[CLOSED] Share your PC Building Horror Story and enter to win a 3070 Graphics Card!

Sky534

A friend and I were building a pc for the first time, and we had trouble installing the cpu cooler onto the motherboard. We took over an hour for this one step in the building process as we tightened the screws on one side only for the screws on the opposite side to lift off. We also tried using 2 screwdrivers and screwing both sides simultaneously, to no avail. The motherboard got scratched up and started shaving its material as a result of the screws being screwed and undone at least a dozen times. Eventually, we got the cooler installed by using more force to screw it in, which we had avoided doing since we were scared that doing so would break it. I am ready for the next time I build a pc though!

theactualduane

Unfortunately, the first time I built a PC, which was back in 2015, wasn't a very positive experience. After meticulously selecting high-quality components and obsessively studying how to properly put together a rig, I made a terrible mistake during assembly. While screwing in my Hyper 212 Evo, my screwdriver somehow managed to slip (maybe it was sweat?) and I poked a hole straight through my motherboard. Fortunately, the PC still worked, but the hole destroyed a trace to one of my memory slots. I've been a lot more careful since then.

Beeruh

It was my first time upgrading a computer and I had no idea what I was doing. It was for my family pc which was an old dell inspiron. I upgraded the graphics card, and everything went smoothly. Easy enough I thought. I tried to upgrade the cpu and bought an fx 6300 for an old intel motherboard. Whoops. Just need to buy a new motherboard then. Bought a compatible atx motherboard and it didn't fit in the proprietary dell case. Ok, guess I need to buy a new case. Installed everything in it, realized the power supply was weak and has way too short cables in addition to no pcie power. Wow, I suck at this. Bought a new power supply and eventually a new hard drive to make a completely new pc. At least I know better now.

FiLiNuX

You want a PC Build Horror Story? I will tell you the worst PC build horror story I have ever had in my decades of PC building.  Maybe it just seems so horrific because the lost time, the anger, the ugliness, and the total disrespect & disregard for basic human kindness is so fresh.  The story can be told and understood in few words and is known to scores of us.  
The horror is trying to work with BEST BUY to try to finish my most recent PC(s). 
What should have been minutes in ordering opened the puzzle box and has turned into literally dozens of hours.  Uncaring hordes of "support staff" in a never ending labyrinth of phone systems. A staff of Blue Shirted Zombies roaming their stores.  A website and ordering system that behaves like it is the victim in a possession horror movie.  The scariest though?  Even though you are the righteous hero in this tale  and explain and PROVE  the error of their ways you are again and again defeated by the unstoppable evil.  Think you have made progress and survived the night by showing them the light?  Wrong!  The unstoppable evil (Jason, Freddy, Blue Shirt, etc etc) will be back in the next movie, sorry I mean call, email, or chat, to tell you the one before was wrong, lied,  didn't exist or whatever to keep the nightmare going. 
Heed my warning and learn from my tale of woe fellow builders!  Do not split up from the group.  Don't keep living in the haunted house. Don't go into the basement to investigate the strange noise.  Above all DO NOT think Best Buy is going to care about your PC Build.  Or you for that matter.  
(Why oh why did Nvidia go with the Blue Shirted legion of doom to handle the Founders Edition).   

BlueShadow42

I have a secondary PC that has a Gigabyte A320 board and Athlon 3000G, being used as just a web surfing/email PC. During the last 10 months, I've done an RMA on the motherboard once so far, and just yesterday, the FIFTH power supply has died. I don't get it, in 10 months, FIVE power supplies have been through this PC. Two of them were EVGA, one from AresGaming, and two random ones.

I've had full blown gaming rigs not even come close to the issues i'm dealing with this light duty PC.

