Post Your Biggest CPU Mistakes

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jpishgar

jpishgar

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Jan 5, 2010
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Back when I was in middle school, I sawed an AMD K6-2 CPU in half using a Dremel. See, it was a different pin configuration than the socket for the motherboard I was using, and I wanted it to fit. Yes, there was some peer pressure involved. I think the biggest stupidity was plugging the thing in and pressing the power button. The smell was quite impressive. Since then, I've always associated the scent of computer components burning with a deep sensation of personal guilt. Life lesson: Never take a Dremel to a CPU.

Now that you have my embarrassing confession, let's hear yours.

We want to know what your biggest mistake building PCs has been as it relates to CPUs. What mishaps have you had that make you look back and go "Oh man, what the heck was I thinking?".

Consider this a no judgement zone - and a fun means of tech-related therapy.

Include images, if you've got 'em. If we get some good horror stories, we might even turn this into an editorial feature and showcase our communal misery.

-JP

p.s. Check out the other threads, too.
• Post Your Biggest CPUs Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Graphics Card Mistakes
• Post Your Biggest Motherboard Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Storage Mistakes
• Post your Biggest Cooling, Cases, & PSUs Mistakes
 
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well my first cpu mistake was with my first computer. i got a ibm with a pentium 1 i think ran at 33 mhz well later i was given another motherboard that had a cyrix cpu that ran at 66 mhz and it fit in perfectly in my ibm motherboard. so i put the chip in and turned the computer on expecting it to turn on so im starring at my monitor waiting and waiting and next to me the chip had coat fire. thankfully we kept a fire extinguisher in every room.

My second massive massive mistake was last year building a new i7 rig i didnt get the cpu in correctly and didnt notice and clamped it down and then realized i wasnt lined up correctly. ended up bending 3 pins on the socket and bending the cpu. thankfully i fixed the pins and the cpu still worked so everything was good in the end.
 
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when applying the heat sink for my cpu i accidentally pushed it all the way out and the thermal paste was scattered every where from my mobo to my gpu, i then took out the cpu to remove the excess paste but ended up bending way too many pins, its an fx 8320 btw.
 
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This was *very* early in my hobbyist days, almost 20 years ago now, but after spending the better part of half an hour figuring out how to pry the CPU from it's socket (it was a 386, to give you some idea of timeline), and mucking up more than a few of the pins, I realized there was the little ZIF-lever adjacent to the socket.
 
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Jeez dude you went and let the smoke out! :)



 
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I destroyed a 775 Trying to De-lid it was a Pentium D that was bsel modded. I killed allot of 478 Pentiums trying to salvage them from bent pins. My favorite, I was experimenting with cpu compound alchemy from stuff I found around the house it was a competition against my brother on two pcs we pulled from the dumpster. Peanut putter finally killed it, But I was onto something with oil based products.
 
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Well, I have 2 CPU fails really... First off is I had an old Acer Aspire desktop. M1610 I belive and one day I was cleaning it out and I dropped the CPU corner first on to the grid array, bending the pins. I tried so hard to get them back straight but there was no hope. Another time was on the same motherboard and with the same CPU that did the damage. I had a graphics card without the correct backplate so it would become dislodged in the PC if it was knocked. I had to take the cover off the side of the computer every time this happened. (Extremely annoying as you can imagine.) One day, I took the CPU heat sink off to get a little bit more room as the case was quite small. I put it back on without plugging in the power pins. I powered it on and started playing a little bit of Gmod. About half an hour into it, I realised a drop in performance and then it hit me. Always double check the fan pin 😛
 
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I had a potentially dangerous thing happen to me it was 5.am i was up all night watching films then decided to change my computers case i should not have done that!!!!! the thing smoked to shit i mean rearly smoked and started sparking to crap i ragged the power cord out the wall and inspected i thought the computer was toast it was a brand new phenom 2 x4 955 and GTX 460 so i bought a new board and psu and everything worked great i still have no idea how it started smoking the board died but after replacement worked great if i was not in the room it could have burned the house down it was that bad and smelt awful :-/
 
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Well, I had an 80386 sx 16mhz when I was about 12yo. I wanted badly to "upgrade" so I bought (rather convinced mom to buy) a cyrex "upgrade" chip that was just supposed to fit over the CPU and give you 586 performance.

Sadly I put the upgrade chip on the wrong chip, forced it on actually. Ended up with a paperweight, but the 386 still worked and got used till the mid 90s
 
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Well i use to love overclocking a lot and when i got my first P4 back then it was a 3 ghz northwood cpu on a msi 865 mob😵verclocked it with stock cooler to 3.6 ghz and ran benchmark 2003(back then was only one available)Did the best score of his life.PC stuck did a reset of mobo worked fine But.....After that i could barely get 3.2ghz with after market cooler.

PS.Why do people always make stuff intel vs amd same can be said that my worst mistake was buying intel i only have bad memories of all of mine >.< but itrs personal preferences who gives a fk about that?If a pc works it's good nuff said amateur fanboyz -_-
 
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On my very first budget build gaming pc: I had an i3-3220 from an old pc, so I had to purchase an aftermarket cooler.. I had a little tube of thermal paste and a little tube of super glue which looked almost identical. I ended up squirting a big blob of super glue all over the cpu and needless to say I spent that day trying to perform CPR on that poor little i3... RIP.
 
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hey if it doesn't fall into place line it up with number 1 placement if that doesn't work its the wrong socket, i went with amd because intel was paying vinders not to use amd cpus at 1/2 the cost but its not worth paying 2 times the cost for 10 fps, cpu reach speeds where its not a issue so it comes down to display cards, oh don't touch a hot cpu you'll get burned
 
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Ok, so one day I decided to swap out the Socket 775 Pentium 4 in my Dell Optiplex gx280. I went and pulled the CPU out, only to realize that I put too much thermal paste on, and it travelled to the socket. I then got the brilliant idea to use toilet paper to clean the pins off. Instead, I got chunks of toilet paper in between the pins. I then tried picking them out, only causing the pins to work. I ended up replacing the board.

The second occasion that I will mention is not as related to CPU, but similar. I borrowed a machine from my father that had a motherboard that was damaged in a surge. He replaced the motherboard. It burned up RAM every week. I decided to put in 3gb of ram in it, thinking that somehow, magically, that I would get it to work. (It was better than my machine at the time, the XPS 410, which was the machine from him, had a Pentium D in it, whereas I had a Pentium 4 in my machine) It ended up nuking a 512mb stick of ram and a 1gb stick of ram, leaving me with a 1gb stick and 512gb stick.

Another occasion was that I was fooling around with some older parts (A 486DX and 8mb of RAM) and decided to put the parts in a case. The motherboard used plastic stand-offs which easily slid all over the place. Anyways, the motherboard shorted out against the case, and a capacitor exploded on the board and burned my leg. It was a painful experience. The 486 still functions fine, and is waiting for me to make another machine with it.

Hopefully I don't have any more n00b mistakes to report here, but since we're imperfect, I imagine there will be more. 😀
 
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When i was running an X6 1055T i pulled the heatsink off after the thermal paste dried, ended up ripping the CPU out it's socket. That gave me bent and broke pins. Made me appreciate Intel's socket design a lot more.

Couldn't use my system for quite a while till i bought a X4 620.

That was the only and hopefully last CPU mistake i'll make.
 
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I bought an fx 8350 instead of and i3.... biggest mistake ever.
very very bad performance ( in games) compared to i3.
games used was(cod series, bf series, any kind of shooter related, starcraft 2, r9 290, and gtx 970 tested)
 
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