Sign up for a new account or log in here:
also @ TechSpot: OCZ Vertex 450 Review
Home › News › Weekend Open Forum
Weekend Open Forum: Your biggest tech failures
We've all been there: you're kicking ass and taking names when all of a sudden you're staring at a memory error, blue screen of death or, in the case of one TechSpot moderator, a plume of smoke. During a recent round of Team Fortress 2, Leeky's four-month-old Corsair HX750 exploded, taking practically his entire system down in a blaze of glory.
Flames charred his chassis while the electrical surge fried his Asus ROG motherboard, Core 2 Quad Q8300, GeForce GTX 280, 8GB of RAM, 256GB RealSSD C300, and even his aftermarket CPU fan. Only his hard drive and Blu-ray player survived to tell the tale. It's unclear what caused the issue, but the PSU is on its way to Corsair for inspection.
Although tech catastrophes of that magnitude are uncommon, we imagine most of you have witnessed the partial or complete destruction of some electronic device. Have you lost data during an HDD failure? Fried a processor by forgetting to apply thermal paste? Dropped your smartphone in a pool? Share your greatest tech snafus after the jump.
Flames charred his chassis while the electrical surge fried his Asus ROG motherboard, Core 2 Quad Q8300, GeForce GTX 280, 8GB of RAM, 256GB RealSSD C300, and even his aftermarket CPU fan. Only his hard drive and Blu-ray player survived to tell the tale. It's unclear what caused the issue, but the PSU is on its way to Corsair for inspection.
Although tech catastrophes of that magnitude are uncommon, we imagine most of you have witnessed the partial or complete destruction of some electronic device. Have you lost data during an HDD failure? Fried a processor by forgetting to apply thermal paste? Dropped your smartphone in a pool? Share your greatest tech snafus after the jump.
User Comments: 100
Got something to say? Post a comment-
I bought a device made by Apple
-
I broke my Iphone 3G glass 3 times. And broke the lcd trying to replace it. And the speaker.
-
AVG crashed my hard drive with an update. Win 7 64bit blue screen error, drive now unbootable.
-
I broke my Iphone 3G glass 3 times. And broke the lcd trying to replace it. And the speaker.So it's pretty much a given you're not Chinese?
-
Do the Chinese use iphone (I mean the original one) ? I've seen a perfect copy (in appearance) of iphone 3GS (the OS was cooked up by the manufacturer and had 'square' icons as well !) sold for about 80$.
-
My logic was this; if the Chinese can build the iPhone, they should be able to fix it, right....?
Do the Chinese use iphone (I mean the original one) ? I've seen a perfect copy (in appearance) of iphone 3GS (the OS was cooked up by the manufacturer and had 'square' icons as well !) sold for about 80$.I'm sorry, I must have been thinking out loud. I just assumed you could take the phone to Best Buy, have them send it back to China by accident, then get it fixed for free, plus they'd have to hand you a big pile of money.... -
I haven't had many, but my biggest tech failure isn't even associated with the PC (although I did have an ASUS mobo brick on me). No, my biggest failure was on my 1st generation PS3. I kept having issues with downloading content onto my PS3 so I reformatted the disc and lost all kinds of saves, but I wanted it to work. When that didn't work, I traded it in for a second generation PS3. That still didn't solve the problem. After I had gone through all of this I decided that maybe I might get a new router. Once I purchased the new router, I was able to download content again. I wasn't so much angry at myself for having to delete all my saved content, but rather disappointed that I didn't do such a basic troubleshoot first: Check the router! Now, I've lost the ability to play PS2 games unless I buy a separate PS2 console.
-
I destroyed three Socket 478 motherboards and two (likely no-name brand) PSUs, under the mistaken assumption that the power cable at the back could be plugged in and out without switching off the power at the wall socket.
Then came university, and enlightenment. And a fair bit of rage (Heh.) at being so...uncouth.
Oh...I've been doing that a bit recently with a bestec POS. There's no on/off button but nothing's happened yet, except that I've found that they're voltage drops below 10v even on small loads.
-
I destroyed three Socket 478 motherboards and two (likely no-name brand) PSUs, under the mistaken assumption that the power cable at the back could be plugged in and out without switching off the power at the wall socket.Well, in spite of being in my advanced years, I haven't learned this lessen yet. I suppose that ignorance is bliss, since I seem to be able to do this day in, day out, without breaking anything. I may pop the PSU switch off from time to time, but I don't recall doing so religiously.
Then came university, and enlightenment. And a fair bit of rage (Heh.) at being so...uncouth.
With that out of the way, I do have Antec supplies in all the machines. My home is a Bestec free environment.
It could be argued, I suppose, the only difference between turning off the switch, and pulling the plug, is the fact that the ground is also broken with the latter, while only the hot is severed with the former.
I'm going to offer a theory, which you, (and HK), can abuse, concur with, and/or try to shoot down as you see fit.
In BIOS, there are ACPI options that allow you to choose what the computer does after a power failure. I suspect the "turn on" option may be the culprit, while the "stay off" option, nets a better chance of the machine's survival.
@Rage: I don't know if the ACPI in a socket 478 board, is as sophisticated as its current implementation. If it wasn't, it might go toward an explanation of your issues. Also, things tend happen a whole lot more intensely @220 VAC, than they do here stateside @ 110.
