Requiem For A Motherboard

JimLynch writes "In my last DIY column, I discussed what it was like to build my first system. As time went by, unfortunately, my DIY system wasn't all wine and roses. This column tells the story of how I destroyed my motherboard through a series of ill-planned and stupid actions. It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere."

Comments

no doubt..

[sxtxixtxcxh]

on that list there's "don't install windows" ;)

when i first started slapping computers together, things were easy enough to do without too much worry... general rule of thumb: if it don't fit, don't force it.

Re:no doubt..

[sTalking_Goat]

when i first started slapping computers together, things were easy enough to do without too much worry... general rule of thumb: if it don't fit, don't force it.

Agreed. I haven't built a system since an O/C Celeron 2 800 running at 900 Mhz was a kickass system, but in my experience the hardest part was figuring out with components your board supported. Most componenets could ONLY be connected the right way and it was just about impossible to connect things the right way in the wrong place. As my co-workers used to say when I worked at Old Navy: "A partially trained Monkey could do the job, and the customers would probably treat him better"

Building my first PC was no where near as confusing as the first bike I built, or the Car Engine I hope to rebuild in the future (as soon as I can listen to one of those muscle car guys talk about engines without my eyes glazing over, and parts of my brain BSODing)

Re:no doubt..

[AKAImBatman]

This guy wasn't just forcing it, he was handling it in the most slapdash manner possible! And how could he get a heatsink that barely fits the case? Where's all the air going to go?!

Bah. Here's what I learned about building a machine:

1. Buy as much as possible from the same retailer. That way when something goes wrong, there's no back and forth on it.

2. Buy from a store. There are a lot of "cheap" internet sites that will happily sell you unreliable hardware, then become hard to contact afterwards. Swap meets are an especially bad place to purchase new hardware components. With a store, you can walk through the door and strangle the guy behind the counter.

3. Buy as big of a case as you possibly can. This will allow you a lot of room to work on the inside, as well as good airflow and extra mounts.

4. Find out what every cable is *before* you plug it in. Also, make sure which direction it goes. Sometimes they need forcing, but only force after you're SURE that it's supposed to fit that way.

5. Take your time and assemble the components as early as possible. Some things can only be inserted inside the case, but others (such as CPU, fan, and DIMMs) can be assembled outside the case. It also never hurts to leave things like the hard drive unplugged just to make sure your system turns on and functions. Remember, SLOWLY.

6. Buy quality components. It may look cheaper to buy that AZUZ motherboard instead of the ASUS one, but the difference is tremendous.

One last tip: don't buy the latest and greatest processor unless you absolutely have a reason to do so. The performance difference between that and the next model down is almost imperceptible due to wait states in the CPU. You're much better off investing your money into more RAM. Less heat, more speed. For gaming, go for the best vid card, though. Unless you like to upgrade, you'll be with it for a long time.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

general rule of thumb: if it don't fit, don't force it.

Works for computers AND intercourse.

Re:no doubt..

[nocomment]

no kidding. I dunno if it was worthy of a slashdot article. Perhaps it should have been posted in the sysadmin blunders (follow link in sig). Still, it was funny to read about all his screwups.

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

I built a system off of the Sharky Extreme budget PC components back in November. I loaded up the basic stuff and had a few extra components laying around like a Geforce 4ti and a Soundblaster Live card.

I only run Linux on it and never even installed Windows at all, everything is fully supported by Linux.

The only problem I have with it is over heating. I have a nice heatsink/fan sitting on the AMD 2500+ and I'm not overclocking it at all. But still, I have to have the case open and a small table fan pointed right at the motherboard to keep the temperatures down to 44c...otherwise it raises to 55c+ with the side panel on and the two case fans running.

I've seen the temp jump up to 61c-62c which from what I've heard is either fine to it's too hot. I've heard the gamut of people saying it's not a problem and not worry about it.

But here's the rub...I run Gentoo Linux, and since I compile everything, I don't want it overheating while in a compile...as an error could easily be compiled into code and be almost impossible to track down a bug....or so I've heard. This has NEVER happened to me. I guess I'm just extra paranoid about the temp.

Other than my paranoia, everything runs tip-top and is very speedy. First computer I've built from scratch (not to mention the first OS I've built from scratch) and everything is ok. Other than me running the memory as single channel DDR instead of Dual channel for 3 months because I had it in the wrong slots. D'OH!

Re:no doubt..

[drkhwk]

I don't want it overheating while in a compile...as an error could easily be compiled into code and be almost impossible to track down a bug....or so I've heard.

Just making sure everyone saw this gem.

Re:no doubt..

[John Courtland]

It's GCC, not Gentoo. If the computer flips a bit and GCC puts that into the code, the resulting bug can be damn near impossible to find. Short of having an assload of time, a good debugger, and being damn near a genius, forget it.

Re:no doubt..

[karstux]

I wouldn't worry about the CPU temperature. My old XP 1800+ ran at ~60 degrees all the time, and higher on hot summer days. And it did so stably and without any complaint. (The airflow in that case sucked.)

I don't know how such temperatures will affect the overall lifetime, but I'd guess that even if it should fail prematurely someday, it will still be far enough in the future for you to want an upgrade anyway.

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

thanks for pointing it out for everyone...but as I said, that's what I've heard...if I'm wrong please enlighten me.

Not everyone is born an expert in these things.

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

That's what I ment, just it being Gentoo and everything is compiled. So while gcc is compiling firefox and it "flips a bit", that could compile an error into the firefox code, correct? Which is why I've heard many times not to be overclocking while your compiling anything.

Thanks.

Re:no doubt..

[norsk_hedensk]

engines, (and computer HARDWARE) are easy! its the software and the actual engineering that is the difficult part.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hail to the king of teh(sic) dumb, baby!

