Off Topic Discussions

[jej]

I've been messing around with computers even since I got my first computer! Most of the stuff I had to figure out my own since I barely did any research beforehand and had to learn the hard way, lol.

My first ever experience of 'bricking' one, was when I was browsing for free flash games to play on google, and somehow I ended up on a sketchy website which a window popped up, I remember trying to click away as I did not know what it was saying (it was in Russian), and it didn't go away!! I think it was some sort of terms of service agreement, no idea but my younger self couldn't close a window properly xD

Now to actual brick, had my hardcore gamer phase and hot computer moments, as a result the poor Nvidia GTS 450 got toasted.

Took apart the computer once, it needed a cleaning. Lots of dust had built up xDD Everything went well, learned how to be careful (or so I thought), how to clean and place things back together... till the part where you connect the little cables from the powersuply? the ones responsible for turning on and off your pc? yee those, I placed them wherever I saw fit and.. glad it didn't explode as the PSU took one for the team xD

Last year, had two rams of the same brand die on me, each lasted a year. The BSOD errors weren't pretty... and quite frustrating to figure out the cause of the problem! Now I have them hanging on my wall heh

While the bricks were costly.. it's a price you've got to pay to learn xD and a funny story to share too.

hanging.. in the wall of shame

Do you have any stories like that? 😊

[eebiii]

I can remember when the Radeon 290x came out. I had to have one and I was just getting into water loops. So, I bought I think the only full cover water block at the time, Swiftech 290x Komodo maybe? Can't recall. It also came with a backplate, or you had to order it separately, again can't recall. Everything was fine putting the block on, and it all fit fine. What I didn't read before installing the backplate was that you had to snip the solder joints on the back of the 290x so the backplate wouldn't short out on the card. See where this is going? I am actually getting a little worked up about it while I am typing here lol. I remember seeing the flash and then disassembling the whole **bleep** computer. Pretty sure it fried MB, PSU and RAM too. There were multiple components screwed. 

[ThreeDee]

I've had components die and what not .. but the only time "I" bricked something was a bad BIOS flash with an older Dell setup years ago .. I've done literally hundreds of BIOS flashes since without issue though

[GreatnessRD]

Never bricked a PC, but I did help in bricking a friend's PSP while installing homebrew many moons ago. Shouldn't be doing such things when you're really, really sleepy. 

[regare214]

Hello

Sometimes, when you perform custom operations, install inappropriate programs or platforms, etc., you may find your computer has problems. Due to incompatibility issues, malware alerts or malfunctions, you may find you have bricked your computer. PC bricked issue often occurs, especially you have installed a Windows 10 update. 

BenefitsCal

[eebiii]

So, you are saying to stop downloading porn and 3rd party software that corrupts every part of your PC? 😂

You may be asking a lot of some people. 😏

[morphinebear]

In 2016 I read somewhere that disabling the iGPU was a good idea. Bricked my PC for a few hours until I had a friend tell me to reset the CMOS battery.

[johnnyenglish]

Bricked a Pentium II 266mhz. (more like toasted!)

Ran like a champ OC'ed on 333Mhz but I wanted a notch up to the sound of 350mhz.

Ran quite well for some time till it died for good some months later.

[Vynski]

Yep, been there, done that too.   That is why I quit overclocking.  It's just not worth it.

[sreg036]

Nope, too scared to mess with mine.

[Axxemann]

Come on, live a little on the edge!

[Axxemann]

Hoo-boy... here we go!

First PC I bricked was my Pentium MMX. A buddy of mine had a 233MMx CPU kicking around and we dropped it into my case. I was on a P133 at the time. Everything ran great. Then we started moving jumpers around to OC it to about 300mHz. It ran for a couple years like that. No heatsink, no real thermal solutions at all save for the single 80 or 92mm case fan. Then one day, the PC just DIES. I smelled some burning electrical, and see a single wisp of smoke rising from my case. Unplugged everything, took it out to the deck and let it sit for an hour before cracking it open. Sure enough, it was cooked. I made the switch to AMD around that time.

Next one I cooked was my Athlon rig. I had mounted an ATI HD 4350 into it and little did I know a screw fell between the MoBo and tray in the case. I had ran fine for a couple of months, but I must have bumped it while vacuuming and jarred the screw into a spot where it shorted. Thankfully the GPU , CPU and my hard drive survived. But since the Athlon and its MoBo were obsolete, I ended up upgrading to an Athlon II, and needing an IDE adapter for my hard drive since the new board was all SATA. I finally moved to a SATA HDD when the IDE drive started showing all kinds of errors. Ran that one hard as hell until I pushed that 4350 too hard and cooked it, the PCI-E slot it sat in and subsequently the entire MoBo. Common trend, eh? I think I had swapped out the old 300w PSU for a 430w a few months before that.

That's when I made the move to my last rig. The 4350 was replaced by an R7 250 (the 1gb GDDR5 version of the R7 240) AM3+ MoBo to carry the Athlon II for a couple of months until I secured a Phenom II, a whopping 8gb DDR3 (which was huge at the time, since the biggest kits you could get were 2x2gb) and then found out my PSU that was only a year old didn't have enough oomf to run it all. So I jumped to the 750w I still run in my AM4, and went to the 4x4gb G.Skill kit when one of my 2gb kits inexplicably died. Since I had some leftover parts, I cobbled up a system with a new mATX MoBo with integrated graphics, my old Athlon II, 430w PSU and case to give to my girlfriend, since her SFF HP desktop was crashing on her constantly (deathbed PSU.) I used her RAM and HDD, and all was good. I would have used her ITX MoBo, but my case didn't have a mounting option for ITX boards. When I got my FX-8120 and got overclocking stabilized on it, I gave her the Phenom. When I got my RX570, I gave her the R7 250.

Then, a few weeks before we split up she comes to me saying her PC won't boot. She ended up bricking it by plugging it directly into the wall outlet. I'm guessing we had a surge during one of our famous Western Canadian Prairie thunderstorms and that's what cooked everything. Only thing salvageable was her hard drive. And that's when Pandora's Box opened up and lead to one of the ugliest, messiest breakups I've ever lived through. Even my divorce went WAY more amicably. 

[Vynski]

I live in one of those lightning prone areas where we have had numerous devices fried during thunderstorms.  For years we kept thinking the surges were coming through the electric lines, but they were coming in over the phone line.  We have actually had the phone box on the exterior of the house completely blown apart 4 times, the last one just last year.  Took out our router.  The surges would come in on the phone line then back-feed through the electrical grid.  If there are thunderstorms in the area we just unplug the router from the wall jack.

I really don't consider them as "bricking" a computer.  That's more an "Act of God". 

[eebiii]

Yup, a lightning strike near the house will lift the ground potential and pretty much surge through every conductor through the house. That sux Vynski. Usually a grounding issue. You may need a few more rods and its been a while but phone line ground and electrical line grounds should most likely be bonded together at some point. I am a commercial electrician but don't see to many landlines around the city anymore.

[Vynski]

More than once.😂

most recent was just about 18 months ago.  Flash Bios that went bad.  Fortunately for me the MSI X470 board was still under warranty and it only cost me shipping cost to MSI for the repair.  Although, I didn't have the time to wait for the turn-around and purchased the MPG X570 board I'm running now.  In their manuals they recommend that you use Edge to download the BIOS, well unfortunately i failed to do so on that day (lesson learned).  I guess there is a reason why they recommend Edge!

[Axxemann]

Wait... people actually use the Edge browser?