Ever burn out somthing? Negligance, user error, or other? What was it?

[Murloc]

I never burned anything.

 

[Modelworks]

I used a usb cord and cut it in half, intending to use the +5vdc wires to power another device. On connection the LCD display module went up in smoke. Apparently the cheap China cable manufacturers do not observe the normal black = ground, red = + VCC wiring colors. The cable colors were backwards but since they were wired that way on both ends the cable worked for its intended use.

 

[Jimmah]

Fried a 586 overdrive CPU by installing it backwards. Was a sad day.

Ran a WC setup for a long time and never noticed any leaks...... eventually it leaked a tiny drop onto the x800 xt pe and popped off a resistor. Silly me decides to just solder the two contacts and hope for the best. Pop goes the rest of the card along with my motherboard.

Once tried peltier cooling a sempron 2400. Back in the day if those even got close to the max temp they'd fry. Worked fine once, cooled to around 5c in bios. Turned it off then back on quickly and sizzle. Not enough time in between power cycles and the pelt got too hot all over I think, 60$ down the drain.

 

[RebateMonger]

Forgot this one. It definitely wasn't my fault:

I burned up the built-in IDE controller on a Gateway P5-60MHz motherboard.

Moving the motherboard to a new case, I hooked up the hard drive to the motherboard. Both ends of the cable had the alignment protrusion on the connectors, making it impossible to accidentally reverse the IDE connectors.

It was common knowledge at the time that reversing an IDE connector could burn up an IDE controller. Originally, IDE cables had a red stripe on wire #1. Later, the standards added the plastic protrusion on the connector and a missing pin hole near the center of the 40-pin connectors. My factory-made IDE cable had all three features, so I didn't bother checking the red stripe.

Whoops. The cable maker had reversed the connectors. The red stripe was at Pin #1 at the motherboard and at Pin #40 at the hard drive.

I powered it up. No sparks or anything. But the IDE controller never worked again. I added an old PCI IDE controller card and that worked for the next five years.

 

[Davidh373]

I set my first computer on fire.

I was gifted a lovely HP Pavilion desktop which was the bought at a very affordable price of over $2000. It was a pentium w\ a 2gb hard drive, and 128mb ram.

Knowing absolutely nothing about computer hardware at the time, I bought an AMD cpu from ebay. ( Yes... been using ebay since I was 14-15 )

I installed the cpu, and turned the power on. I had to goto the bathroom, so walked across the hall and began using the restroom when the overpowering smell of burning circuit board hit my nostrils.

I quickly turned around and the computer was ON FIRE. Luckily nothing else caught fire and the fire went out easily.

I know you probably feel awful about it, but that takes the cake for best post yet! lol

 

[AstroGuardian]

I've done this. Also:

- Somehow managed to mount DDR backwards. Would not boot, started burning. Label on the dimm caught on fire for a second.

Ummm,.... how did you manage to mount the DDR backwards? It's impossible unless you made a hole in the ddr module or destroyed the terminator on the slot.... You sure you placed it backwards? Cause i find this difficult to believe...

 

[fffblackmage]

I've done this. Also:

- Somehow managed to mount DDR backwards. Would not boot, started burning. Label on the dimm caught on fire for a second.

Ummm,.... how did you manage to mount the DDR backwards? It's impossible unless you made a hole in the ddr module or destroyed the terminator on the slot.... You sure you placed it backwards? Cause i find this difficult to believe...

IIRC, the notch for the DDR DIMMs are nowhere near the middle. I've stupidly tried installing DDR (and DDR2) DIMMs backwards before, but the notch had always saved me from bright fiery doom.

 

[Daishiki]

I woke up to my UPS going off and smoke coming out of my tower. A part of my MSI mobo decided to burn, leaving a blackened area on the inside of my case. The smell was horrible.

At my first job, my CRT was starting to hourglass before it went poof and smoke came out of it. I got an LCD monitor after that.

 

[Davidh373]

I got an LCD monitor after that.

Yay UPGRADES! 😀

 

[TheStu]

Lost an Abit AN7 due to using a crappy PSU, then didn't kill anything else for a while.

As for actual burning, I pulled a bunch of bare HDDs out of the closet a couple of weeks ago to determine which were good, which were bad, and if bad, which were under warranty. Hooked them all (about 4 or 5) up over USB, and a little puff of smoke came out of the back of one of them.

My roommate, just this past 2 weeks has fried an 8800GTS and 2 mobos.

 

[Davidh373]

My roommate, just this past 2 weeks has fried an 8800GTS and 2 mobos.

WTF!? lol

 

[F1shF4t]

Was installing a heatsink on my old amd board and the metal backplate shorted the VRMs. (The plastic was pierced) Luckily the psu had good ocp protection. The board worked for a while after that, then became unstable.

 

[spinejam]

usb headset control pod burned-up b/c the external usb port on case was actually connected to a firewire header on the MB. 🙂

great thread / stories! 🙂

 

[TheStu]

WTF!? lol

I had given him an Asus SLI board that had never worked for me, or rather, he asked me for it. He got it up and running and stuck his 8800 and e2200 into it to test it. It all worked fine. He stuck his 8800 back into his other computer... dead.

The next week, he decided to use this Asus motherboard as the heart of his new work computer, so he hauls everything out of the work case and put all the new stuff into it (He apparently had never heard of the concept of open air testing), mobo fried somehow, he went through A+ cert. and is as knowledgeable about computers as anyone I know personally and he swears up and down that he did everything correctly.

Puts all the old stuff back into the case... its dead now too.

Thankfully the 8800 was an EVGA so it had a lifetime warranty.

 

[Davidh373]

Thankfully the 8800 was an EVGA so it had a lifetime warranty.

Probably got a nice upgrade to a 9800. Not all bad then right?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I used a usb cord and cut it in half, intending to use the +5vdc wires to power another device. On connection the LCD display module went up in smoke. Apparently the cheap China cable manufacturers do not observe the normal black = ground, red = + VCC wiring colors. The cable colors were backwards but since they were wired that way on both ends the cable worked for its intended use.

Out of all the USB extension cables I purchased at a dollar store, fully half of them failed to work properly. I'm probably lucky that they didn't cause my test USB flash drive to go up in smoke.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I woke up to my UPS going off and smoke coming out of my tower. A part of my MSI mobo decided to burn, leaving a blackened area on the inside of my case. The smell was horrible.

At my first job, my CRT was starting to hourglass before it went poof and smoke came out of it. I got an LCD monitor after that.

This is like the fifth MSI product that I've heard of catch on fire. What is with MSI???

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100419140242AAkImKd

 

[Texun]

After cleaning up some case wiring I forgot to plug in the CPU fan on my Athlon 1700. It shut off after running for a few minutes so I pulled the side cover off so I could feel for anything loose and ended up leaving a small fingerprint on the heat sink. Connected the fan, booted to BIOS and the CPU was at 69C. The board did not have any thermal protection so there is no telling how hot it was when it crashed. It still worked so this may not qualify as a true burn down, but it was a mistake that I remember each time I am inside a case.