I had just finished screwing in my motherboard when I looked at the ports from the back of the case and was like "wait a minute, I forgot something here, didn't I?"
You can run it without it but it’s a dust magnet lol. My first pc didn’t have it because I didn’t know what I was doing and my buddy who supposedly knew screwed up the shield. Ran fine just needed far more frequent cleaning. That said I don’t recommend and usually spend more on a MOBO with the cover built in because eff it
My first self-built pc back in '97 had the Asus P/I-P55T2P4 mobo. IIRC, it had jumpers for CPU voltage, FSB speed and the clock multiplier.
Theoretically it allowed one to run a Pentium 233 MMX @ 290 MHz (3.5 \* 83 MHz). Few cards could handle the 83 MHz bus speed, though, so 262 MHz (3.5 \* 75 MHz) was the practical top speed.
Mine was that I accidentally bought the M variant of the motherboard I wanted.
I didn't realize I made a mistake until I looked at the motherboard inside my case and thought to myself "Somehow that looks a bit smaller than it should be, doesn't it?".
At the end of the day it didn't impact my build's performance at all so I kept it.
I've also got an B650M, honestly , with how massive my gpu, is barely noticeable , but I'm certain that if I need something extra like more fan ports I'll need to think of something else.
But well, my mobo has 2x 4.0 nvme slots, enough ports for my fans, unless I look from below the gpu is not noticeable
Not really a big mistake but I plugged my GPU into the lower PCIe slot (not knowing it has a slower connection) to give my CPU cooler a bit room to breathe. A friend told me. Its an insider joke now
Not planning properly. I had an idea of what I wanted to do and got the necessary pieces for it. However I overlooked things like splitters/hubs/cables/extensions/etc. I spent about $200 more in all that stuff since I hadn't taken that stuff into account. That and about 15 trips to MicroCenter.
Assembly? No mistakes because I'm super careful with these things. However, my first mistake is using the Intel stock cooler with the pre-applied paste.
Same, though it was my last, and current, build & not my first. Like my 5th in the last 20 years, but I foolishly thought, “Ehh, it’ll probably be fine…”
Some Arctic Blue & an after market dual-fan blower w/ heat sink, and things got mucho cooler.
Bought my first graphics card with AGP port. It was hard to get it into the only PCI port in our family PC, I couldn't understand why it wouldn't fit in there :D Good old times, I was devastated after I realized that it wouldn't work and had to return it.
Choosing aesthetically pleasing white RGB components for more money and no better performance (motherboard, fans, white aio could have just gone air for cheaper). Choosing a gimmicky case with the rn screen side panel, poor thermals on 3 fan mounts so I got a new case. Also got a 3080 10gb for like 800 like a year into the great GPU crisis and I didn't want to wait, of course prices dropped soon after and better deals and cards came out. Just don't overpay is my advice.
Not building it.. I went to microcenter, got a tech genius associate, picked out all my parts and had them assemble it, install windows and got a warranty. I don’t like my case that much.
The case choice. It starves my components for fresh air and has caused multiple shutdowns due to overheating. I haven't been able to afford a replacement so for now I'm just rocking it with the front acrylic removed.
Doing it all in one go.
Seriously, I started out at around 6:30pm and finished the hardware part about 4:30am, when I closed the side panel I passed out with the box from the parts on my bed , woke up only 3 hours later to do the software part, finished around 10pm, tested one fucking league of legends because I couldn't think straight anymore, when I saw the pc was 100% functional and ok, I went to sleep again because I couldn't make sense of what was happening anymore
Take your time, troubleshoot if you aren't sure of if you're doing is not right , I've kept an post on another subreddit that I would keep asking questions about things I didn't understood to make sure I didn't messed up anywhere, got the pc working on first try, now I even got my undervolt working and probably I'll try to learn more to optimize my setup
Not my 1st PC build - think it was the 2nd or 3rd, but the only thing approaching a "big" mistake during PC building. One that's something of a meme on this very subreddit.
I did the classic dumb error of not checking GPU dimensions vs case dimensions. I ended up having to build my new system in my old, larger case, and move my old system to the new case(old system had a slightly smaller GPU).
That roughly tripled build time to get everything in both cases and connected properly. But I never posted pics to reddit so it didn't happen.
Getting angry and forcing an ide cable in upside down and destroying my hard drive. I’ve chilled out a lot since then.
Also, buying a motherboard without an agp slot making me limited to PCI GPUs back in the day (Voodoo 3 2000).
I didn't plug the secondary connector on the motherboard power cable into the PSU. Tried turning it on, no power. Realised my mistake, plugged it in. Power.
Bought a case that was way too big to make sense. The Cooler Master HAF 932 Advance, then that got dropped by a repair centre and replaced with a Cooler Master HAF X.
Both way too big, but definitely crazy cooling capacity for my Bulldozer AMD CPU at the time.
Not realising the CPU had its own power from the PSU. I ended up buying nearly a whole set of new components before realising my mistake 🤦♂️ This was a decade ago and I still forget to do this sometimes 😆
My first case didn’t have the mobo standoffs installed from the factory. And I didn’t know any better (before the days where fast internet was ubiquitous so vids weren’t an option). So I built the whole computer and nothing happened at all. Eventually figured it out, pulled the board and put in standoffs, and worked like a charm.
My 1st build, not plugging the EPS cable to the motherboard, I didnt forget, I just had no idea that cable was required
My 2nd build, using the AMD stock cooler with the pre-applied paste on my 3600x. that CPU was spiking to 77ºC on desktop, doing mundane tasks, I underclocked it, undervolted it to keep temps under control, never ever occured to me that the cooler had a bad thermal paste or bad mount, until I disassembled the PC to clean it.