How is this dumb? The guy is right, if the CPU is overheating while gcc is compiling, while it may not seg-fault, the code compiled code could be slightly corrupted in that it works, but could be buggy.

Re:no doubt..

[Hatta]

If your processor was to overheat, the computer would just freeze. On the slim chance that garbage was incorporated into your binary, it would just crash when you ran it. The chances of some incorrect but "meaningful" bits being written are vanishingly small.

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

Thanks for the info, and as I said before, I've never had my computer freeze up ever. But I've seen everything from "60c isn't bad" to "60c is one step below the entire computer bursting into flames". Was just trying to be more safe than sorry...but what you say makes sense.

Again, thanks

Re:no doubt..

[karnal]

Rebuilding an engine is kind of like upgrading your computer.

You get to:

1. Buy tools to do the job right.

2. Have screws and bolts left over after every trek under the hood/in the case.

3. Get to swear you'll never touch this goddamn piece of crap again when it fails to start/turn on.

4. Be overjoyed at the sound of sweet exhaust/bios beep when you're finally finished.

The only real problem with cars is that they don't stay perfect forever. But I guess the same could be said for case fans/hard drives etc.

I've worked on cars for about 6 years now, got the bug from friends in college. Some days I hate having to fix my cars, but others, I look at the savings.... that is, after I learn what to buy etc.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

The performance difference between that and the next model down is almost imperceptible due to wait states in the CPU.

Wait states have not much to do with the CPU... good advice, but a bad explanation.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the temp jump up to 61c-62c which from what I've heard is either fine to it's too hot. I've heard the gamut of people saying it's not a problem and not worry about it.

If that 60c measurement is from an on-die sensor, youre fine but if its a mobo sensor directly underneath or otherwise detached from the CPU, then you may have something to worry about.

I have an Opteron thats been running at a constant 60c on-die temp for quite some time and it's very stable.

Re:no doubt..

[Laebshade]

It's because you're using the stock fan. Spend about $30 w/ shipping a buy a nice Thermaltake Volcano 7+ (the one I use). I've had it since my Athlon XP 1900+ and overclocking it to 1900 mhz and it has stayed with me to my 2400+. It cools better than most of the cheap watercooling kits ($100-$150) and is a lot cheaper. I'm overclocking my 2400+ to 2256 mhz (150 mhz FSB from 133 mhz FSB, 256 mhz overclock), the Volcano 7+'s fan controller is set on high, and my max temp is about 53c.

Also, make sure you have at least 2 fans in the front and 2 fans in the back (if they're 80mm fans). Two 120mm fans would probably do just as good or better.

Re:no doubt..

[Sweetshark]

So while gcc is compiling firefox and it "flips a bit", that could compile an error into the firefox code, correct?
Firefox wouldnt matter too much - a bug in glibc would be annoying. But most of the time the compile simply fails - if you compiles fail on different source code lines (inreproducable) you can be pretty sure it is a hardware problem (overheating or bad RAM).
Which is why I've heard many times not to be overclocking while your compiling anything.
Thats a good advice. My current system ran at 85C when first assembled (And mainboard, CPU and cooler came as a bundle). Starting a compile locked the system. My brothers system even failed trying to install Windows XP because of lockups. Checking the CPU temperature in the BIOS we saw a temperature of 120C (on my system because of the compile, on my brothers system even when idle.). We decidered there just wasnt enough pressure from the Cooler (Arctic Copper Silent Pro) on the CPU - so we manufactured two thin copper plates of about 0.8 mm width and did put it between the mounting piece and the cooler. We now needed much more force to press the cooler onto the CPU, but both systems now run stable on 50C.
So:
Dont trust manufacturers. Even good ones. If something seems weird (like cooler that could be pressed onto the CPU ,,somehow to easy'') doublecheck and correct!

Re:no doubt..

[sTalking_Goat]

I just wish I knew where to start. See this all started when I fell in love a few months ago.

Being the geek that I am, there no way I'm going to buy something and not upgrade it or at the very least know how it works. So I've been reading whatever I can get my hands on and watching stuff like Horsepower TV . But everything I read is either basic stuff, like changing your oil or really advanced stuff about engine timings and camshafts that lose me after the first paragraph.

I haven't felt so clueless since I accidently took an advanced Philosphy class in my freshman year.

Re:no doubt..

[AKAImBatman]

Wait states have not much to do with the CPU... good advice, but a bad explanation.

True, but it is the CPU waiting. The wait states have more to do with cache misses, bus speed, and memory latency. The end result is that your CPU rarely his 100% capacity, thus real world performance differences between CPUs is somewhat mythical.

Then again, I didn't really feel like giving a dissertation on why CPU speed doesn't matter. Getting a good MoBo is about all you can do to really improve the issue. Since "quality components" was already in my advice, I figured that anyone reading it would do just fine. :-)

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

hehe, actually, it's using a Thermaltake Volcano 9 on it.

It has to be my case. i only have one fan in the back taking air out. and the fan that's on the power supply. But this in theory should be enough as I'm not overclocking anything. And, with the table fan off and the regular computer fans running, I'm running around 45-55c give or take. It's just that I've seen it jump for a few seconds to 60c when the CPU is really being taxed.

Re:no doubt..

[wfberg]

That's what I ment, just it being Gentoo and everything is compiled. So while gcc is compiling firefox and it "flips a bit", that could compile an error into the firefox code, correct? Which is why I've heard many times not to be overclocking while your compiling anything.

Obviously, that is entirely different from the remote possibility of the CPU "flipping a bit" randomly when you're downloading (precompiled) stuff... exactly how? Not at all, perhaps?

