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I don't always derp

C

capt_cope

Gawd
Joined
Apr 12, 2009
Messages
948
but when I do, I herp first.

Finally got around to swapping out my old asrock extreme 3 for a Rampage IV extreme with EK blocks this past weekend. While I was at it I swapped my old MIPS iceforce HF CPU block for a EK Supremacy EVO to match the mobo and GPU blocks.

After leak testing I fired it up and... failure to post. As I'm thumbing through the manual to figure out what the debug code means, the pc starts power cycling... It's at this point that I notice a nice "hot" smell coming from the case. I pulled the plug and start investigating.

As I investigate I notice the CPU clamp is stupidly hot, but the waterblock is still room temp... I verify the pump was/is working (it is) and then it hits me: the waterblock isn't touching the CPU. Turns out I somehow managed to install the standoffs intended for all sockets EXCEPT 2011... causing the waterblock to hover a few mm above the top of the IHS. ..
DOH!

Amazingly the cpu still works like a champ, I'm still learning this bios but I've already managed an overclock equal to my best on the asrock board in about 20 minutes.
 
There is nothing like that feeling when you look and see daylight between the chip and your waterblock.

Not that I've ever done that... *cough*
 
On the upside, it is damn near impossible to burn up newer CPUs....not so sure about AMD however. Been a while since I spent a lot of time with those. Hopefully that will be corrected soon.

Dropped a damn water block on the floor last week, knocked a big chunk out of the flooring and stripped out one of the fittings to boot. derp.
 
We all derp on occasion.

At least your derp was cheap.

It's been a while for me, so I'm overdue.

When I was in college 16-17 years ago I bought an Asetek Vapochill unit. Proceeded to crush three top of the line Athlon's trying to install it. Gave up, decided to sell the damned thing, and UPS destroyed it, and I didn't take out insurance.

There went ALL my summer job upgrade money for that year.

OOPS.

I've learned a lot since then.

And yeah, modern self throttling designs are damned near impossible to burn up, unlike the old Athlons. I read somewhere that a modern Intel chip has more transistors dedicated to thermal/power control than the original Pentium had in total.
 
I've read about the throttling and how they're damn near impossible to kill, just never tested it before. I was also a little worried about degradation since this chip has been ridden hard for the past few years (24/7 @ 4.4ghz / 1.37v)
 
capt_cope said:
I've read about the throttling and how they're damn near impossible to kill, just never tested it before. I was also a little worried about degradation since this chip has been ridden hard for the past few years (24/7 @ 4.4ghz / 1.37v)
Click to expand...

I once shipped a C2D rig to my dad years ago, he ran it for over 2 years bitching about it being slow. When I finally got out to check on it I found the heatsink fell off in shipping. It still works to this day, almost 10 years later.
 
Came across this today. That whole mating surface thing....back in 2000.

1011342084ZUH0gnPBVf_1_5_l.jpg
 
That looks eerily similar to the damage I did to my trusty de-lidded Q6600 back in the day. I did manage to avoid burning that one up, it just took some creativity. IIRC I ended up ripping the entire metal clamp section from my badaxe II motherboard since the die sat below the top of the clamp. To add insult to injury I was too chicken (and cheap) to invest in water cooling gear, and didn't see a noticeable decrease in temps. Those were the days. I think I might have to dig that combo up and see if I can get her running again, it was a pretty nice hackintosh back in the day. Even has a custom bios that let me install my retail copy of OSX straight from the discs.
 
Oh, I just remembered another major derp.

Was trying to custom fit a corsair AIO cooler to a Radeon HD 7970 about a week or two after launch.

I was trying to get more OC out of it as I hated how my previous dual 6970's performed, so I was hoping to get one GPU to satisfactorily drive my 2560x1600 Dell U3011.

While taking the stock cooler off, I slipped with a screwdriver and cut a trace killing the GPU. Tried repairing it, but was never able to. Those damned traces are just too damned small.

6804480778_f0a18cf86f_o.jpg
 
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I put a thermistor directly on the die between my fan to 'get a better reading' on my AMD T-bird AYHJA Y, it zapped in a jiffy. oops :)
 
Napoleon said:
I put a thermistor directly on the die between my fan to 'get a better reading' on my AMD T-bird AYHJA Y, it zapped in a jiffy. oops :)
Click to expand...

I tried to put one under my CPU when I was young... I bought a big thermaltake tower which came with one and was like.... euhh ok let's pass those cables between the CPU pins so the sensor is right in the middle... No need to say I destroyed some pins lol..
15 years later... I feel soooo dumb about it haha
 
what aboot the "dont stab the flat-head into the mobo" game we used to play? I know i stabbed a couple before learning the socket driver trick...
 
pendragon1 said:
what aboot the "dont stab the flat-head into the mobo" game we used to play? I know i stabbed a couple before learning the socket driver trick...
Click to expand...
I still do it, just have not killed anything in a couple of years, which only makes me more foolish.
 
My most recent derp has been knocking out a tiny mosfet on a GPU I was cleaning. It was a "fairly good" one, but can't remember the name.

I was in a rush, and I knew I was risking too much by doing precision work while annoyed. And it happened - flathead stab.

I was the luckiest man in the world though, because that mosfet was part of the "Red" channel of the analogue output. And the guy was using DVI. Lesson learned... step away, breathe, come back.
 
pendragon1 said:
what aboot the "dont stab the flat-head into the mobo" game we used to play? I know i stabbed a couple before learning the socket driver trick...
Click to expand...
Oh gads.. I remember that game, made me all kinds of nervous with the amount of force you'd have to use. Actually did stab the motherboard once, got lucky though, the board still worked fine.
 
lol i killed a rad recently still not sure on that one sence i used same screws as befor. i once wired a fan up so wrong that the wires melted and my psu started to puff white smoke heres the kicker tho while fan was shot the psu still works and the same night i did it i powerd my pc back up like 15mins later and worked fine.
 
Aaron_ATX said:
Hah! Yup burned up a Tbird myself. 3am, drunk as hell, redoing the thermal paste, thought I had the 2nd clip all the way on.... too drunk to notice. Booted machine and with a POP and a large puff of smoke i transformed it into a nerd keychain.

Come to think of it around that time I also managed to drunkenly cram a stick of ddr1 into a slot backwards.....and hard enough that both clips were holding it.
Hah! That produced additional smoke and broken parts.

.....oh and there was the time in 1989 when I learned that a molex connector only goes in one direction....by putting it in the wrong way and nuking the cd-rom x1 drive I got for christmas that year.

been about 17 years since I have broken anything while assembling a computer. Guess it's time to try and put one together using nothing but a hammer!
Click to expand...
... at 3am ... while drunk as hell!! :D:LOL::ROFLMAO:

Back in the day, when the AT power supply was prevalent, I worked with a tech that could never wire the PSU switch right. "Black and white on top, blue and brown on bottom!" I'd always tell him. Next build, 5 minutes on his bench and POPCLICKDARKNESS and another switch in the trash can. Finally told him to criss-cross the wires, put black and white on opposite corners and brown and blue on the other two corners. May not have been IEEE sanctioned but he never blew another switch after that.
 
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