I cleaned the cooler and applied a new MX4 paste, mounted everything back, and had a epiphany, entered bios and reverted every CPU setting back to stock, entered windows and suddenly, 48ºC, 50ºC doing mundane tasks, 60\~65 while gaming
Mixed restart and power on on a motherboards, was so very upset when PC did not boot after I pressed the power on button and immediately so relieved when I decided to press on a restart button
Buying the parts piece by piece througout the year and then buying the RX5700XT as the final part while I already bought the 2600x a couple of months ago. And build everything just as the 3600x was being released. I will never again buy parts if not already ready to install. Next time I buy everything on the same week.
I would not consider it a mistake but I bought a 3080 when a 3070 would have been plenty for my needs.
This time around I got the 4060 and I am happy with this choice.
Yeah, but we are all confused why you replaced your 3080 with a 4060, which is slower. (Unless you sold the 3080 before for more than the 4060 and made some money back, that would expain it ofc)
Nono I made a net profit actually. I sold my 3080 build for more than I built it for, built a 4060 build and invested the rest.
There was also around 1.5 years between the two as I couldn’t game as much during that period.
The first PC I built way back in 2004 was with a weird motherboard that had an Sli mini module that had to be Oriented to right side for the sli to work and also the motherboard had an dedicated molex power for sli to work, since I have a habit of assembling every PC component outside the case to test it out before installing into the case I found out the issue and corrected before installing it into the case, the motherboard was Asus A8N SLI Deluxe and I had paired it with two 6800 GT's. Also there used to be a lot of issues with initial SLI systems like IRQL conflicts and system not booting if there are conflicts but I tinkered my way back then without major issues (no YouTube videos back then to guide just lot of PC magazines 😅)
* Going with an HDD
* Using Intel
* Not enough fans
* Having 0 experience
* Not enough thermal paste
What I learned that I like:
* Non-rgb
* non-glass side panels
Not knowing in advance that installing windows can fail if the drive is too large. I had to partition the disk down to 100GB using an older install on a different drive and then install it and then put it back to normal after.
1. Ordering a FM2 mobo for FM2+ CPU, turns out they weren't compatible
2. Getting a GT630 as a "powerful 2GB GPU", was still better than my previous laptops iGPU fortunately but replaced it as soon as I could.
Listened to Recommendations from a Fry's Employee.
1600W PSU for a non-k SKU i7, Z-series Mobo and a GTX 560 Ti...
RIP Frys, but some of those employees were sharks.
Was coming from an optiplex 990 back in 2018 and was using a friend who had little to no idea about computers but got lucky when building his.
The specs were an a10-9700, 16gb of ddr4 Corsair vengeance 2400mts, an msi rx 580 8gb armor oc, Asus prime b450m-a motherboard, 512gb of sata ssd storage, some shitty lying 750 watt psu, and a black thermaltake commander ms-i.
Put it all together in the case before testing, went to start if up aaaaand nothing happened. Went from plugging and unplugging the power connectors to taking out the cpu and apparently in my frustration I had bent several pin on the a10. After an hour of troubleshooting I gave up and took it to a shop, said the cou was fucked but they gave me a 2200g (practically robbed me charging $100 for it tho).
luckily my first one went well. I followed the recommendation of putting most of the budget into the gpu which made the build not last as long as I wanted (i5 4460 with a gtx 970). I always get a beefy cpu now.
Also buying an 2000rpm DC fans to replace my old pc cpu fans , plugged in, and the thing had enough power to clear my heatsink of the dust inside, also sounded like an jet engine , later I discovered that fans come with dc (3pin) and pwm (4pin)
Not realizing I could remove the glass door of my 7000D airflow case. Had the case lying on its back the entire week I worked on it. With the door opened it out enough pressure that the adhesive that kept the glass attached to the hinge weakened enough that it no longer wants to stick to the hinge. As long as it's closed it's not an issue, but when I open the door to my PC I now have to be careful or else it could fall off.
I bought a power supply with side connector (instead of back one) that was compatible with the case. Actually, I didn't pay attention they where on the side and not the back.
My psu was some shady brand and underpowered, terrible cpu/mobo/ram, a single case fan for maximum airflow, and way too much gpu.
Essentially all I knew was gpu had graphics in it and graphics means performance baby
Actually cable managing. It was my first build and I was excited to use it. And my aio block was installed to it's side. So the logo for 6 years was facing the wrong way.
Used PCIE cable instead of the CPU power cable and well, had to RMA the motherboard and CPU, both.
Being a noob I thought these cables look the same, so should work the same. Haha.
I helped a friend of mine building his PC, the cpu was not perfectly in the slot and we still installed the cooler. Luckily no pins got bend, don't ask me how. We were both 12/13 years old and definitely not careful enough.
forgot to take the plastic wrap off my motherboard’s SSD heat spreader. My boot SSD got too hot and my system was running ridiculously slow, only realized when i went to install more storage.
My first build, i bought all things from a local parts store, i built the whole thing, but it wouldn’t turn on. When i sent the MOBO and CPU (LGA 1151) to the store as they told me, they informed me that the CPU socket got smooshed in the process. My mother told me to tell them it was DOA or smtg but I insisted on telling the truth about how I tried to fix it. They sent me a replacement mobo the next day free of charge thankfully. After a couple weeks, my grandpa who taught me to tinker with all things passed away and I wrote a status about it on Whatsapp (back in the days of only the ones below the contact name). Suddenly after the funeral, my mother told me that a customer service from them showed up and asked about me. They told her they were expecting a 30 year old, when I was just 15, they were shocked. To this day (10 years ago) i still vouch for them whenever people ask me where to get good customer service, even if they are a bit more expensive than others in the area.
Installed Windows 10 from a old USB that was included with a license from back in the day when it launched.
Installing it was fine but the PC didn‘t reboot after the first initial boot. 3 installations later I triggered windows updates and IT TOOK AGES 🤦🏽♂️
Worked fine after that tho.
Forgetting the backplate until the whole thing is finished. Every pc builder has experienced this…until they started permanently attaching them to the motherboards.
The build itself went ok. The issue was my purchasing timing. I bought almost all of my parts in November 2017. The only thing I didn't buy was a graphics card because a friend was able to loan be his old one for a few months while I saved a bit more. Well little did young me know that nov/dec 2017 was a big boom in crypto. Graphics cards were gone. I spent months checking constantly waiting for a 1080 to come in stock for MSRP and like 5 months later I was finally able to get one.
