Post Your Biggest CPU Mistakes

[jpishgar]

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

 

[mrfungi]

I bent 3 of the pins on my older brothers brand new Pentium III processor and blamed it on the cat. He either fell for it or took pity on me, I don't know.

Had a moment of stupidity, well moments, when I bought my Q8300 and the parts and decided to build it whilst in quite a sleep-depraved state having spent the night before gaming till late morning, and not wanting to sleep till the following night. Put it all together, seemed fine. Booted up fine. Ran some CPU tests, kept going up to the 90s then switching off. Couldn't figure out why. Repeated same process till late that night. Same result, I was going mad. This went on for a good 8 hours. GF at the time getting angry, I'm getting more agitated. Sitting there feeling sorry for myself, then the Personal Computer Archangel must of flown in and slapped me in my miserable, agitated and delirious ugly chops because it dawned on me, I didn't put on any thermal paste. Despite the fact you could cook Eggs on the thing by the end of it, it lasted me a good few years.


Tadaaaaa!

 

[CountMike]

I bought an Intel CPU once (Pentium 60) !!!!

 

[grin4me]

Two things, both kinda equal.
Bending the pins on my FX-8350 (Damn people hate on it but it runs ARK, Fallout 4, BF4, and other games at 80+ fps on high settings)
and
Getting the FX-8350, then realizing my PSU wasn't good enough for it.

 

[geemamoore]

When I was pursuing my graduation then I did this mistake except instead of shorting the jumpers with a screwdriver I plugged in on switch in front panel header except I actually a wired it in the rest power switch which so when I pressed the power button it was DOA too.

 

[Zahid Malik1]

its better to buy Intel Core I7 K series for overclocking

 

[kwc813]

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

 

[kwc813]

Love the idea of this forum! I build high end (mostly game builds) systems literally for a living, and been doing it about 25 years now. I constantly have 3-8 machines around to play with (read: screw up and learn from!!!), so this is fun (and I rarely reply to posts)! Your dremel beats anything I can think of quickly, but...when I first started to realize that people would buy computers not only because of how they worked but looked, too, I started to add LED's before the craze. I was trying to get a red old fashioned rope light to fit a case. A) they're 120v a/c. B) cutting them in sections and trying to solder a length in before the 12v d/c rail in the PSU was an error (I wouldn't have known a 12v rail back then if it bit me in the arse). C) NOT turning off the computer while doing this so I could see the result was probably a cry for mental help. I got colors though...black, dark black, midnight black being foremost, which quickly led to D) an elbow numbing short E) a little pop from somewhere on the board F) all the lights in the house going out and G) being asked to go cut my own switch when Dad got home (really sucked because most of our trees were oak!). So y'all, avoid having to cut your own switch and come to Tom's FIRST! I still wonder what that "pop" might have been, though 🙂

 

[Aedamus]

I bought an A10 7850K and a GPU. I had no idea what kaveri is...

 

[Themastererr]

Overclocked an ASUS ROG Crosshair and 8350 to 5.3Ghz @1.56 volts. Every voltage rail set to extreme. MOSFETS went up in smoke and took the CPU with them when I switched over to liquid cooling because the airflow was removed from VRMs

The board and CPU are in RMA. Be mindful of your MOSFETS 😉

 

[dan123123]

I made a huge mistake when putting in my new CPU, I put it in the right way but I had to reposition it because it didn't go down and I was under pressure since it was a 4790K because I didn't want to do anything wrong. After that I applied thermal paste and spread it and it had managed to get stuck on the card I was spreading it with putting it out of place again and then realising I had forgotten to clamp it down with the CPU housing. Everything booted up fine and I had no crashes or anything.

 

[lodders]

In 2008, I built 2 computers with AMD 3.2Ghz black edition phenom II dual core CPU, and ASUS motherboard with core unlocking...

Didn't unlock or overclock them until they were nearly 3 years old!!

(One is now a 4.0Ghz quad core, the other is a 3.45Ghz quad core - been running like this for the last 4 years)

 

[ZeroInfinity]

Using AMD for my first cpu build

 

[Citoyasha]

When my I bought my laptop I thought the i5-3337U CPU had 5 cpu cores and it turned out it's a dual core.

 

[SkyDukii]

buying amd imo, lol.