Re:no doubt..

[aquasheep]

3. Buy as big of a case as you possibly can. This will allow you a lot of room to work on the inside, as well as good airflow and extra mounts.

4. Find out what every cable is *before* you plug it in. Also, make sure which direction it goes. Sometimes they need forcing, but only force after you're SURE that it's supposed to fit that way.

To add something else that I've learned about buying cables, longer cables are not always better cables. Several months ago, I went out and bought some rounded IDE cables. Because I wasn't sure exactly how long I needed them, I bought 36" cables that ended up not fitting inside my case. To this day, the extra foot of cabling is folded over and stuffed in that little space between the motherboard and the hard drive rack.

Re:no doubt..

[hcuar]

Sounds about right for an AMD. Had the same problem with an XP 1800+. Fixed it by purchasing a P4 2.4 and new MB. For some reason, I've always experienced higer temps with AMD. AMDs fry in the lower to mid 90 degree C range. Intel slows the processor speed at around 75 degrees C. I'm not sure if it's possible to fry an P4.

Re:no doubt..

[arkhan_jg]

55-62c is a little hot, but within tolerance. If it was hitting 80, you should worry. Still, you should be able to get it cooler.

I presume you've upgraded your heatsink fan, as you say you have a nice one; did you put thermal gunk on it - and did you only put a thin film, or did you ladle it? (much better to have a little than a lot). Might be worth taking it off, cleaning it carefully, and putting it back. You never know, you might just be getting poor thermal contact with the heatsink.

Also, it's generally better to have your case fans blowing hot air out the back/side, and either a fan sucking in cool air at the front, or just rely on partial pressure. Getting the hot air out is more important though. Definitely don't have the ones at the back blowing air into the case.

You could upgrade the fans on your case, if you have them blowing the right way; I've seen some cases come with really anemic fans. Make sure they're not undervolted, and running slow.

Don't forget your PSU either; you can get a decent powered PSU with an internal extract fan as well as it's external fan; I've seen that extra fan knock nearly 10 degrees off one hot case.

Finally, consider airflow again. You want cool air coming in at the front, and hot air out the sides, top, and especially the back. Make sure your cables (especially ide) are tied up neatly out the way, and aren't impeding airflow. If your fans are half decent, and your airflow unimpeded, then having the side on will actually improve airflow, and keep it cooler. You might want to drill extra holes in the sides/back though, to help hot air escape. Avoid holes on the top, they're a killer for dust.

Finally, you could always just upgrade to a better case. Two 80mm fans is entry level these days, and you can get a nice quiet case with more, or bigger fans for very little cash.

Re:no doubt..

[Phiu-x]

About the cooper plate, my guess is that it would have been less hassles (sp?) with thermal paste.

Re:no doubt..

[Cloud K]

"Other than me running the memory as single channel DDR instead of Dual channel for 3 months because I had it in the wrong slots. D'OH!"

Join the club, I did exactly the same :) Actually, I think it was more like 4-5 months before I realised.

Just goes to show though, how little difference things like dual channel RAM make to those who just use their PCs for everyday gaming etc.

Re:no doubt..

[Sweetshark]

We did use thermal paste. The copper plate was put above the cooler, but below the mounting piece locking the cooler to the mainbord - the only reason was to generate more pressure on the cooler....

Re:no doubt..

[John Courtland]

Downloading an erroneous file would require the computer to fuck up on both the incoming packet AND the packet CRC in just the right way. I think the odds are well over 1:1 billion.

Re:no doubt..

[mrchaotica]

You could always compile again and diff the binaries and find the bug that way, right?

Re:no doubt..

[blueskies]

Wrap it up really tightly in tinfoil too, so cosmic rays don't flip a bit. It can happen!! I'm serious. Lots of things have a non-zero probability.

Re:no doubt..

[mrchaotica]

I don't think you need a whole lot of pressure to get the heatsink to work, just flatness. Usually when people want their heatsink to work better they polish the bottom (until it looks like a mirror), and then use less thermal paste - as little as possible, in fact, because it doesn't conduct as well as metal (but better than air).

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the "60 isn't bad" is from AMDers, and the "60 is one step below fire" is from pre P4 Intelers. My Tbird ran fine at almost 70C, and my friends PIII crashed at 40C.

Re:no doubt..

[mrchaotica]

Water cooling isn't necessarily about better cooling, it's about noise (Like Apple's G5 case). Unless you're using a peltier, a water cooling system can only approach ambient (just like a good fan), but it's generally much quieter.

Re:no doubt..

[silicon not in the v]

Our company makes memory chips. 80C is considered standard operating temperature. We do high voltage operating stress on the parts to eliminate infant fails at 130C before they're re-tested and sold. I'm not sure how tolerant other types of IC chips are, but 50 or 60 doesn't seem too bad yet. However, if that is 50 or 60 air temp in your case, your components are getting hotter than that, and will probably have problems.

Re:no doubt..

[randyest]

No, it can't.

This thread is scary dumb.

Re:no doubt..

[mrchaotica]

Find a website for Scion tuners that has forums, and ask questions when you get stuck.

Also, if you want to get a turbocharger, read (and understand!) this book - it's really good.

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

the original comment was someone dissing Gentoo and this being one of the reasons to stay away from it. But I was commenting on compiling in general...whither you running Linux or XP or AmigaDOS or whatever.

Compiling anything anywhere. Not meaning a "binary vs. compiling" issue.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Like you'd know anything about that. I bet you're a virgin too.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it can. Learn a little about computers before you show your ignorance you moron.

Re:no doubt..

[John Courtland]

Yeah, so long as the binaries are compiled with the same flags, and the compiler is the same version. But then again, if I have a system producing buggy code, I wouldn't trust it to produce cross-checking code.