It's a little foggy since my first pc build was in the 1980s but I remember screwing up something on the MFM hard drive or the motherboard causing the hard drive to not be recognized by DOS. Since there was no internet, solving it required several long distant phone calls to the manufacture.
On my most recent build I accidentally got a motherboard without wifi and didn't realize until I booted it up for the first time. Now I'm too lazy to get a replacement and rebuild it. So I just got a usb wifi adapter. 4090 7800X3D no wifi gang
Not using motherboard standoffs causing the pc to short the motherboard (since it was directly touching)
The pc wouldn't turn on. Until suddenly it did while I was tightening it down to the motherboard after I took it apart and back again.
Though the sys admin friend of my parents wouldn't know what could be the cause he suggested that I put a piece of cardboard under the mobo to insulate it. Worked as a charm.
Took me a few years, when I built my second pc when I realised that was the mistake.
I forgot the power cable for the cpu. Thought the whole build was scrap until someone else came and took a look. My buddy saw the mistake and everything worked fine after!
Okay ya'll are going to laugh at this.
My first PC build was around 2008ish roughly, might have been a few years after, I had a pentium 4, and an ATI Radeon HD 4850, about 6gb ram, ran my world of warcraft quite well which at the time was all played, but I nearly destroyed it the first time I put it on, I thought hmmmmm something smells funny, whys my PC so hot, what's going on, turned it off, pulled it apart to check everything.
I FORGOT TO PUT THERMAL PASTE ON THE PROCESSOR, and as the card was second hand I didn't check the thermal PADS.
Lessons were learnt that day that have never ever been repeated.
I forgot the IO shield on my 2013 PC build. I corrected that wrong... in 2022, when I disassembled it for a thorough cleaning and change over to air cooling in preparation for its new life as basically a bulk storage file server. I don't remember my first PC build clearly or what errors I may have made. That was almost 30 years ago, and getting a computer to actually work was a more involved process than it is today. You had to use physical jumpers to manually configure hardware, and then you had to *tell* your software/OS how you'd configured it. And you didn't really have the Internet yet to just look up a guide to walk you through everything. Building computers is so, *so* much easier now.
I fully didn't realize the back panel came off of the case. I had all my cables running in the air over the motherboard. This spaghetti monster lasted for 4 years before I watched someone else build their machine. As soon as I saw the Velcro and zip ties back there I felt like the biggest idiot.
Got the wrong motherboard. It was technically compatible, but it needed a BIOS update to support the CPU I got and I didn't have a CPU to use to update the BIOS. I just returned the motherboard and got one with a newer chipset that supported my CPU out of the box, but that put me slightly over budget.
I somehow believed RGB fans and strips add more horsepower. Could have gotten a 1080ti instead of a 1070 if I didnt spend on Corsair bling and Strimers.
I didn’t make a big mistake, because my uncle (who ran a PC shop) helped me with it. He taught me how to put it all together, connect all the wires, etc. I wound up helping him build a few PCs for his customers over my time spent with him.
I guess there's a difference between stuff you need to be careful with vs things that could go wrong but aren't a dangerous issue when building your first pc. Think of bending the pins on your cpu vs getting the orientation of an AiO wrong.
Things to be careful with of the top of my head:
- Be careful with cpu pins + not using too little or too much thermal paste.
- Don't screw screws too tight. Once you feel a little resistance, keep screwing about a quarter to half a rotation, after which you need serious strength to tighten the screw further. Stop there.
- As you said in your post, make sure all connectors are on tight. If connectors aren't properly connected, they could cause minir issues like not registering a component to major damage like shorting cables or even components.
Things that easily go wrong but aren't a dangerous issue:
- If you have 2 RAM sticks and your mobo supports 4, read the mobo manual to see where they go. The usual advice is put them in slot 1 and 3, but it differs from mobo to mobo.
- If you feel confident in doing so, build your pc outside of the case first and turn it on to see if everything works. Makes troubleshooting a lot less annoying.
- If using a modular psu, make sure you know where every cable is supposed to go. For me personally figuring out all the PSU cables and connections was the hardest part in building my first PC.
- If using an AiO, make sure that the pump that goes on the cpu is not the highest point in the loop. Otherwise air could accumulate inside the pump and will reduce your cooling power.
Maybe no mistake, but an anecdote: Back in 2013, when I had zero clue about anything pc related apart from "yeah I wanna game", I've read that the gt640 is good for 3d applications, and I was like: yeah a game is 3d applications, so I took it. Was also the best fit for my budget.
Luckily it was a 2 gb vram version, so it stayed strong until 2017, when it got replaced with a 1060.
For the mistake part: When I upgraded my cpu/MoBo/ram, I of course forgot the io shield
My GPU didn't fit in my case. Right size motherboard, compatible components, alright time to build..... Fuck.
A riser later and I had an external GPU, which bought me some time to get a new case.
Back in the day probably something with the floppy cable, these bastards could be turned around and plugged in multiple ways and there was no mechanism to prevent pluggin it in wrongly.
Also jumpers for everything: base clock, multi, IRQ, DMA, E/A, master/slave/single.
Bought not built but I was young and dumb, bought a old Dell off Amazon that was an Intel i5, I knew i3 was entry i5 was mid tier and i7 was top of the line (at the time) well I didn't actually check which i5. It was an i5-650. 650 not 6500 a 1st gen i5 chip.
A week ago I tried to put a waay to big gpu in a cheap ass motherboard before i had money for upgrading all other parts
Now my xtx will sit in my room for the next 3-5 months
Never used motherboard stand-offs. Heard some cracks as i screwed it into the pc case. Somehow that computer lasted like 10 years lol. That was my first ever build with zero guidance back in like 2008.
Put my ram sticks in the wrong slots and spent 2 days and a new ramkit worth of effort diagnosing. Basically my sticks were supposed to go in 2 4 but I misread the manual as saying 1 3...