MerrHeLL

I've been building computers for 30 years. Over 100 builds with 20 of them with Micro Center components over the last decade. Last summer I found a deal on the new 10 series i5. I decided to build my first ITX box in the Lian Li TU150 case. After assembly, it booted into the bios twice, but each time as soon as it tried to initialize a boot sequence it would just power off. So I did all of the normal troubleshooting methods. Checking connections, looking for defects on the boards, any signs of burned capacitors etc. I tried 3 different known working power supplies. I pulled all but one ram stick of ram. I swapped Ram for known working ram. Finally I concluded the motherboard was dead. I go to Micro Center and they are out of the motherboard I purchased. So they gladly swap me out with a much better and more expensive board. I take it home and try that board, same effect, no boot. I take that board back and they swap it again! That's 3 boards! It still won't boot. I pull the cpu out and try inspecting it a little closer. With 30 years of PC builds I'm getting older and my eyesight isn't what it once was. Using a magnifying glass I notice a faint heat mark. The FCLGA1200 socket has very small contacts and I notice a manufacturing defect on the cpu chip itself. I contact intel and they give me a warranty replacement. Once the new chip arrives I plug it in and its smooth as butter. This build took me 4 weeks from what is usually 1 day or sometimes 2. I share this story for several reasons. The service I received at Micro Center was extraordinary. Their staff and management are committed to providing great customer service and doing so in a professional and considerate manner. I can't thank them enough for how well they helped me through this challenging build. I apologize for not being a better technician and recognizing the cpu flaw earlier. This experience has reinforced the incredible value that local service provides to this industry. Thank you. I'll be a grateful and reliable customer for life. PS. standing in line for that RTX 3070 I managed to grab following the release date was worth it too! That one  was plugged into my son's computer. Now I need to win this so I can have one for my own box. Thanks again!

fastfoodnightmares

Over the summer I was helping a friend organise their wires since they had a mini itx case and they wanted it to look neat. I wasn't really paying attention so I didn't catch it, but I absentmindedly grabbed some wires to zip tie and tuck them into the perimeter when a chunk of the wires just broke off? I still do not understand how it happened and with multiple, as I pulled with minimal force. Needless to say my friend was pissed at me and had to get replacements. To top it off, a few days after we finished building the pc, her gpu died and she freaked out thinking it killed her entire pc, though it booted fine when i took it out. Luckily she was able to get that replaced as well.

fastfoodnightmares

Over the summer I was helping a friend organise their wires since they had a mini itx case and they wanted it to look neat. I wasn't really paying attention so I didn't catch it, but I absentmindedly grabbed some wires to zip tie and tuck them into the perimeter when a chunk of the wires just broke off? I still do not understand how it happened and with multiple, as I pulled with minimal force. Needless to say my friend was pissed at me and had to get replacements. To top it off, a few days after we finished building the pc, her gpu died and she freaked out thinking it killed her entire pc, though it booted fine when i took it out. Luckily she was able to get that replaced as well.

Suzukii

MerrHeLL said:

I've been building computers for 30 years. Over 100 builds with 20 of them with Micro Center components over the last decade. Last summer I found a deal on the new 10 series i5. I decided to build my first ITX box in the Lian Li TU150 case. After assembly, it booted into the bios twice, but each time as soon as it tried to initialize a boot sequence it would just power off. So I did all of the normal troubleshooting methods. Checking connections, looking for defects on the boards, any signs of burned capacitors etc. I tried 3 different known working power supplies. I pulled all but one ram stick of ram. I swapped Ram for known working ram. Finally I concluded the motherboard was dead. I go to Micro Center and they are out of the motherboard I purchased. So they gladly swap me out with a much better and more expensive board. I take it home and try that board, same effect, no boot. I take that board back and they swap it again! That's 3 boards! It still won't boot. I pull the cpu out and try inspecting it a little closer. With 30 years of PC builds I'm getting older and my eyesight isn't what it once was. Using a magnifying glass I notice a faint heat mark. The FCLGA1200 socket has very small contacts and I notice a manufacturing defect on the cpu chip itself. I contact intel and they give me a warranty replacement. Once the new chip arrives I plug it in and its smooth as butter. This build took me 4 weeks from what is usually 1 day or sometimes 2. I share this story for several reasons. The service I received at Micro Center was extraordinary. Their staff and management are committed to providing great customer service and doing so in a professional and considerate manner. I can't thank them enough for how well they helped me through this challenging build. I apologize for not being a better technician and recognizing the cpu flaw earlier. This experience has reinforced the incredible value that local service provides to this industry. Thank you. I'll be a grateful and reliable customer for life. PS. standing in line for that RTX 3070 I managed to grab following the release date was worth it too! That one  was plugged into my son's computer. Now I need to win this so I can have one for my own box. Thanks again!