Re:no doubt..

[John Courtland]

One more thing, figuring out what the bug is would be insane. It would seriously be probably only one bit out of the library/executable. Making that error crop up enough so you'd even know it was a bug would be hard enough, and it would seem more like a hardware fault (which it technically is, but it's also a software fault as well).

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this can be a real problem and some "bugs" have been tracked down to simple CPU over heating while compiling source code.

Just because you've never encountered it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Re:no doubt..

[Artifakt]

Cosmic rays do have a probablility of about 1 a month or so, if you mean for one passing through a chip. However, the term 'cosmic rays' is often used to refer both to actual energetic gamma rays and to some particles, sometimes even including exotic, short lived ones like muons, so it helps to be specific.
Heavy, really energetic gamma may penetrate meters of rock, but any random gamma has a somewhat better chance of being absorbed if it's passing through someting dense, i.e. metal. To show how counter intuitive this is, a really high energy gamma ray from space, that actually hits an alumuinum nucleus in that foil, will kick off a cascade of energetic electrons and other particles, in a roughly fan shaped spray inside the case. This will be more likely to affect a data bearing structure than if that same gamma passes directly through the CPU, hits a tiny wire there, and kicks off a shower there that sprays into the plastic holder underneath instead of across the other wires inside the chip.
So, any effects from tinfoil are not particularly prone to be good, are generally unpredictable, and are outweighed by other effects, such as how your computer is oriented towards the sun and known cosmic ray sources like the crab nebula, how your location is oriented re. the van Allen belts, whether your building is steel frame construction or not, and probably a thousand other factors.

Re:no doubt..

[dasunt]

I've seen the [CPU] temp jump up to 61c-62c which from what I've heard is either fine to it's too hot. I've heard the gamut of people saying it's not a problem and not worry about it.

Er, why don't you do your own research? A quick google search shows that the maximum CPU temperature for XPs seems to be 85C. I believe the XPs have an on-chip temperature sensor, which should be pretty accurate. Figuring in a 15C margin-of-error, I wouldn't be concerned unless the CPU hit 65-70C on a hot day.

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

I'm interested in why everyone is jumping all over me about the CPU overheating and compiling errors? I'm only going by what I've read on other web sites about overclocking, over-heating and compiling, it's not like I'm making this stuff up. And let's face it, it's not that far fetched.

Sheesh

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

Er, I did do my own research. And yes, I know about the 85c maximum temp. But I've gotten into arguments with people (wow, just like this whole thread) about CPU temps. We go "what's the temp on your CPU right now" and we go around and when I say mine is 55c I get the "thats WAY to hot! it's going to catch on fire blah blah blah". I point out to them just like you did about the 85c max temp. It goes round and round until both sides tire...kind of like how this whole thread will die too.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

The chances of some incorrect but "meaningful" bits being written are vanishingly small.

Bullshit. Once you've taken the chance of the original flipping out of the equation, the chance of it obviously affecting the resulting code is the small one.

Consider a few simple instructions:

MOV AX, 4F03 8 bits for MOV and destination, 16 bits for the value
MOV AX, [4F03] 8 bits for MOV and destination, 16 bits for the address
ADD AX, 3 8 bits for ADD and destination, 16 bits for data

in each of these simple and common instructions, there's a 66% chance of only corrupting data, which may or may not lead to a crash, depending on where and when they execute (for instance, perhaps the flipped bit only affects iterating through your bookmarks in Mozilla when using "manage bookmarks"). That kind of problem would be notoriously difficult to track down when nothing in your source suggests anything wrong with that section of code.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

first things first. shut it down, remove that heatsink and scrape that worthless heatsink tape that came on it off. a very VERY thin coating of regular heatsink grease will do better.

secondly. you DID get a semi-decent heatsink right? I had one that cost me $29.00 and it was utter crud while the $35.00 heatsink that was actually machined on the bottom to be truely flat and smooth worked flawlessly and now the processor never get's past 48degC

Yes, It's a 2500+

if the heatsink comes with compound, DO NOT USE IT. and dont fall for that arctic silver crud. get a good quality grease but dont get suckered for that "overclocker go-fast wing crap"

Re:no doubt..

[Zzootnik]

Just to make sure... The fan on the power supply is cranking air out the back, right? It used to be that most power supplies went the opposite way, and it was a meaningful 'mod' to crack open your power case and turn the fan around...though most ps's I've seen recently do have it pointed the correct way...

Re:no doubt..

[korbin_dallas]

Hi,

2 possibilities:

A) You used a heatsink with that pink gum like substance. Remove that and use some Artic silver heatsink compound.

B) You did A as advised, but you used the whole tube of Artic silver compound, clean that off and use just a tiny BB sized dab of it.

When building systems, I observed that the pink bubble gum stuff caused AMD 2xxxx series to run hot. Scraping that off and using tubed compound would get the temps back down around 45c instead of 58c.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, avoid jumping up and down near your hdd while you're compiling. Sometimes the seismic waves can cause the head to skip and write gibberish into your binary. :o)

Re:no doubt..

[grepistan]

I wouldn't take it personally... I think the consensus seems to be that the event you describe, while possible, is so unlikely as to be statistically insignificant. I don't think that's any reason to jump all over you and describe the thread as 'scary dumb', an epithet more than slightly ironic, but that's Slashdot for you I'm afraid. The only pleasure some people get is humiliating others... it's sad, really!

Cheers, and good luck with the cooling!

Re:no doubt..

[WuphonsReach]

Usually when people want their heatsink to work better they polish the bottom (until it looks like a mirror)

Think that's "lapping"...