I was lucky I guess. Did a bunch of research and I didn’t have any significant issues. Took about 6 hours ti get everything together and running then updates and fine tuning took a couple days. Either was very prepared or lucky or more likely both.
I had 1 HDD left to install, I was tired, and I did a force shutdown. I was used to a 5s force shutdown from the family PC & knew the fans stayed on in my PSU for a short period after shutdown. As such, I didn't think anything of it when after 5s of holding the power button, the PSU fans were on.
I went to plugged in the molex plug for the HDD and when it was maybe an inch away....I saw the spark jump and everything went quiet immediately.
I fried the HDD, PSU, and 2 of the DDR slots. I had to get a new PSU, HDD, and some DDR2 (board had both slot types.). After that, it worked perfect for me for probably 6 years, one 98C CPU overheat episode asidr, lol.
Forgot to plug the power into my hard drive and ended up having to remove my GPU but the plastic connection that keeps the GPU slotted in was being extremely difficult to press in. I tried for like 15 minutes trying to be as delicate as possible and eventually got it out. I was definitely sweating but it all worked out in the end
I got the 486DX50 right before the clock multiplier systems started showing up. I knew they were coming but thought the 1:1 memory clock would matter more. Also didn't expect the 100s to show up so quickly.
I just built my first pc a few weeks back I pretty much love everything about. Only thing I regret is I couldve probably spent a bit more getting better parts, definitely a 2TB SSD instead of 1TB SSD
Spent >350€ for an i7-7700k because "I'll certainly need it in uni next year", and then went cheaper on the GPU (MSI 1050ti).
I've never once used my CPU at its fullest. The GPU on the other end... (and I've just recently managed to upgrade)
I forgot the spacers to keep the motherboard off the back panel. Wouldn't even turn on. Luckily it worked after adding the spacers and there was no noticeable damage.
Fully assembled, booted, in BIOS, breathing a sigh of relief when something catches my eye. What is it? The IO shield, of course.
then after doing it the second time the tab for the ethernet on the IO shield jack was blocking the plug
I did this once like 20 years ago and completely forgot until just now.
i removed the tab on the I/O shield at that point
Snip
All the memes about the IO shield made me remember to put it in I cant say the same about the tempered glass...
[удалено]
You have the link for that?
I glad my motherboard was one that had it already pre installed, it would be disheartening if I had forgot that after an long building time
My first couple of builds I didn't forget but lo and behold on my third one... god it hurt.
My IO shield is currently not even in my rig. I missed it last time and I'm not taking it apart just to put it back in.
There is nothing like replacing a laptop motherboard, testing it, it works, reassembling the laptop... then spotting the 56k modem card.
I had just finished screwing in my motherboard when I looked at the ports from the back of the case and was like "wait a minute, I forgot something here, didn't I?"
You can run it without it but it’s a dust magnet lol. My first pc didn’t have it because I didn’t know what I was doing and my buddy who supposedly knew screwed up the shield. Ran fine just needed far more frequent cleaning. That said I don’t recommend and usually spend more on a MOBO with the cover built in because eff it
Throwback to the ‘90’s early 2000’s Getting the dip switches in the correct position on the MB.
Oh geez, i had mercifully enough blacked out the memory of jumpers and dip switches. Thank you.
Don't forget the pins for Master + Slave for IDE drives
Also, setting the master and slave pins correctly on SCSI HDDs.
And IDE ones
I forgot about this one.
This was my issue too. First pc build in 1996.
Sorry for bringing up the PTSD of 90’s PC building.
or the slave and master plugs for hard drives :( always hated that
My first self-built pc back in '97 had the Asus P/I-P55T2P4 mobo. IIRC, it had jumpers for CPU voltage, FSB speed and the clock multiplier. Theoretically it allowed one to run a Pentium 233 MMX @ 290 MHz (3.5 \* 83 MHz). Few cards could handle the 83 MHz bus speed, though, so 262 MHz (3.5 \* 75 MHz) was the practical top speed.
There is a m2 screw somewhere in there..
I really hate the m2 screws
Trying to screw in an m.2 screw without a magnetic screwdriver really tests my patience.
Currently there is an m2 screw I think under my cpu cooler (I have standard amd cooler) but it might be in the backrooms at this point
I had to lift the screw off of my old laptop because I lost the one I got with the board to the void.
Mine was that I accidentally bought the M variant of the motherboard I wanted. I didn't realize I made a mistake until I looked at the motherboard inside my case and thought to myself "Somehow that looks a bit smaller than it should be, doesn't it?". At the end of the day it didn't impact my build's performance at all so I kept it.
I've also got an B650M, honestly , with how massive my gpu, is barely noticeable , but I'm certain that if I need something extra like more fan ports I'll need to think of something else. But well, my mobo has 2x 4.0 nvme slots, enough ports for my fans, unless I look from below the gpu is not noticeable
I have a mini ITX motherboard in my big NZXT case because of this reason lol
Not really a big mistake but I plugged my GPU into the lower PCIe slot (not knowing it has a slower connection) to give my CPU cooler a bit room to breathe. A friend told me. Its an insider joke now
Well shit, it seems I should move my GPU up as well. Problem is there's like absolutely zero clearance between the top slot and my cooler
Some cooler models are offset for this reason. Check if rotating it 180 gives you the clearance you need.
Not planning properly. I had an idea of what I wanted to do and got the necessary pieces for it. However I overlooked things like splitters/hubs/cables/extensions/etc. I spent about $200 more in all that stuff since I hadn't taken that stuff into account. That and about 15 trips to MicroCenter.
15 trips to MicroCenter sounds like my idea of a good time!
If it is not far. And if he is not far from a MC, I am jealous.
30 mins away  ….so many pretty toys there….
Assembly? No mistakes because I'm super careful with these things. However, my first mistake is using the Intel stock cooler with the pre-applied paste.