 So glad you had a very positive experience with them. Mine was a nightmare, back at the Paterson store, after making a return for a cpu last week. Upon my returning of the processor, they made me feel like I was a guilty criminal. It all started when I was so excited to finally get my hands on the AMD 5950X CPU that I neglected to look at the packaging upon purchasing it. When I get home I realised it was not a new CPU. But after waiting for so long in line,  3+ hours, in 24 degree weather, to get one in my hands, I said to myself, what the heck and proceeded to try the installation on my new build.  When it didn't work I tried it in my old PC build with an AMD 3700X CPU and a Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master motherboard and G.Skill Trident-Z (CL16) RAM, 1300 WATT PSU and recently purchased ROG STRIX RTX 3070 GPU. It was DOA out the box and upon my returning it to the store I was greeted with nothing but  interrogations and dirty looks from both a cashier and one of the store managers.  Needless to say, it was nothing but a stressful, unexpected and unwarranted experience for me.  They took back the DOA CPU back and I am left with my old working system an incompletenew.PC build and no new CPU.

NoRest4wkd

I decided to do my first new build in over 10 years, so I did my research and compiled a list of components. As I was able to save up enough money and catch a sale, I proceeded to buy these components over a span of about 3 months to save money. When I finally had everything except the GPU (since the RTX 3000 series was about to come out, I wanted to wait) and put together my dream build, there was no display upon boot. I thought it was because the GPU I was using from my old PC was too old, and I kept trying everything I could including bios & firmware updates. When I moved the GPU to a slower PCIE slot, it suddenly worked and I had video! About a month later, I was able to pick up a newer 4GB GPU for $10 at an estate sale (it works!) and realized while installing it what the original problem was: the PCIE slot next to my CPU is dead! Everything else on the motherboard is fine, but that one slot simply does not work regardless of my efforts. Now if I want to get an RTX 3000 series and really take advantage of the speed, I can't unless I get a new motherboard! If I have to take it all apart and rebuild from the motherboard up, it should would be nice to finally have that new GPU as part of the finished product.

Faiyaz

I accidently dropped my cpu in a cup of water but it stilled worked. I was very scared

Grahamk

One time, when I was helping my friend build a PC (decent Ryzen 5 3500, GTX 1060 3GB) 2 things happened. We were trying for literally 20 minutes to get the IO Shield in. We were building this on a folding table, and the little ring that was supposed to lock the table in the upright position was not in the right spot, and the table just collapsed on one side. We had 2 cans of seltzer open at the other end which slide over and spilled onto the half built PC. Luckily, we were able to salvage everything except the motherboard, which wasn’t a big deal since we were going for budget and bought a cheap motherboard.

BAllen2782

This was pretty bad. My first PC build was a 915p chipset ABit AG8 motherboard with the 3.06GHz Pentium 4HT (524) and a 32MB ATi Radeon Diamond Stealth. I didn't know much about PC's so i figured a $135-$170 GPU would be fine. No, a 32MB Diamond Stealth did not cut it. So i went back to Micro Center (yeah, i been shopping at the Micro since the Pentium 4 days) and swapped for the 256MB nVIDIA 7600GTS. World of difference. 1 day after playing and testing games. My PC boots up but no post. I tore the whole PC down and rebuilt it. Nothing, the same thing. Luckily i had another ABit AG8 board. So, i swapped the BIOS chip cause i thought it was that. Nope. The other board has over 100,000hrs on it now cause the BIOS has an up time counter. But, for some reason that board did not want to post. Anyway i seen that the GOD tier Core2Quad Q6600 (GO) was now $200 down from $850. I got the eVGA 680i SLi motherboard with 8GB's of SLi ready OCZ 1200MHz DDR2 and "2" 512MB eVGA 8800GT SSC's in SLi in a NZXT Apllo case with a 600watt NZXT PSU. CRYSIS just came out, so i figured if i built a PC that could play CRYSIS, it could play anything. I had left the case on its side without the side panel window on it. It was up on a table basically fully assembled, so i had no worries. I had to run back to Micro Center because the 1TB HDD i had was actually faulty. I come back an hour later and are family cat decides he got a new litter box. Yeah, pee and poo all in my new PC. And are cat is like Garfield. He weighs like 30 pounds so you know he did some damage. Geeze, i thought. It was like $2000 i just spent and this happens. So, i gave everything a alcohol bath after disassembling all the GPU's and motherboard. The cool thing is, is that CRYSIS rig i built in 2007-2008 is still running today. Though, with a 2GHz GTX1050ti. The Q6600 GO overclocked to 4GHz gives this 13 year old beast a new life. It plays Vulkan/DX12 titles like DOOM 2016 and Sniper Elite 3, 4 and Zombies at 1080p60 locked at Ultra settings. Not to shabby. My nephew loves it. But, that's my horror story in a nutshell. Good luck to everyone trying to win the 3070. I'm still using a GTX1050ti with an 8700K, so i could use a new GPU.   