But you are correct about how much paste to use. Like the old commercial said, "a little dab 'll do you". The goal of the paste is to fill in any microscopic holes in the heatsink/CPU as it conducts heat better then air. Even the fancy "artic silver" pastes don't conduct heat as well as direct metal-to-chip contact.

The proper amount of paste is a thin sheen, usually by dabbing a tiny dot on the CPU and use a credit card edge to spread it.

Re:no doubt..

[Kiryat Malachi]

Standard commercial grade chips are rated to operate at 0 to 70c. Industrial grade ICs are usually rated for -40 to +85. Military (sometimes extended industrial) ICs are rated for -55 to +125. Most automotive modules are designed to operate safely over the industrial range; underhood modules are designed for an even larger range, and a small subset of powertrain modules (the ones designed to sit in hot fluids) are designed for ridiculous ranges including temperatures of a couple hundred C.

Those are all ambient air temperatures; I don't know the junction/chip temps for commercial or military but most industrial ICs are rated for 125 or 150C at the junction.

Chips are not your main worry, usually - worry about moving parts, especially HDDs, which are significantly affected by heat.

Re:no doubt..

[Notrace]

Actually, it will shutdown if your BIOS supports ACPI; most do these days.
Compiling ACPI-support in the kernel (inlucing thermal zones, fan ...) helps you control the temperature in your machine, and you really don't have to do anything. The kernel handles it all.
I found out the hard way, and learned something by it, wondering why my laptop would keep overheating and hence shutting down, and this ever since trying the kernel 2.6.x. Stupid kernel configuration choices where the culprit.

Re:no doubt..

[WuphonsReach]

But I've seen everything from "60c isn't bad" to "60c is one step below the entire computer bursting into flames".

Different CPUs are capable of different temperatures. (case in point: Intell Prescott chips being derided as "Pres*hot*" chips)

Internal case temp should be in the 30-45C range (assuming ambient air temp of around 25C). My AMD cases are running 41-46C at the moment, but the A/C is off and the ambient temp in here is 31C. CPU temps are generally in the 50s, depending on the case temp and the particular chip. I only use AMD, but I get nervous when the chip hits the high 50s. At which point, I investigate larger heatsinks or higher cfm fans.

Only solutions for lowering internal case temps are either:

- Remove heat-generating components

- Get components that produce less heat (5400rpm drives instead of 7200rpm drives, older video cards instead of the dual-heater top-of-the-line beast, use an older and cooler CPU)

- Adjust/add fans to move more air through the case per minute (air flow). Make sure the exhaust fans are properly oriented so that air flows through the case as designed.

- Simply buy a larger case so that the heat producing components are farther away from each other (Antec Sonata / p160 or a full-tower case)

- If the video card has a fan on it, make sure there is at least one empty slot between it and the closest PCI card

- 7200+ rpm drives generally require active cooling (Antec p160/Sonata cases have drive bays with a dedicated 120mm fan slot). Putting a 7200rpm drive in an external USB/firewire enclosure that doesn't have a fan is a good way to kill the drive (been there, done that, now only use 5400rpm drives in those enclosures).

I tend to be conservative with my cooling advice because my office has poor climate control. Like I said, it's 31C in here at the moment, which is warm enough to be uncomfortable even in shorts and a t-shirt. However, all of my machines work just fine since that they're in good cases with good airflow.

Re:no doubt..

[WuphonsReach]

Just goes to show though, how little difference things like dual channel RAM make to those who just use their PCs for everyday gaming etc.

And on the AMD boards, it doesn't make much of a difference to performance. (Usual amount bandied about is only 5-10% better.)

Yeah, it's sexy, but at least with the first generation boards (A7N8X) it's more of a marketing point. I've tested with MemTest86 (which shows data rates while testing the memory), PCMark2002, and the data rates shown by QuickPar when creating a PAR2 file set.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for computers AND intercourse.

Prison called with some anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Re:no doubt..

[forkazoo]

I work at a PC retail shop. I just want to agree with you strongly. If anything goes wrong, the guys at the internet site will not help you. If you buy half your stuff from another store, we will blame thier hardware.

OTOH, if you just get a bunch of stuff from us, we'll take care of you. We have to deal with you face to face, so it isn't worth the hassle to screw you over.

Another reccomendation : here in Denver we have a guy named Tom Martino, "The Troubleshooter." He's on the local news show, and he does stories about crappy businesses. Know the name of whatever similar reporter exists in your municipality. If the guys at your local shop are giving you shit, don't be afraid to give them shit.

Be reasonable with the guys at the shop. Give them a chance to take care of you of something is wrong. And shit does go wrong. Don't be real surprised if you get a bad stick of RAM, or whatever. That isn't what makes somebody shady. IT's what happens next! If you inform them they gave you a shitty piece of RAM, and they tell you to go fuck yourself, it isn't right. Also, make sure you know the warranty information upfront. If you are at five times the warranty period, and expectiung a full refund, you are SOL. If you are three days past the warranty period, they should be willing to take care of you.

Last word of advice when dealing with a shop : sometimes they will only warranty a part if they install it. Don't get your panties in a knot. Some people are as incompetant ast the author of the article, so the shop doesn't want to deal with warranty replacement of backward-inserted DIMMs. They aren't calling you stupid, it just makes things easier for anybody.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this page: http://www.daniel.nofftz.net/linux/Athlon-Powersav ing-HOWTO.html. I put the line for my chipset in rc.local and had my idle temperature drop by about 20 C. This is an older Athlon, but I think this info might apply to Athlon XP as well.

Re:no doubt..

[mrchaotica]

Yeah, I didn't feel like using jargon.

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Athlon-Powersaving-HOWTO It's a well known problem. And by the way Gentoo SUCKS

Re:no doubt..