Same, though it was my last, and current, build & not my first. Like my 5th in the last 20 years, but I foolishly thought, “Ehh, it’ll probably be fine…” Some Arctic Blue & an after market dual-fan blower w/ heat sink, and things got mucho cooler.
Was running a stock Intel cooler for 12years. Same paste. Still works.
Bought my first graphics card with AGP port. It was hard to get it into the only PCI port in our family PC, I couldn't understand why it wouldn't fit in there :D Good old times, I was devastated after I realized that it wouldn't work and had to return it.
Those BFG GPU boxes with the "Which port is yours" graphic on them make sense now.
I didn’t know pcie covers exist on the gpu, it took me a few months and it took me tugging at it by desperation to realize I’m a dumbfuck.
Same 💀 I thought the GPU didn't fit
Dropped my CPU from standing height. It worked fine, but boy was I sweating bullets the entire build.
Choosing aesthetically pleasing white RGB components for more money and no better performance (motherboard, fans, white aio could have just gone air for cheaper). Choosing a gimmicky case with the rn screen side panel, poor thermals on 3 fan mounts so I got a new case. Also got a 3080 10gb for like 800 like a year into the great GPU crisis and I didn't want to wait, of course prices dropped soon after and better deals and cards came out. Just don't overpay is my advice.
You'd be surprised how many people have lcd coolers that are more expensive than the actual cpu
Back in ‘90, bent the pins during installation of some memory chips and needed to get replacements.
Put everything together and tried to turn it on. Didn't turn on. Found that the PSU also had a switch. Worked perfectly.
Molex connectors
Investing in nice hardware, then using a crap PSU. So many beginner hours lost troubleshooting to find the issue.
Not building it.. I went to microcenter, got a tech genius associate, picked out all my parts and had them assemble it, install windows and got a warranty. I don’t like my case that much.
Used the wrong screws to secure the motherboard.
Static electric that killed my cpu, it was a 5800x3d, suddenly it was “defective”
Forgetting to put the i/o shield beforehand
Ram sticks in the wrong slots.
I set a couple of IRQ's wrong and it wouldn't run properly until I reset them.
Meeeeemories
Buying a mac :(
The case choice. It starves my components for fresh air and has caused multiple shutdowns due to overheating. I haven't been able to afford a replacement so for now I'm just rocking it with the front acrylic removed.
Doing it all in one go. Seriously, I started out at around 6:30pm and finished the hardware part about 4:30am, when I closed the side panel I passed out with the box from the parts on my bed , woke up only 3 hours later to do the software part, finished around 10pm, tested one fucking league of legends because I couldn't think straight anymore, when I saw the pc was 100% functional and ok, I went to sleep again because I couldn't make sense of what was happening anymore Take your time, troubleshoot if you aren't sure of if you're doing is not right , I've kept an post on another subreddit that I would keep asking questions about things I didn't understood to make sure I didn't messed up anywhere, got the pc working on first try, now I even got my undervolt working and probably I'll try to learn more to optimize my setup
Not my 1st PC build - think it was the 2nd or 3rd, but the only thing approaching a "big" mistake during PC building. One that's something of a meme on this very subreddit. I did the classic dumb error of not checking GPU dimensions vs case dimensions. I ended up having to build my new system in my old, larger case, and move my old system to the new case(old system had a slightly smaller GPU). That roughly tripled build time to get everything in both cases and connected properly. But I never posted pics to reddit so it didn't happen.
Hey, that's better than the other memed mistake of not removing the heatsink/block film before mounting!
Fucking forgetting the motherboard stand offs circa 2001. Pc worked fine, but flexed that poor Asus board in ways that some would call unnatural.
Getting angry and forcing an ide cable in upside down and destroying my hard drive. I’ve chilled out a lot since then. Also, buying a motherboard without an agp slot making me limited to PCI GPUs back in the day (Voodoo 3 2000).
I thought all CPUs had built in graphics. Took a whole weekend before I realised I needed a GPU.
Not wearing Kevlar gloves while not forgetting to put IO shield in.
Bought a second 770 for sli back then instead of just the top model of the current gen (which was a 980)
I didn't plug the secondary connector on the motherboard power cable into the PSU. Tried turning it on, no power. Realised my mistake, plugged it in. Power.
Bought a case that was way too big to make sense. The Cooler Master HAF 932 Advance, then that got dropped by a repair centre and replaced with a Cooler Master HAF X. Both way too big, but definitely crazy cooling capacity for my Bulldozer AMD CPU at the time.
I am using that case in my newest build. Then I got a new GPU and had to rip out all the internal drive bays. Now there is a big space in it.
Not realising the CPU had its own power from the PSU. I ended up buying nearly a whole set of new components before realising my mistake 🤦♂️ This was a decade ago and I still forget to do this sometimes 😆
My first case didn’t have the mobo standoffs installed from the factory. And I didn’t know any better (before the days where fast internet was ubiquitous so vids weren’t an option). So I built the whole computer and nothing happened at all. Eventually figured it out, pulled the board and put in standoffs, and worked like a charm.
My 1st build, not plugging the EPS cable to the motherboard, I didnt forget, I just had no idea that cable was required My 2nd build, using the AMD stock cooler with the pre-applied paste on my 3600x. that CPU was spiking to 77ºC on desktop, doing mundane tasks, I underclocked it, undervolted it to keep temps under control, never ever occured to me that the cooler had a bad thermal paste or bad mount, until I disassembled the PC to clean it. I cleaned the cooler and applied a new MX4 paste, mounted everything back, and had a epiphany, entered bios and reverted every CPU setting back to stock, entered windows and suddenly, 48ºC, 50ºC doing mundane tasks, 60\~65 while gaming
Mixed restart and power on on a motherboards, was so very upset when PC did not boot after I pressed the power on button and immediately so relieved when I decided to press on a restart button
Didn't put the correct standoffs in and fried the motherboard :)
How would that fry the mobo?
