PC failures, anyone care to share a story?

[Sakaris]

First of all, this isn't a tech question of any importance, just a personal rant and a desire to satisfy my own curiosity.

I was sitting down with some friends recently talking about building PC's when we ended up talking about some failures we had experienced. It wasn't as much tales of software issues or ancient hard drives finally giving out as it was stories of PC's that were essentially destroyed by a misplaced glass of iced tea or a stray static spark that ended the life of an expensive piece of technology.

My personal favorite was an incident that affected a friend foolish enough to replace a pci NIC with his case set on thick shag carpet that looked like something off of the set of Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy. While doing this he noticed a clump of fuzz and cat hair on his northbridge heatsink. All it took was a quick touch of his finger and SNAP. Now, I am not an engineer by any measure, so I honestly had no idea that could blacken a spot on a motherboard. What surprised me as well was that it charred two of the gold connectors off of his (then) brand new 64 meg Geforce 3 that had replaced an old riva 128 the day before.

 

[ren0nie0]

yer a failure...

 

[rcookiemonster]

I had 2 maxtor diamondback hard drives crash within about 20 minutes of eachother. My case temp was perfectly normal too at 90 degrees F.

 

[rcookiemonster]

I had 2 maxtor diamondback hard drives crash within about 20 minutes of eachother. My case temp was perfectly normal too at 90 degrees F.

 

[Sakaris]

I had a power supply fan go out when I was out of the house one time, ended up frying everything but the mouse, the video card, the sound card, even the damn keyboard didn't work (weird), though I'm using the same mouse two builds later, woo hoo.

 

[Grimmy]

My PIII 800 Failed awhile back.

The last thing I did on it, was a linux update. And it wouldn't reboot for some odd reason. At 1st I thought it was the MB. I ended up reseating everything.

I did have another MB that had a PII 400 that was running, and tried that PIII 800 chip in it. I was actually thinking it would be a good upgrade, and gutting out the other system.

Turns out it wouldn't work on that other board. So, I tried the PII 400 on my other MB... and it worked.

So I took the PIII 800 apart, cleaning off what I could, and noticed a lil crack in one corner on the core. The conclusion I came up with was that the HSF assembley is different (built more cheaply) then the PII 400. I thought perhaps the heat/cold and fan vibrations finally cracked the core.

Oh well... nice to know I can perhaps get a PIII 850 for around 37 bucks last I check on ebay. :lol: . o O (naaa.. RIP my PIII)