Anorak

I saved for up for about 8 months to build my first PC. After completing the build and booting up WOW for the first time on it. I left my desk to go grab a drink just to come back to my dog deciding it needed "Mark" it for its own. True story. It fried everything. It was a ruff day for me. 

UUNISAVANT

I don’t need to win the graphics card. But I want to tell a true story about “tuning horror story”. I have been a system admin for many years and got a job as a manager of supercomputing. The supercomputer had a hundred “motherboards” with four Xeon CPU’s each. That’s a 400 CPU supercomputer. I was adjusting all the parameters to make the system more powerful. At some point the supercomputer went into a loop and choked. 

At that point, it was unusable anymore. And I had forgotten to record the original settings of the stable system BEFORE I started messing around with all those settings. That was many years ago and as you’d figure it out by now, “I don’t work there anymore”. 

So I built a home computer back in August 2020 for my home use. It has all the latest AMD CPU/GPU. all from Microcenter in Sharonville, OHIO. 

I rely on an automated tuning tool now.
hahahahahaha
its called CTR — Clock Tuner for Ryzen, listed at Guru3d.com

CT548

Not that big of a horror story, but essentially my biggest nightmare came when trying to screw in my motherboard onto the standoffs on my case.  The screwdriver I was using wasn't magnetic, so it would be an absolute nightmare trying to get the screws to go into the holes, and sometimes I'd lose them by having them drop into the chassis.  Being terrified that I'd cause a short with a loose screw, I'd shake the case to try to locate the screw, with one screw taking a good 2 hours to actually locate since I was just about ready to disassemble half the case to find it.  This would happen dozens more times until I decided to screw it (no pun intended) and buy a magnetic screwdriver.  It really, really makes a difference.

Ultramegamighty

I'd say the worst build for me was my first. I was still pretty young and thought I knew way more than I did about building PCs. I had replaced individual parts in my old one several times, I'd had a part time job at a local computer repair / sales store for almost a year, I thought I was a certified super awesome tech. I found out that I did indeed know plenty, but what I DIDN'T know was going to cost me. See, while I was working as a tech, I was still installing 386 and 486 chips that had very simple heat sinks. Some had fans, some didn't, but they were all very basic. That's what I was used to. There was a roughly 5 year gap between when I worked at that store and when I built my first complete machine on my own, and things had changed in that 5 years. One of the things that had changed was now it was highly recommended that you put thermal paste between the CPU and heat sink. And this is what cost me. See, I didn't bother to ask anyone what thermal paste was, because my brain hung on the word "paste." You may be able to tell where I'm about to go with this. I decided in my ignorance that if just slapping paste on the CPU is all it needs to transfer heat better, I've got some Elmer's glue. So I used that. Now surprise surprise, it actually worked for about 6 months. And worked well, I might add. But then the day finally came. I had been using my PC in my barracks room, which was kept at a fairly reasonable temperature. I took my PC with me to visit some friends out in town. In the summer. And their AC wasn't the best. So after a day of hard playing, the CPU overheats. I pop it open to see if the fan is still working, which it is. Ok, I'm thinking maybe something else is wrong, and something gives me a hunch that I should pull the heat sink off. When I do, the CPU separates, and the upper portion that isn't locked in the socket comes off with the heat sink. The CPU is destroyed, the upper portion of it is fused to the heat sink in a way that rendered it unusable, the pins for the CPU were left behind, jammed in the socket. With one air headed mistake, I cost myself a motherboard, CPU, and heat sink. In the process of replacing them, I found that the motherboards I could easily and quickly get were already using a new type of RAM, which was not the RAM I already had, so I ended up replacing that, too. The whole system had originally cost me around $540 to build (caught good Father's Day sales). Replacing the parts I destroyed cost me another $400. I haven't made a mistake that catastrophic since. 