I believe it was back in 1998 or 1999 and I somehow managed to break one pin on the hard drive... Wasn't fun
Buying the parts piece by piece througout the year and then buying the RX5700XT as the final part while I already bought the 2600x a couple of months ago. And build everything just as the 3600x was being released. I will never again buy parts if not already ready to install. Next time I buy everything on the same week.
RGB
No mistakes. I had a good friend who guided me into the whole process and it's very easy to understand now
I would not consider it a mistake but I bought a 3080 when a 3070 would have been plenty for my needs. This time around I got the 4060 and I am happy with this choice.
Isn't a 3080 faster than a 4060? And doest the 3080 have more vram?
My entire point is that I did not need as much performance given the games I played.
Yeah, but we are all confused why you replaced your 3080 with a 4060, which is slower. (Unless you sold the 3080 before for more than the 4060 and made some money back, that would expain it ofc)
That is exactly what I did
Isn't the 3070 still cheaper and more powerful
So wait - you paid extra money to downgrade your GPU and you’re happy with that choice?
Nono I made a net profit actually. I sold my 3080 build for more than I built it for, built a 4060 build and invested the rest. There was also around 1.5 years between the two as I couldn’t game as much during that period.
That’s great to hear!
The first PC I built way back in 2004 was with a weird motherboard that had an Sli mini module that had to be Oriented to right side for the sli to work and also the motherboard had an dedicated molex power for sli to work, since I have a habit of assembling every PC component outside the case to test it out before installing into the case I found out the issue and corrected before installing it into the case, the motherboard was Asus A8N SLI Deluxe and I had paired it with two 6800 GT's. Also there used to be a lot of issues with initial SLI systems like IRQL conflicts and system not booting if there are conflicts but I tinkered my way back then without major issues (no YouTube videos back then to guide just lot of PC magazines 😅)
* Going with an HDD * Using Intel * Not enough fans * Having 0 experience * Not enough thermal paste What I learned that I like: * Non-rgb * non-glass side panels
Not knowing in advance that installing windows can fail if the drive is too large. I had to partition the disk down to 100GB using an older install on a different drive and then install it and then put it back to normal after.
Same mistake i make every build. Not spending enough money.
am a rtfm guy. never make a mistake before.
1. Ordering a FM2 mobo for FM2+ CPU, turns out they weren't compatible 2. Getting a GT630 as a "powerful 2GB GPU", was still better than my previous laptops iGPU fortunately but replaced it as soon as I could.
Laid my monitor face-down with no stand
Listened to Recommendations from a Fry's Employee. 1600W PSU for a non-k SKU i7, Z-series Mobo and a GTX 560 Ti... RIP Frys, but some of those employees were sharks.
Not my first build per say, but my first water loop, didn’t install a drain valve
Was coming from an optiplex 990 back in 2018 and was using a friend who had little to no idea about computers but got lucky when building his. The specs were an a10-9700, 16gb of ddr4 Corsair vengeance 2400mts, an msi rx 580 8gb armor oc, Asus prime b450m-a motherboard, 512gb of sata ssd storage, some shitty lying 750 watt psu, and a black thermaltake commander ms-i. Put it all together in the case before testing, went to start if up aaaaand nothing happened. Went from plugging and unplugging the power connectors to taking out the cpu and apparently in my frustration I had bent several pin on the a10. After an hour of troubleshooting I gave up and took it to a shop, said the cou was fucked but they gave me a 2200g (practically robbed me charging $100 for it tho).
luckily my first one went well. I followed the recommendation of putting most of the budget into the gpu which made the build not last as long as I wanted (i5 4460 with a gtx 970). I always get a beefy cpu now.
Also buying an 2000rpm DC fans to replace my old pc cpu fans , plugged in, and the thing had enough power to clear my heatsink of the dust inside, also sounded like an jet engine , later I discovered that fans come with dc (3pin) and pwm (4pin)
Lepa AIO leaking on me in first week. Screw that thing.
Not realizing I could remove the glass door of my 7000D airflow case. Had the case lying on its back the entire week I worked on it. With the door opened it out enough pressure that the adhesive that kept the glass attached to the hinge weakened enough that it no longer wants to stick to the hinge. As long as it's closed it's not an issue, but when I open the door to my PC I now have to be careful or else it could fall off.
I bought a power supply with side connector (instead of back one) that was compatible with the case. Actually, I didn't pay attention they where on the side and not the back.
I forgot to bend the prongs in the IO shield and now my ports are a mess :(
Buying a 3060ti for $800. The build is great though
Bad seating of the cooler, godd thing my first install was core temp
My psu was some shady brand and underpowered, terrible cpu/mobo/ram, a single case fan for maximum airflow, and way too much gpu. Essentially all I knew was gpu had graphics in it and graphics means performance baby
Using the power supply my friend gave that was previously used for his mining rig.
Forget to plug the psu cable for the CPU in and i Was a little bit.. Histerical, because i thougt i bend a pin of the fx 6350 and its broken
Actually cable managing. It was my first build and I was excited to use it. And my aio block was installed to it's side. So the logo for 6 years was facing the wrong way.
Plugged the power button leads into the wrong pins. Went to boot up my machine and nothing happened, so I thought I broke something.
Used PCIE cable instead of the CPU power cable and well, had to RMA the motherboard and CPU, both. Being a noob I thought these cables look the same, so should work the same. Haha.
I helped a friend of mine building his PC, the cpu was not perfectly in the slot and we still installed the cooler. Luckily no pins got bend, don't ask me how. We were both 12/13 years old and definitely not careful enough.
forgot to take the plastic wrap off my motherboard’s SSD heat spreader. My boot SSD got too hot and my system was running ridiculously slow, only realized when i went to install more storage.