 

[reedo_43]

When I was about 8 years old, I powered on my Cryix 6x86 without heat sink, after entered windows 98, I touched it and fell very hot, I turnoff it step by step instead of hit the AT power immediately, before I reinstall the heatsink. However it is alive until today.

Thought I was the only one to have that Cyrix. 100 mhz fsb baby!

 

[Nemanja97]

My first time cleaning my PC from dust... I remove the cooler, and deatach the CPU by force, didn't know about the handle thingy. I put it back in with the handle down, put the cooler and tighten it up nicely.
Ended up with a dead cpu and mobo. thank you very much!

 

[peaceduke]

Peoples biggest mistake is, that they think they can do professional level work with consumer level hardware ... CPU , GPU ... etc etc
Never buy Consumer hardware for pro work
5820k is my biggest mistake along with GTX titan
I should buy Xeon + Quadro

 

[Epicness937]

got a new one its not me but my friend took a tried to place a 4690K in a fm2 motherboard

 

[Mark RM]

I fried a perfectly good 80186 CPU by mistakenly providing 12 V when I should have applied 5 to my reworked power circuit. Blew the lid right off ( CPU and the chipset) and let the magical blue smoke out. I was gunning for 10 Mhz. The worst part was I cooked my 8087.... thank Dog it wasn't a Weitek. I think I cried, but I can't say for sure.

 

[EpicPlayer]

I didn't think that there was a difference between CPU sockets when I was 10 so when my parents got me the parts for my first PC build, I got an LGA 775 motherboard and an AMD AM2 CPU. I legitimately thought that the pins on the CPU were to protect it in shipping since it didn't fit into the LGA socket for obvious reasons. So I proceeded to cut the pins off of the CPU and then plopped it into the socket and proceeded to assemble the computer. After attempting to power it on for the first time, a burning smell wafted from the case.
That is how I ruined a CPU and motherboard.
In a previous post on the storage mistakes thread, I had mentioned that I burned a hard drive PCB by plugging in both molex and SATA power to the hard drive. Unfortunately that also happened in this PC.
I don't understand how but I was glad to find out that the PSU still worked after all of that.

 

[fakhar5]

cleaning pc from dust and i damage my motherboard

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

Not knowing what it was at the time, I once threw away a server CPU that had been left on a workbench.

"What's that? Meh, doesn't look important, in the bin with you!"

I shudder to think how much that CPU cost.

 

[hapkiman]

A couple years back, I was at my buddies house to de-lid his i7 3770k using a razor blade method. Well he started it but was struggling, so me being the expert I said "let me give it a try." Well, I sliced into my first and second fingers on my right hand with the razor and it started bleeding like a stuck pig. He had light kind of beige carpeting in his house and blood got everywhere - it looked like a freaking homicide scene. We tried to clean it up before his girlfriend came home (it was actually her apartment). But there was no way. So I ended up going to the ER and got like 10 stitches and a massive bill, and he ended up breaking up with his girlfriend. He's still pissed at me about that to this day.

 

[KirbysHammer]

Thinking that temps in the 90's were ok on 2500K 5Ghz OC. need more be said?

 

[gigabob]

I bought the ASROCK Z-97 Extreme 6 due to the 4 lane M.2 sockets and while waiting for the M.2 options to become affordable - and before I realized they were significantly value challenged - it was time to replace my Wife's system. I decided to go whole hog and duplicate my system, except she would only get 16GB of RAM. After the system was up and running for a few weeks it seemed to have issues turning on. I was surprised as the system seemed to work perfectly - once it was on. So I got an RMA from NewEgg to send it back but got cramped on time to get everything re-packaged. We were about to got on vacation for two weeks to the Canadian Rockies - which I figured would be perfect timing to send it in and have the return waiting as we got back. After packing, I tore down her system and pulled out the ASROCK board and put it carefully back into the conductive plastic and foam. But it was very late and I got confused by the CPU cap. I then tried to put the cap underneath the clamp - and successfully crushed several pins. Quick way to lose $160. Caps go on the outside after the clamp has been locked in. Many yarn ago I used to build many systems a year and this was not an issue. Senioritis, a late night and mnd on hitting the airport the next morning is a poor combination for performing re-packaging work.

Ultimately I got an MSI Z97 to replace the ASROCK I had destroyed, only to fiind it was the Power supply - the ASROCK was good all along.