new radiator, reservoir and pump from gammods last week and received it on Friday, on Sunday I went to stay at Dasa's for a few days (3 hour trip!) to do a bit of a case mod and install my new gear.

We took the GPU blocks apart and cleaned them out, while doing that I noticed something...

On the bottom of one of my GPU blocks was a flap of plastic, I peeled it off, revealing a nice shiney copper plate, damnit! I'd forgotten (most likely in my haste to get the GPU blocks mounted) to remove the plastic protective film, every aftermarket cooler I have bought has had one of these and I've never forgotten to take it off, ever. After removing it, GPU temps are now identical, silly me.

Anyone else done something that you know is completely stupid and out of character when it comes to building PCs? Share your horror stories!

[triumph]

That red switch on the back of old power supplies....

[Action Cheese]

The little blue tab on the end of a network cable protecting the pins. Spent close to an hour troubleshooting that one..

[viremia]

That red switch on the back of old power supplies....

I'm guilty of that one.

[h3viw8]

plugging in 3 fans to some of those molex splitters, spent a good half hour wondering why the bleep my fans weren't spinning up, unplugging replugging these cables, till i saw i hadn't actually hooked up the end of this mess of wires to the PSU, good thing i was alone, no one to mock me.

[.:Cyb3rGlitch:.]

plugging in 3 fans to some of those molex splitters, spent a good half hour wondering why the bleep my fans weren't spinning up, unplugging replugging these cables, till i saw i hadn't actually hooked up the end of this mess of wires to the PSU, good thing i was alone, no one to mock me.

I've done that before. :P

[smadge1]

sometimes when I'm troubleshooting PCs at work, I'll put the jumper on to clear the CMOS, and sometimes I forget to put it back again.

Usually this means the PC won't boot, and I'll scratch my head for 15 minutes trying to figure out why

[nesquick]

I'd like to say I don't make mistakes, well I don't anymore...

first and last major mistake was trying to put a delta fan on a TRUE while the computer was on, not only did my finger get 5mm shorter but one of the metal fan clips fell off and landed on a HD4870 and fryed all the resistors, luckily I got an RMA for that one.

[DonutKing]

The one I've been doing lately, fiddling with old AT motherboards...

set up the board on a test bench,plug in HDD, floppy etc...

very gingerly turn on the power switch to avoid getting bitten by 240V... hard drives spin up, no beeps, nothing on screen. Crap, another dead board.

Turn the power off and start pulling it apart only to notice that I'd forgotten to plug the two power connectors into the motherboard :P

Also, a dude I knew who worked at a computer shop quoted a customer on a $2000 PC and forgot to include any RAM. They didn't notice until the parts arrived and he want to build it. Wasn't a big deal, they just threw in a stick from their stock but we gave the dude plenty of shit about it.

[gtdane]

power to the GPU ........... fucks me every time.

[Dasa]

bumped a vmod on my 8800gt gs 1g when installing a new mb\cpu which made it short across the pins pumping max v into the gpu rather than a moderately increased amount
after repeatedly trying to post checking things to try work out what was wrong with me being worried i had bent some of the socket pins due to all the crunching noise the socket made as i clamped in the q9450 (first pinned socket) it eventuly let out a puff of smoke when it hit me what had happened
it must have been pumping as much v as it possibly could into that poor little gpu a sad day indeed
but the timming couldnt have been better as the 4870x2 was just out so i placed my preorder and had a great card for the next 2 years

the rest of my mistakes with pc's i seem to have conveniently forgotten :) which probably meens i have also forgotten the lesson learnt and will repeat them some day :(

[jdog]

forgot to plug in the 2nd 6 pin to my GPU...

i havent killed any hardware..yet

[PointZeroOne]

thermalpaste........

[NukeJockey]

After installing my first GTX480 in my Raven RV01 I knocked my watercooling tubes, which were using compression fittings, didn't notice until I looked into my case to see water dripping out of the cpu block. Took it all apart, dismantled the loop to drain it etc. then put it back together but forgot to plug my fans back in on the radiator, the result?

Super heated tube that came loose of the compression fittings again and caused another leak. Thank fuck I had distilled water in there and didn't fry everything, lesson learnt there, now every time I touch my watercooling/move my case I check for leaks before booting. Also have given up on using compression fittings, 1/2" barbs, 3/8" tube and steel hose clamps now :D

I forgot to put SLI/Crossfire bridges in all the time too, pain in the ass, but not hard to fix :P

I tend to rush when I'm putting my PC together, which is a big mistake, took my time with the last rebuild but still forgot the SLI bridge :P

[nesquick]

yea rushing is when you make mistakes, any build I do I just take my time and revel in the new tech I am installing :D

[the_13th]

plugging in 3 fans to some of those molex splitters, spent a good half hour wondering why the bleep my fans weren't spinning up, unplugging replugging these cables, till i saw i hadn't actually hooked up the end of this mess of wires to the PSU, good thing i was alone, no one to mock me.

I'm guilty of that, and I think I've made the same mistake on both previous builds too.

[Adicolour]

ahh a list of things
the little red switch.
the cpu power
the gpu power
the hdd power
one end of a sata cable
no sata cable
mixing up the power and reset button
trying to install a dvd drive upside down.

[nesquick]

ahh a list of things
the little red switch.
the cpu power
the gpu power
the hdd power
one end of a sata cable
no sata cable
mixing up the power and reset button
trying to install a dvd drive upside down.

on some of those sounds like you need to: RTFM

This post has been edited by nesquick: Mar 19 2011, 02:51 PM

[Morgoth]

Water pump, forgot to plug it in, like 3 years ago, no damage was done though =D

Also Nuke, I'm surprised that overheated with passive radiator use, when I turn my fans off, my temps slowly creep up and sit highish, but nothing more than stock cooling would.

Seems odd to me.

This post has been edited by morgoth: Mar 19 2011, 03:26 PM

[.:Cyb3rGlitch:.]

on some of those sounds like you need to: RTFM

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