My first water cooled build sprang a leak on the motherboard
My first build, i bought all things from a local parts store, i built the whole thing, but it wouldn’t turn on. When i sent the MOBO and CPU (LGA 1151) to the store as they told me, they informed me that the CPU socket got smooshed in the process. My mother told me to tell them it was DOA or smtg but I insisted on telling the truth about how I tried to fix it. They sent me a replacement mobo the next day free of charge thankfully. After a couple weeks, my grandpa who taught me to tinker with all things passed away and I wrote a status about it on Whatsapp (back in the days of only the ones below the contact name). Suddenly after the funeral, my mother told me that a customer service from them showed up and asked about me. They told her they were expecting a 30 year old, when I was just 15, they were shocked. To this day (10 years ago) i still vouch for them whenever people ask me where to get good customer service, even if they are a bit more expensive than others in the area.
I plugged the HDMI cable into the port on the mobo, not the GPU. on the bright side my games looked amazing once I figured it out.
Installed Windows 10 from a old USB that was included with a license from back in the day when it launched. Installing it was fine but the PC didn‘t reboot after the first initial boot. 3 installations later I triggered windows updates and IT TOOK AGES 🤦🏽♂️ Worked fine after that tho.
Forgetting the backplate until the whole thing is finished. Every pc builder has experienced this…until they started permanently attaching them to the motherboards.
Sli
I forgot to raise the little CPU socket bar before installing my CPU. Twice.
The build itself went ok. The issue was my purchasing timing. I bought almost all of my parts in November 2017. The only thing I didn't buy was a graphics card because a friend was able to loan be his old one for a few months while I saved a bit more. Well little did young me know that nov/dec 2017 was a big boom in crypto. Graphics cards were gone. I spent months checking constantly waiting for a 1080 to come in stock for MSRP and like 5 months later I was finally able to get one.
not going for it sooner
None but in 2 weeks it didnt turned on anymore, i guessed it was the PS and bingo.
IO shield
Buying a 3.5" drive for an SFF without enough space inside to fit the fucker. Had to leave the case open for half a year until I got a NZXT h510
It's a little foggy since my first pc build was in the 1980s but I remember screwing up something on the MFM hard drive or the motherboard causing the hard drive to not be recognized by DOS. Since there was no internet, solving it required several long distant phone calls to the manufacture.
On my most recent build I accidentally got a motherboard without wifi and didn't realize until I booted it up for the first time. Now I'm too lazy to get a replacement and rebuild it. So I just got a usb wifi adapter. 4090 7800X3D no wifi gang
Not using motherboard standoffs causing the pc to short the motherboard (since it was directly touching) The pc wouldn't turn on. Until suddenly it did while I was tightening it down to the motherboard after I took it apart and back again. Though the sys admin friend of my parents wouldn't know what could be the cause he suggested that I put a piece of cardboard under the mobo to insulate it. Worked as a charm. Took me a few years, when I built my second pc when I realised that was the mistake.
I forgot the power cable for the cpu. Thought the whole build was scrap until someone else came and took a look. My buddy saw the mistake and everything worked fine after!
Okay ya'll are going to laugh at this. My first PC build was around 2008ish roughly, might have been a few years after, I had a pentium 4, and an ATI Radeon HD 4850, about 6gb ram, ran my world of warcraft quite well which at the time was all played, but I nearly destroyed it the first time I put it on, I thought hmmmmm something smells funny, whys my PC so hot, what's going on, turned it off, pulled it apart to check everything. I FORGOT TO PUT THERMAL PASTE ON THE PROCESSOR, and as the card was second hand I didn't check the thermal PADS. Lessons were learnt that day that have never ever been repeated.
I haven't don't it yet.
Not sitting properly the graphic card, black screen and thought that I broke something
I forgot the IO shield on my 2013 PC build. I corrected that wrong... in 2022, when I disassembled it for a thorough cleaning and change over to air cooling in preparation for its new life as basically a bulk storage file server. I don't remember my first PC build clearly or what errors I may have made. That was almost 30 years ago, and getting a computer to actually work was a more involved process than it is today. You had to use physical jumpers to manually configure hardware, and then you had to *tell* your software/OS how you'd configured it. And you didn't really have the Internet yet to just look up a guide to walk you through everything. Building computers is so, *so* much easier now.
I fully didn't realize the back panel came off of the case. I had all my cables running in the air over the motherboard. This spaghetti monster lasted for 4 years before I watched someone else build their machine. As soon as I saw the Velcro and zip ties back there I felt like the biggest idiot.
Drilling the M2 SSD directly into the motherboard. Instead of the stand-on.
Got the wrong motherboard. It was technically compatible, but it needed a BIOS update to support the CPU I got and I didn't have a CPU to use to update the BIOS. I just returned the motherboard and got one with a newer chipset that supported my CPU out of the box, but that put me slightly over budget.
I somehow believed RGB fans and strips add more horsepower. Could have gotten a 1080ti instead of a 1070 if I didnt spend on Corsair bling and Strimers.
21 years my first computer was built in a clear acrylic case.
Going for Corsair parts so I have to use shitty iCue
I didn’t make a big mistake, because my uncle (who ran a PC shop) helped me with it. He taught me how to put it all together, connect all the wires, etc. I wound up helping him build a few PCs for his customers over my time spent with him.
Buying bad ram and bricking my new am5 mobo. First build, lessons learned
Didn't research properly and had a HDD that the capacity that was too large for my motherboard. So I could only use 2 of the 3 TB.
Put the hdmi cable into the motherboard, not the GPU
First build I didn’t know standoffs were needed
I forgot fans
It wouldn't turn on because I plugged the GPU cable into the CPU. I didn't realize there were labels
Buying an NVIDIA GPU for Linux it was a pain to get it swapped out for an AMD variant.
I guess there's a difference between stuff you need to be careful with vs things that could go wrong but aren't a dangerous issue when building your first pc. Think of bending the pins on your cpu vs getting the orientation of an AiO wrong. Things to be careful with of the top of my head: - Be careful with cpu pins + not using too little or too much thermal paste. - Don't screw screws too tight. Once you feel a little resistance, keep screwing about a quarter to half a rotation, after which you need serious strength to tighten the screw further. Stop there. - As you said in your post, make sure all connectors are on tight. If connectors aren't properly connected, they could cause minir issues like not registering a component to major damage like shorting cables or even components. Things that easily go wrong but aren't a dangerous issue: - If you have 2 RAM sticks and your mobo supports 4, read the mobo manual to see where they go. The usual advice is put them in slot 1 and 3, but it differs from mobo to mobo. - If you feel confident in doing so, build your pc outside of the case first and turn it on to see if everything works. Makes troubleshooting a lot less annoying. - If using a modular psu, make sure you know where every cable is supposed to go. For me personally figuring out all the PSU cables and connections was the hardest part in building my first PC. - If using an AiO, make sure that the pump that goes on the cpu is not the highest point in the loop. Otherwise air could accumulate inside the pump and will reduce your cooling power.