Augmented3rd

Phantom Power Supply

Before bed, I turned off my computer * Click *, it gently powered down – suddenly the LEDs shone in the dark * CLICK! – it turned off again. While startled, the computer seemed to be okay, so I went to sleep. The next morning I was ready to work, but the computer wasn’t. Ominous, white text appeared on screen: "The ME FW of system was found abnormal…”. I anxiously searched for a quick remedy: I directly booted from the SSD – crash, and changed some BIOS settings – crash.

Perhaps the power supply suddenly turning on corrupted the motherboard. Thankfully, there was a solution: I needed a sketchier PSU to initiate a BIOS flash.

I would never use a fire-hazard PSU, but this one seemed fine. A friend lent me an 80+ bronze PSU, but when everything powered on, my heart sank. It’s was the loudest PSU I’ve ever heard. Despite the red-flag, I carried on.

When the BIOS flash started, clicking, grinding, and electric whining noises appeared –it seemed like the PSU was possessed by a maligned spirit. “Don’t explode!”, I pleaded. If the PSU failed before the flash completed, the motherboard would die.

I anxiously watched as a dangerous race unfolded. Pixel by pixel the motherboard clung to life as the phantom power supply growled and groaned. It was threatening destruction. Eventually, the system powered down and the PSU’s fan slowly halted in defeat.

giggity

Me: Buys cheap 600W PSU off Amazon.
PSU: Dies after a day.
*RMA and gets sent 750W version*
Me: WOW! Customer service :O
PSU: DOA
Me:

jpwinkis

"Integrated NIC on new motherboard destroys home network"

I had been wanting to upgrade for a while now and my friends told me to hold off and wait for the new Ryzen to be announced. I ended up having to wait a month or so for the announcement. When they announced the new processors, I would have to wait a month for their release date. 

I marked my calendar for November 5th, took the day off work to be at Micro Center before open to get one. I wanted to drop the money and get the 5900x. I was 50th or so in line and the manager came out and said they had less than 15 5900x but about 50 5800x. Ok, I guess I’m still fine getting that. So, I waited in line and got my voucher for a 5800x.

I picked out all my parts, a new case, a new ram (I said 32GB and the guy took the ram out from behind the locked glass case), and picked a motherboard. I would just use my current SSD, power supply, and video card.

I get all the way home and install everything. Boot up, 16GB ram detected. Look at the box for the ram and realize they sold me a 16GB kit. Make the 40 min drive back, return it and get the 32GB set, drive 40 min back home. Boot back to BIOS. The processor is 0.00GHZ. Troubleshoot that and then realize I need to flash the BIOS so I do that.

Finally, everything is working and I’m happy. Fast forward a few days down the road to when the real problems start. My internet goes out. Modem lights flashing like it's lost connection, router says it's not getting a connection, all devices are without internet. Reset the devices, call Spectrum, and everything I can think of to get the internet back up and it comes back up. Keep running into this issue constantly and Spectrum tells me it's fine on their end and they have a connection to the line. I have a tech come out and check all the lines and says there is no issue. Outages are still occurring, so I return modems with Spectrum and swap for another. Outages still happen. I swap out and try other routers I have had. Still have outages. These outages were affecting me as while I’m at work I remote into my desktop as well as have smart home devices, locks, cameras that need a constant connection. These outages are causing major problems for me.

I’ve troubleshot with Spectrum, swapped multiple modems of there’s, switched to a modem I owned, had a tech come out, swapped routers and the problem was still occurring. Now I’m swapping out the network switches in the house, swapping out the ethernet cables with the issue still reoccurring. It gets me closer and closer to the new PC I built. Al these issues started after I built this PC.

The next time the internet went out on all the device, I use the Windows repair connection which resets the onboard NIC and every device in my apartment go back online! I tracked the issue from the modem and router flashing “NO CONNECTION” to being caused by my new computer.

I google the motherboard I had (GIGABYTE B550 AORUS MASTER ATX) and found a Reddit post and that multiple people have this motherboard and it kills their whole network. MY NETWORK CARD FOR ONE PC WAS SHUTTING DOWN MY WHOLE NETWORK! To test this, I waited for the internet to go out again and unplugged that computer, and magically all other devices' connections to the internet were restored.

