Just a fun little story, proving everyone makes mistakes.

[indydude345]

I entered the PC master race last year, and since then, I have built quite a few machines for myself and others, so I am confident in saying I'm pretty OK at it. In my own current system, I have a Ryzen 5 1600 and a GTX 980Ti. About an hour ago, I decided to take apart my 980Ti, you know, just to give it a little tidy up from the summer of Dust Hell. I got out a tiny brush and the isopropyl alcohol and went to work on the dye, getting off all the crusty old thermal paste from around the die itself. After I had re-applied thermal paste and put the card all back together, plugged it back into my rig (or so I had thought ) and there was no signal to my monitor! I sat there for 5 minutes, trying to figure out what the heck was wrong. And oh boy, did I feel like a noob. I had completely forgot to plug in the 6+8 pin power, the cords were just hanging there. How in the world could I miss something so simple and easy? So, to everyone: don't feel bad if you mess up on something, when there is people like me whose problems stare them dead in the face, and they don't even see them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

BT, DT

 

[disappoint]

Thanks for the story. So how in the world did you miss something that in retrospect seems so obvious?

Rushed through it? Got distracted? Had a lot on your mind? Lack of sleep, low blood glucose? Not paying attention?

Might not be a bad idea to make a checklist of all the things to check and double check if you want to be better at it than "pretty OK at it" as you are now.

 

[disappoint]

BT, DT

Well now that R2D2 has put in his 2 cents with beeping noises that clears everything up.

 

[indydude345]

I’m not really sure what it was, as I have installed video cards more times than I can remember. Maybe that’s it, I know that my family history includes memory loss.. maybe I’m just getting it early.

 

[disappoint]

I’m not really sure what it was, as I have installed video cards more times than I can remember. Maybe that’s it, I know that my family history includes memory loss.. maybe I’m just getting it early.

Sorry to hear that. Like I said earlier, checklists. You should get yourself checked out too. It's probably not as bad as you think.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Welcome to the club? I have done that like 20 times. Happens when I am swapping cards quickly and moving them among PCs. The key indicator of an experienced tech isn't whether or not he/she makes mistakes like that, but whether he/she can quickly identify those mistakes.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Hey guess what? I have hit the power button on my PC before after cleaning it up and blowing it out and after it not turning on, I noticed 5 seconds later that I forgot to plug it in. LMAO at people (Dissapoint?^^) who think they are above these types of mistakes. I have years (20+) of experience building and maintaining PCs, both professionally and as a hobbyist and if you are fast and efficient, you will make mistakes from time to time. It's... shall we say, human? It is also way more likely to happen the more familiar and experienced you are, unless it is a mistake that results in catastrophic failure. A good tech will always double, triple check anything that can result in 'damaging' equipment. But merely a cable being unplugged? Oversight on something insignificant that causes no damage? Common.

 

[gammaray]

that's not really a mistake, only a ram hole!

 

[NCIXGreg]

My worst mistake building PCs is electrocuting myself trying to connect the PSU to the front switch on an old AT case. I kept the machine plugged in to keep ESD to a minimum while installing the components, but didn't think about disconnecting it before trying to connect the switch.

ATX was quite the improvement from AT.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My worst mistake building PCs is electrocuting myself trying to connect the PSU to the front switch on an old AT case. I kept the machine plugged in to keep ESD to a minimum while installing the components, but didn't think about disconnecting it before trying to connect the switch.

LOL (at myself), I've done that too, at a job I had in the 90s/2000s.

ATX was quite the improvement from AT.

For certain!

 

[mrblotto]

My worst was.......oh....maybe 10 years ago or so. I had put a computer all together. Taken my time, did it right. Turned it on, and it would POST for maybe a couple seconds, then cut off. I took out everything but 1 stick of RAM and the Matrox Millenium (sp) vid card, and it STILL did it! Convinced it was a MB problem, I took it back to where I had purchased it. The 'tech' took it back to the 'bench', and about 30 seconds later told me 'the selector switch on the PS was set for 220, I switched it to 110 and it boots up fine'

So, yeah....after 30 or so builds, mistakes still happen lol

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I entered the PC master race last year, and since then, I have built quite a few machines for myself and others, so I am confident in saying I'm pretty OK at it. In my own current system, I have a Ryzen 5 1600 and a GTX 980Ti. About an hour ago, I decided to take apart my 980Ti, you know, just to give it a little tidy up from the summer of Dust Hell. I got out a tiny brush and the isopropyl alcohol and went to work on the dye, getting off all the crusty old thermal paste from around the die itself. After I had re-applied thermal paste and put the card all back together, plugged it back into my rig (or so I had thought ) and there was no signal to my monitor! I sat there for 5 minutes, trying to figure out what the heck was wrong. And oh boy, did I feel like a noob. I had completely forgot to plug in the 6+8 pin power, the cords were just hanging there. How in the world could I miss something so simple and easy? So, to everyone: don't feel bad if you mess up on something, when there is people like me whose problems stare them dead in the face, and they don't even see them.

I remember building a $2000 gaming PC for a friend a few years ago and doing the exact same thing. For ten minutes I felt so bad encouraging my friend to drop $2G on a really high end system that wouldn't turn on and then I looked and saw the empty PCIE plug connectors. Plugged them in and powered it on and relief washes over me in an awesome wave.