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always compile again and diff the binaries and find the bug that way, right?

If you have to compile everything twice, your speed advantage is gone. Might as well just not overclock.

Re:no doubt..

[RMH101]

athlon 2500? dual channel ram? if this is an nforce2 board, then bear in mind a lot of early bioses misreported temperature. bios flash to the latest version and check before you panic: up to 15 degree drops seen on some MSI boards. ric

Re:no doubt..

[ScottGant]

Hit the nail on the head! Yes, I have an nforce2 board, but I haven't flashed the bios to the latest version.

I'll try that out, thanks.

Re:no doubt..

[DuckDodgers]

A few suggestions:
How Stuff Works has a good section on auto technology explaining the basics.

There are tech talk discussion forums where you can ask questions at many magazine websites. My current favorite is the 'Combustion Chamber' at Auto Week, and aside from the registration it is free. (If you find anything better, please let me know.)

One thing to remember about Horsepower TV is that they focus on a lot of muscle cars with pushrod engines. I personally am a big fan of pushrod engines (there are lots of pushrod vs. over head camshaft discussions on various forums), but the valvetrain layout is different enough from overhead cams that you can get confused comparing the two.

A lot of the hot rod magazines have free tech articles that give explanations on the magazine website.

Re:no doubt..

[DuckDodgers]

To get a car that handles superbly around curves, the traditional requirement is either rear wheel drive with LSD (That's Limited Slip Differential, not the drug) or else all wheel drive. Giving the Scion either would probably cost more than selling it and replacing it with a car that already has one of those setups, like a Lexus IS 300.

I don't mean to discourage you. With the right modifications almost any front wheel drive car can be blazingly fast in a straight line and respectably quick around curves. But making a tC keep pace with, say, a $23,000 Subaru WRX on a twisty road course would be a real challenge.

Re:no doubt..

[EvilBudMan]

We'll I built my first two machines for work a while back. They are both Athlon64 3200 systems on a MSI motherboard in a Antec Sonata case the first one has a CPU temp of 52C and a SYS temp of 35C. The second one I did a better job of seating the CPU and routing te cables and get a CPU temp in the high 30's. This is with a stock AMD cooler and the extra 120mm case fan. The hardest part was getting the RAID set up for the 2 Raptors in RAID 0. I used the Promise controller on the MoBo instead of the VIA. They are CAD systems so i wanted the hard drive speed over reliabilty.

It was a first time build and it didn't take much longer than buying a Dell and removing all of their crap and installing my stuff and i got what I wanted like a floppy drive card reader combo and a daul DVI card that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Re:no doubt..

[Sj0]

You might want to worry about solar flares as well. The best solution? Wrap your hard drive in magnets. They hate that.

Re:no doubt..

[Codifex Maximus]

I dunno, building a computer is really kind of easy.

Steps:
Decide on a processor family: AMD or Intel.
Decide on a motherboard: Compatible with processor, has the desired motherboard connections - usb, ieee1394, sound, gigalan, Dual Channel DDR, memory capacity, SATA, SPDIF etc...
Decide on amount of memory: Dual DDR 512 - 1GB min.
Decide on the video card: Nvidia or ATI - how much you got to spend?
Buy your drives: No less than 200GB HD, DVDRW and CDRom drives.
Decide on Operating System: Linux of course - Gentoo. :)

And, last but not least...
RTFM!

Wow

[Nasarius]

I smelled the distinct odor of something burning.

I checked the temperature of my motherboard with SiSoft Sandra. The readings I got showed that it was too hot indeed. I was skeptical of Sandra's exact readings, however, so I posted a note in the forum and received some good suggestions for alternative programs to check the temp with.

Not very smart, are you? You smell your computer burning, but you start up Windows anyway (most BIOSes have temperature monitors built in) and mess around. Just...wow.

Re:Wow

[Mz6]

Well... he pretty much screwed up building a simple Windows box... What do you expect?

Re:Wow

[nekoniku]

He tot it was da ganja, mon.

Re:Wow

[karrde]

This whole article was just one painfull (and pitiful) screwup after another. I couln't even bring myself to read the whole thing.

Re:Wow

[Arcanix]

After all that I was almost expecting for him to say he then loaded up Far Cry for a couple hours until the smoke started REALLY billowing from the computer. Of course that would become a nuisance so then he'd go in the other room to get some shut eye while Maya rendered a few scenes overnight...

Re:Wow

[sTalking_Goat]

He tot it was da ganja, mon.

Best use for an AMD CPU. EVER.

Re:Wow

[anon*127.0.0.1]

Actually...

Yeah, he made a series of incredibly boneheaded moves. No big deal there, I think most humans do something like that at least once in their life.

However, he was smart enough to write an article and make some money off of his mistakes. Hell, he can probably deduct the cost of the dead hardware as a business expense. I never managed that.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

If you didn't read the whole thing, how do you know what the whole article was like?

Re:Wow

[AndroidCat]

It doesn't say that he specifically used that computer. Personally, I could could cook 2-3 systems and still get something on the Internet. (Not that that would happen. I'd trust my nose first--the slightest wiff of crisp electronics and I'd track it down.)

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I couln't even bring myself to read the whole thing. Considering this is /., you're not alone.

Re:Wow

[shawn(at)fsu]

You didn't miss anything, basically this guy just told everybody how foolish he was. If I am getting heat sink/fan for my cpu and it's not an exact copy/replacement I would definitely check to see if it fits. This man doesn't, in fact he doesn't check three times. To further things he gets impatient and either shorts out his board with static electricity or the piece that he refers to as a doohickey was more important that he realized when he knocked it off.
I have the same board he has, sorry strike that, had and I gone through two fans because of temp getting to high but I allow the BIOS to turn of the PC if things get to hot. Linux can get might pissed off about a hard shutdown but it's better than having to get a new CPU.
All in all a really dumb story...
I would like to see a picture of said doohickey to see what it was he broke.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people mod up posts that make no sense, grammatically or logically?