As it had taken over a month to find it was the motherboard (after blaming Spectrum, getting techs to come out, swapping out; the router, the modem, switches, and cables) it was the motherboard. 

I went back and returned the motherboard for an Asus, got home, rebuilt my system and a month later have not had one internet outage. The frustration that the motherboard cost me trying to figure out what was causing my outage made me want to never touch a computer again. I spent so much time troubleshooting it and dealing with internet outages that the whole month for me was torture.

Who would have thought that 1 computer could take down a whole network?  It's like troubleshooting a car not starting and it turns out the tires are flat!

TLDR: Bought new computer, the internet was going out for a month and it was the motherboard of the new computer shutting the whole network down. Starting troubleshooting from the line outside the apartment, to modem, to the router, to switch, to cable, and finally to PC to find the issue. 

 

NotTheSoundGuy

So it had been 10+ years since i had dealt with PC internals. A friend was upgrading and for an amazing deal i got an i7 7700k, an rtx 2080, psu, test bench as case, basically everything except storage and an aio cooler. So I build it all on the test bench, go to power it on, and at the time i did not really the psu had gone bad. When I powered it on for the first time, the power cable into my aio cooler literally smoked and burst into flame. I unplug everything, theres scorch marks across the heat shields on the mobo and I die inside. In my head im like, "WHAT HAVE I DONE, I DID IT WRONG AND RUINED IT ALL"  Though luckily, everything was fine and after a bit of testing and one more scorched cable (which i was prepared for and in a test situation this time) i realized it was the psu and that i had actually done everything correctly, which a quick trip to the store fixed.

latincoffeebean

Molex to SATA, lose your data!  I ran out of space for music and converted a molex power supply on the cheap to make space for a dedicated media drive.  Well the connector didn’t take long to overheat and destroy my spare drive mid transfer!

Chris_P_Bacon

"Thermal Shmermal"

When I was in my late teens, a friend of mine whose parents won the lottery ($3mil USD jackpot in annuities) decided to spoil my friend with whatever he wanted. This led to his wanting to build a PC in the Pentium 4 HT era with the CPU being, you guessed it, a Pentium 4 HT. Having combed through a couple of threads online at that time, he felt he had a decent handle on things but "wanted my assistance with the build" (or, in another word, show it off).

Given I had only just come off of building a Pentium 3 1ghz build w/ a GeForce 4 MX 440 by myself for the first time using hand-me-downs and spare parts and scraps I was able to get my hands on at the time, I was a little excited to mess around with what was considered 'high end' in that period. Given the parts selection he went with ran a little shy of $2k, you could imagine most of what my assistance involved was just watching him put his build together.

With a substantial feeling of upper-crustiness, he frantically piecemealed the build into his case but, for some reason, decided to save the CPU and cooler for last. Watching him insert the CPU (where he bent a pin slightly and bent it back into place with tweezers, mind you) and attach the cooler, I noticed something odd: He was wiping the pre-applied thermal paste off the cooler.

I had asked him if he had bought his own thermal paste or a thermal pad for the CPU to which he was strongly insistent that, per Xanga, LiveJournal, and MySpace feedback, he "would ruin his CPU and cooler if he kept the paste on."

He, then, powered the PC on. Wouldn't POST.

I had reiterated at this point that maybe he should have applied thermal paste or a pad, only to have gotten cut off before finishing my sentence. He was so sure that he shouldn't use paste or a pad for thermal contact that he, instead, took a can of compressed air and turned it upside down into the case based on some feedback he saw to (not sure where this logic was feasible) "cool the cooler" because it was too hot, to him.

Somehow, it POSTed... for like a minute.

At this point, I was frustrated and just quietly watched this dumpster fire. With an entire can of compressed air upside down, he was (almost magically) able to get the PC cooled just barely long enough to go into BIOS and disable any warnings or triggers that would cause the PC to shut down due to heat.

This dumpster fire of a show nearly turned into an actual fire as the shorting occurred.

He tried to pin blame on me. It didn't work.

When we (my friend, his parents, and myself) took the build to our local PC shop where he bought the parts, I explained exactly what he did to the support tech. He could not lie his way out of this one. As such, they would not refund them.

Needless to say his parents were mad; partly at me, but mostly at their son for wasting the cash, who I have not heard from to this day.