-
My first build ever was with a Northwood Pentium 4. I unloaded a whole tube of thermal paste on top of the CPU, then installed the HSF with its black thermal pad in tact still. Hell, I was 12 and didn't know what I was doing at the time.
-
My first build ever was with a Northwood Pentium 4. I unloaded a whole tube of thermal paste on top of the CPU, then installed the HSF with its black thermal pad in tact still. Hell, I was 12 and didn't know what I was doing at the time.I guess it's true then, "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing". Although, "my first build" suggests that you finally got it working.....?
-
My logic was this; if the Chinese can build the iPhone, they should be able to fix it, right....?I'm sorry, I must have been thinking out loud. I just assumed you could take the phone to Best Buy, have them send it back to China by accident, then get it fixed for free, plus they'd have to hand you a big pile of money....
But you can still salvage this situation, I mean iSheeps can't seem to grasp the fact that their beloved manufacturer can make mistakes; so they would never notice any difference as long as the logo / appearance is similar; and just think how much money one can make by selling these fakes (so you would still end up with 'big pile' of money; or if the worst comes well ......... that is another story for another time).
-
@Rage: I don't know if the ACPI in a socket 478 board, is as sophisticated as its current implementation. If it wasn't, it might go toward an explanation of your issues. Also, things tend happen a whole lot more intensely @220 VAC, than they do here stateside @ 110.
Of course; the large voltage swing is the demon!
And yes, most Socket 478 motherboards used the ACPI 1.0a\b specification, which stated that the power button (a single-button type; there is a dual-button spec as well) cycled the system between an on (G0) and a "soft-off" (G2) state. It could also be transitioned to a G1 (sleep) state.
If you plug the cable in and out fast enough, and since the PC is in a G2 state, since it's never really off, the voltage surge the components experience may be enough to ruin them, depending on their quality.
There is a mechanical-off (G3) state, but IIRC that's only triggered when you manually turn off the power to the PSU via the wall socket or the button at the back of the PSU (if there is one).
I read this stuff way back, so feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
-
I swear I've pulled out power leads in haste before now, and never had something fail yet, and thats with 240V AC.
Its certainly been the case with my old Dell PSU, as that never had a switch, and the desk covers the wall socket up, so I never used the wall socket switch, ever.
-
here is my best fail, was going to the gathering lan party and fried my Athlon 64 3200+ Socket 754 the week before, mainly i put the wrong pins in the wrong place so both mb+cpu smoked
i also did a chuck norris roundhouse kick on some of my harddrives, after they started clicking :p
-
I've witnessed or been a part of a few tech failures over the years. In manufacturing: Someone plugged in a computer 120 VAC into a 220 VAC (this was before power supplies could switch between the two) and smoke and flame ensued. I also saw a board that was wired so that the 5 VDC line had 120 VAC and the chips vaporized.
In Support: Not so visual however a RAID 5 system failed and the backups had been failing for 6 months (this was at another site and we were not notified until we were asked to recover the data).
-
spent a day and a half trying to figure out why my secound 4850 made my pc crash...pci e power cable wasnt properly inside and the fan was spinning due to the power i was getting from the mobo.....
-
I have built many a PC, tinkered with tech and never ever had a piece of hardware (bar a few Sticks of Ram) fail on me. No hardrive faliures, no Meltdowns! I am either Really good or Really lucky!
Well I broke my 360 attempting self repair, but it had RRoD anyway, youtube said it was easy. Liars!
got PS3 now so its all good (well apart from online being down right now)
-
way too many to recall... i've seen it all truly.
-
My Motorola Defy phone (with a soft wrapper) silently dropped from my belt under my car's front tire! ....and yes, I, 'un-smartly' DROVE over my 'smart' phone!
T-mobile didn't want to replace it (even though it was less than 2 months old!) and I had to pay the FULL price of a new Samsung Galaxy S, $500!
the phone is now beyond my techy knowledge!
-
My Motorola Defy phone (with a soft wrapper) silently dropped from my belt under my car's front tire! ....and yes, I, 'un-smartly' DROVE over my 'smart' phone!Well I mean really! How "smart" could the phone actually be, if it didn't have enough sense to jump out of the way.....?
T-mobile didn't want to replace it (even though it was less than 2 months old!) and I had to pay the FULL price of a new Samsung Galaxy S, $500!
the phone is now beyond my techy knowledge!
-
Removed my GPU's fan because it was too loud. For my efforts I played CS2 for 5 minutes of blissfully quite play. It was worth it.
-
Had dual 6800gt's and couldnt get enough power to them so I put in a second power supply just for them.. 2 months later my computer caught fire due to overheating.
fun times... lol -
Raided two 250GB hard drives to make one 500GB and then the second one immediately failed destroying all of my data on both drives...
-
secretassasin69 said:
You story has indeed touched my heart. With that said, sadly this is the "news" forum. And while I'm sure that this is news to you personally, it lacks a certain broader appeal.Tell ya what, why don't you start a thread in the, "General Hardware" forum, and somebody will likely be along to help you.
I'll give you a hint though, in most one fan cases, the one fan is usually set as an exhaust fan. Or, "extract", if you prefer.
Yeah i understand what you're saying but i recently changed the case to a Cooler Master Elite 430 and it came with a fan at the front i.e. an intake fan
![hellokitty[hk]](http://www.techspot.com/community/data/avatars/s/169/169488.jpg?1355088591)
Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
Featured on Cases
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.