There's no way you can know what the whole article is without reading the whole thing, yet that is what you purport to do.

Re:Wow

[Aeiri]

It doesn't say that he specifically used that computer.

Oh yeah, I guess that extra computer in the corner could be used to check the temperature of the burning motherboard.

Re:Wow

[AndroidCat]

Specifically used that computer to check some online forums. (However I tend to doubt he played it safe.)

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that he is incredibly dumb like a muffin! hahahahahaha!!!!

Re:Wow

[Spoticus]

But it's EXTREME!!!
It's from EXTREMEtech.com!!!
Since the entire site is based on the cheezy EXTREME!!! marketing BS, what else would you expect?

Re:Wow

[parryFromIndia]

True.. I once screwed up my brand new Sony VAIO Laptop because of silly mistake and extreme hurry. I had bought a new RAM chip and had to put it in instantly. I didn't had the Philips 4 headed screw driver and imagine what - I pulled out the plastic lid thinking all would be fine! (The VAIO had a single screw on the lid.) Needless to say it screwed the motherboard and now I am stuck with a Presario 1500 :(

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole article was just one giant, glaring ad after another. I couln't even bring myself to read the whole thing.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm... this was a story about an average joe... not som l33t person who likes to call people stupid after they already admitted they had done stupid things... be fair please.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't agree more - why on earth would someone writing for a site called "extremetech" be such a complete doofus where it comes to building a computer - it's not like assembling a space shuttle and making sure it doesn't explode or anything .. err.. hm.

r.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Google for "statistically valid sample", 'tard.

Re:Wow

[Excepcio]

I agree. Luckly Prixovy saved me the ads. Where is the old good "Printer friendly" button? Or was just the purpouse of the article to make us get them?

worst article post in a while

[XMichael]

This has to be by far one of the worst things i've seen posted on slashdot. Really, the fact that someone even took the time to write this article amazing me.

How many ways can I destroy a computer... yahh

Maybe if there were good gory pictures or something

Re:worst article post in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this flamebait? I think it's a legitimate comment.

Re:worst article post in a while

[nostriluu]

I have to agree. I wonder if they'll post a story about me eating a bag of potato chips. Oops, I dropped one! Better get a page or two in about that.

I've been building my own PCs for the past 20 years. Along with my own, I help friends and have easily build more than 100 systems, plus about as many upgrades. I used to ritually buy a bottle on the way home from the parts store and get smashed while assembling. I've put cards in backwards, splashed solder, forced all kinds of parts the wrong way, worked way past midnight, rarely think about grounding myself, and only ever ruined one thing, a CPU I was trying to rig for a dual setup.

PC assembly is meant for amateurs, so I don't know how this guy managed to do the damage he did, but maybe his next system should come pre-assembled.

Re:worst article post in a while

[JDevers]

Agreed. I've never actually been smashed while assembling a PC, but I've done it before when I was so incredibly mad about something that I probably SHOULD have been. I can't remember any component that I single-handedly destroyed from incompetence or stupidity... I once put a screwdriver THROUGH a mobo after a stupid heatsink retention clip completely gave way (someone else's PC with very much bottom basement components) and it still worked fine. I can't imagine how hard someone would have to TRY to screwup before knocking a cap off a board....

Re:worst article post in a while

[TrumpetX]

I was thinking the same thing... horrid /. post

Re:worst article post in a while

[ezzzD55J]

And another thing..

• Like most of you, when I need a question answered, I usually hop right into the forum. The ET forum is blessed with the presence of many extremely experienced DIY people who almost always have helpful suggestions or at least a definite point of view on DIY issues.

  Then, later:

  Some of you might be wondering why I didn't just ask one of ET's hardware gurus-- Loyd, Dave, or Jason--about all of this. The only answer I can give you is that it must have been a "guy thing." It's like asking for directions: Why do it when you can just drive around aimlessly? Why ask for advice from the guys who know everything when I can learn it all myself the hard way, right? I've got my pride, baby!

• Antec Lanboy 350... sounds a bit gay to me.. this was confirmed by finding the anagram "ben canal toy" of antec lanboy.

Re:worst article post in a while

[ezzzD55J]

"Antec Lanboy 350... sounds a bit gay to me.. this was confirmed by finding the anagram "ben canal toy" of antec lanboy."

Not as good as: "con anal byte" and "cent anal boy" though.

Re:worst article post in a while

[christopher240240]

Obviously you've never dealt with an apple 8500. Worst. Case. Design. EVER.

Re:worst article post in a while

[gl4ss]

if you link to something like that it would be nice if the link had some pictures..

Re:worst article post in a while

[Omestes]

Wow, I'm not the only one with that tradition. For ever computer I've ever built, I've always bought a 6-pack of red strip, and a bottle of maker's mark. I was teaching a freind how to build their own compy, and I think I gave them a lesson in what not to do, like hunting for a dropped screw with a huge magnet, turning on the computer while it was completely unassembled, sitting on a card board box, smearing on the heat goop with my finger while ashing on the mobo.

It worked though. And thats all that counts. Never managed to mess up an installation yet.

Re:worst article post in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, considering the growing "newbie geek" audience, it's a damn good article to put on on /.

Lots of the little tykes - such as my soon to be nephew-in-law believe that just because they can figure out how to install and play Counter Strike, that they can fix a PC (or enroll in Computer Science.)