I did end up getting the 80GB HDD for free out of this ordeal since they ended up leaving the PC with them and the employee unmounted it and gave it to me. So, 2004 me had that going for himself.

TL;DR: Don't skimp the paste.

Alec123

SeanM said: 

Ever had a water-cooling system break in your PC? A graphics card catch fire? Did you touch all the CPU pins? Or maybe you just used the wrong RAM? Well, this contest is for you!

Starting today, January 11th, we want to hear your PC disaster stories. Tell us all about your cracked cases and DOA graphics cards, your bad RAM and failed PSUs. Then, when the entry window closes on January 31st, 11:59 PM EST, we’ll be randomly selecting one entry to win a brand new 3070 graphics card!

And be sure to check out the Micro Center Asks section of our forum for more light-hearted PC discussions, as well as our Service Center for assistance with builds, including build repairs and full-build services.

Winners will be contacted the week after the contest ends.

 How to enter (see terms and conditions for full contest rules):

·         Join the Micro Center community

·         Post a comment below describing your most disastrous PC building experiences

 We can't wait to hear from you!

Good luck!

See attached contest terms and conditions.

Contest submission window: 1/11/21 – 1/31/21

1 winner will receive a 3070 Graphics Card.

I got my brand new cpu for my pc and I knew nothing about PCs yet and I touched all my pins on my cpu

Wlm1963

When I built one of my first computers and had everything assembled, I was leaning over admiring my work when a screwdriver that was in my shirt pocket fell out. Of all the spots it could have hit, whatever it hit on the motherboard caused it to short out, so there I was on a Sunday afternoon in my small town with nothing open (no computer stores there anyway). I felt like crying. 

SoupThyme

Me and a few friends got together and built a pc for another friend a few years ago, I decided to set it up near a router (the board didn't have wifi) which was plugged into a slightly broken outlet. We used the same outlet to plug the pc on. Upon powering everything on we realized we forgot to plug in the display port cable. When we plugged it in, a spark jumped from the metal covering around the graphics cards I/O onto the display port cable. The shock was strong enough to leave a burn mark and the circuit breaker flipped implying something shorted. We retried later on a different outlet and everything booted up fine with no long lasting damage besides the burn mark and a fear of plugging anything into a powered pc.

Ericx112

Back in 2014 I was building a my gaming pc on the floor had the tower flat on the ground. When my wife shows up with our baby girl  in her arms she is about 6 months at the time, she came to see how it was coming along, I told her all I needed was to connect the gpu power cables and its all done. As I was done I decided to test it right there on the floor everything was running perfectly. But this is where it goes horribly wrong.

 As my wife sees everything is fine she turns around with the baby over her shoulder as she  is trying to burp her. She takes ones step and my daughter doesn't just burp, she vomits and it lands inside the tower while it was running. What most people would expect the pc turns off. I attempted to clean was hoping for the best following day I tried to power it on after making sure nothing  still had moisture. Yes what you would expect nothing was working, nothing powered on only thing the survived was my cpu and ram. After all this my wife blamed it on me for doing it on the floor and not the table.

To this day Each time I see my daughter playing on her pc it reminded me on what she when she was under 1 year old. "They said have kids it will be fun" but yes they are fun. This has been my worst experience ever building a pc.

jacouby

I screwed up a 5600x by not fulling closing the lever and then proceeding to put the cooler on. The cooler wouldn't fit on so i bent and broke some pins.

ethanlam27

I was trying to help my friend build a PC over Zoom... he had never built a PC before. He received a Ryzen 7 1700X from a friend and was trying to put it in his motherboard, and had a friend over there to help him. Turns out the friend only built using Intel CPUs and didn't really know how to put in a Ryzen. We could hear him struggling a bit to put the CPU in the socket, but we couldn't see it. We kind of hoped for the best. Later it turns out his PC wasn't posting and he found out he bent several pins on the CPU itself... it nearly gave me a heart attack but at least he was able to bend them back! His gaming PC is working now without any issues, thankfully!!

mikesysadmin

Helping a friend build his first, I leave the room for 5 minutes and this happens (to an intel i9-7920x!)

moral of the story align your CPU properly(not upside down) before clamping it down!...
if that wasnt enough he also bent a bunch of pins on his motherboard...
however I've worked in IT for 20 years now and seen a lot of stupid things....never this SMH