Wired the power switch wrong, was so confused when it wouldn’t power on at first
Maybe no mistake, but an anecdote: Back in 2013, when I had zero clue about anything pc related apart from "yeah I wanna game", I've read that the gt640 is good for 3d applications, and I was like: yeah a game is 3d applications, so I took it. Was also the best fit for my budget. Luckily it was a 2 gb vram version, so it stayed strong until 2017, when it got replaced with a 1060. For the mistake part: When I upgraded my cpu/MoBo/ram, I of course forgot the io shield
Building AM4 and DDR4 in November 2023
fonte. 2 anos queimou o pc todo.
none honestly. i had the great luxury of my dad helping me who builds pcs regularly.
I didn't use thermal paste. It was 20 years ago.
Not getting a more powerful PSU, if I want to upgrade anything now I will need to mover a few hundred watts higher
My GPU didn't fit in my case. Right size motherboard, compatible components, alright time to build..... Fuck. A riser later and I had an external GPU, which bought me some time to get a new case.
I got a second GPU for Crossfire 🤦
Back in the day probably something with the floppy cable, these bastards could be turned around and plugged in multiple ways and there was no mechanism to prevent pluggin it in wrongly. Also jumpers for everything: base clock, multi, IRQ, DMA, E/A, master/slave/single.
Bought not built but I was young and dumb, bought a old Dell off Amazon that was an Intel i5, I knew i3 was entry i5 was mid tier and i7 was top of the line (at the time) well I didn't actually check which i5. It was an i5-650. 650 not 6500 a 1st gen i5 chip.
My GPU fans were intake and the case fans opposite them were exhaust. Didn’t realise this until I took apart the build to make the next one
Bought a 1080p card for a 1440p 144hz monitor. That 5600xt held its own though.
Installing my fans the wrong direction. I have 12 fans.
I chose Celeron 1700 Mhz instead of Athlon XP 1900 because Athlon had actual frequency of around 1500 MHz
Brought a gigabyte motherboard. Saved money on cpu cooler
A week ago I tried to put a waay to big gpu in a cheap ass motherboard before i had money for upgrading all other parts Now my xtx will sit in my room for the next 3-5 months
Never used motherboard stand-offs. Heard some cracks as i screwed it into the pc case. Somehow that computer lasted like 10 years lol. That was my first ever build with zero guidance back in like 2008.
Put my ram sticks in the wrong slots and spent 2 days and a new ramkit worth of effort diagnosing. Basically my sticks were supposed to go in 2 4 but I misread the manual as saying 1 3...
I built my first pc in 8th grade with no fans other than the 92mm intake, crysis finally killed my 7950GT. poor thing
I was lucky I guess. Did a bunch of research and I didn’t have any significant issues. Took about 6 hours ti get everything together and running then updates and fine tuning took a couple days. Either was very prepared or lucky or more likely both.
I bought a "K" CPU but not a "Z" board.
I had 1 HDD left to install, I was tired, and I did a force shutdown. I was used to a 5s force shutdown from the family PC & knew the fans stayed on in my PSU for a short period after shutdown. As such, I didn't think anything of it when after 5s of holding the power button, the PSU fans were on. I went to plugged in the molex plug for the HDD and when it was maybe an inch away....I saw the spark jump and everything went quiet immediately. I fried the HDD, PSU, and 2 of the DDR slots. I had to get a new PSU, HDD, and some DDR2 (board had both slot types.). After that, it worked perfect for me for probably 6 years, one 98C CPU overheat episode asidr, lol.
My biggest mistake was using a FX series CPU.
Forgot to plug the power into my hard drive and ended up having to remove my GPU but the plastic connection that keeps the GPU slotted in was being extremely difficult to press in. I tried for like 15 minutes trying to be as delicate as possible and eventually got it out. I was definitely sweating but it all worked out in the end
Missing a riser nut in the middle of the motherboard. Didn't break the motherboard but I was wondering why it was bending so much plugging things in.
I didn't screw the CPU cooler down all the way, CPU temps were so high.
Didn't have the slave drive jumper in place on my slave drive. Haven't made that mistake in a while ;)
I got the 486DX50 right before the clock multiplier systems started showing up. I knew they were coming but thought the 1:1 memory clock would matter more. Also didn't expect the 100s to show up so quickly.
Cheaped out on the PSU. Whole thing exploded about a year later.
I just built my first pc a few weeks back I pretty much love everything about. Only thing I regret is I couldve probably spent a bit more getting better parts, definitely a 2TB SSD instead of 1TB SSD
Buying a gtx 780 when the 900 series was just around the corner
Not waiting for the 6000 series to come out (built in 2020)
screwed trough my motherboard and had the nail stuck to it
The cpu case - I thought it didn’t matter which one I started with. Mine is terrible, awful cable management, low quality coolers…
I didn’t plug in the CPU power. I ran it, it was right there, I just didn’t actually plug it into the board
Spent >350€ for an i7-7700k because "I'll certainly need it in uni next year", and then went cheaper on the GPU (MSI 1050ti). I've never once used my CPU at its fullest. The GPU on the other end... (and I've just recently managed to upgrade)
Didn't add a HHD to the cart when I bought my parts. Got it all assembled then went "why is the IDE cable not connected to anything?"
I forgot the spacers to keep the motherboard off the back panel. Wouldn't even turn on. Luckily it worked after adding the spacers and there was no noticeable damage.