The simplest possible thing that can do WONDERS for keeping a machine running for a long time - is practice propper grounding techniques. Use that wristrap, kids. Ground yourself, your computer, and your components. MOVE THE PLASTIC AWAY. Just by freaking breathing, you're generating enough static to static to blow holes in the gates.

Perhaps if more wanna-be-geeks would read something like this first, they might save themselves a little bit of frustration and time.

Re:worst article post in a while

[Niet3sche]

This has to be by far one of the worst things i've seen posted on slashdot. Really, the fact that someone even took the time to write this article amazing me. How many ways can I destroy a computer... yahh Maybe if there were good gory pictures or something

In reading this, I thought, "this guy ... is employed? In computers/tech??".

I understand that we all have our moments ... but this really takes the cake of, "not doing any research before dropping money out of my pocket". You know the saying ... "a fool and his money are soon parted" - well ... (Mother of All) case in point.

Re:worst article post in a while

[DJTodd242]

In reading this, I thought, "this guy ... is employed? In computers/tech??".

He's probably a programmer.

/me ducks!

Re:worst article post in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

DEAR GOD! Not past midnight! You reckless fool!

Re:worst article post in a while

[Ian Wolf]

Yeah, as a journalist. Nuff said.

Re:worst article post in a while

[Anonymous Coward]

He'll take some pictures as soon as you send him YOUR digital camera.

Re:worst article post in a while

[Spackler]

Actually, I kind of liked it. It reminded me of my first girlfriend. I slammed her down, and broke off this little white thingy. Then I scratched the living hell out of her back, squeezing her into my over crowded room in the basement of my mom's house. Then she just layed there. Well, I thought that was my chance, so I tried to push another little white thingy back into the slot, but she just layed there. Well, by this time my lungs were aching for air. I hope she's not dead. I just payed $200 for her. Man, what have I gotten myself into. For anyone reading this, don't knock little white things off your girlfriends either. More fragile than a motherboard in heat.

Re:worst article post in a while

[CProgrammer98]

Hey! I heard that!

I'm a programmer but I also build all my own systems and do the same for family and friends (for an exchange of beer tokens of course!)

How unbeleivably dumb is this guy! You just don't touch any components without being earthed, it's Golden Rule #1

Someone should also buy this guy some cable ties. The guts of his system are a mess!

Re:worst article post in a while

[nostriluu]

I said WAY PAST midnight, you anonymous coward you.

Jeez.

[Neil Blender]

I have seriously manhandled about 150 computers, ripping out the motherboards, making frankenstein boxes out of non-working boxes, hot swapping non hot-swappable hard disks, forcing fans onto cpus, pulling out running SCSI discs to get that gyroscopic effect because the disks are still spinning at 10K rpms. I must have had some luck though. Never once have I broken a machine.

Re:Jeez.

[Nurseman]

I have seriously manhandled about 150 computers,

Mt first DIY build was a 486 /16 in a HUGE full size metal tower. This thing weighed like 50lbs empty. Built the whole thing with the cover off, tested, retested, everything worked like a dream. Then I put the cover on, it was a tight fit, but I kinda manhandled it on. Push power switch, and PUFF, smoke, and beeps. Lucky I was near power cable and yanked it. Seems I caught one of the power cables from the fan in the case, and stripped and grounded it to the case. Lucky all it cost me was the fan. Lessons learned :-)

Re:Jeez.

[rjamestaylor]

Note to those playing along at home: The "insight" mod prob. is due to the sentence "I must have had some luck though." and not the overall posting.

Re:Jeez.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have messed with 150 computers, then you know what you are doing.
Getting frankenstein computers to work is not an easy task. Into underclocking? :)

Your subconscious knowledge is stopping you do anything *really* stupid.

Re:Jeez.

[LabRat007]

I've done about the same manhandleing. My first few machines I treated like a first date but once I started getting used equipment it was time to get freaky. Here is a little list...

1. Wore wool socks and held a cat while inserting a PCI card. Worked fine
2. Hot swaped video cards until the damn game worked right. I don't recommend this one but nothing broke.
3. Beat the living shit out of a stuck hard drive. It spun up and worked for a few more months, even if it did look a little odd with all the dents.
4. Placed a hard drive in the freezer overnight to see if that could get the bastard to spin up again - and it did. Worked for years after.
5. Stored used components in a frik'n box under other used components. The only ones that havn't worked are the one's with missing resistors.
6. Once I had a particulary difficult processor intall. The heat sink clip was extremely tight and in a poor location with regard to the power supply (sorry, too lazy to take it out). The screwdriver I was using to push the clip down was just a tad too big. Using all my arm streangh I was un able to get the clip down. Now I was getting pissed off and sweaty and started using my full weight to push down on the screwdriver. I wieght 225 lbs. So, of course the srewdirver sliped and I sent green chips dancing about the inside of the case. I got a smaller screwdriver and had little problem manuvering the clip into place. It POST'd just fine and I still use it to this day as a Halo server.

That being said I have a brother who can break a component by thinking about it too often. One of those poor bastards that have had more then one power supply go "up in flames" (not I smell something kinda of funny "up in flames" but full on oh-sweet-jesus-do-we-have-a-fire-extinguisher-up-i n-flames).

Re:Jeez.

[djdavetrouble]

he sed: That being said I have a brother who can break a component by thinking about it too often.

i know the type. I have been doing desktop support at advertising agencies for a few years, and we always get summer interns that are the son/cousin/ other nepotistic relationship of an exec. One year we had the cousin of our HR drone for an intern. this guy knew nothing. We figured we could put him on moves, no way to screw that up, right? First move of the day he breaks the computer down, sets it back up, sweating profusely the entire time. System boots and the monitor has a noticable red tint that wasn't there pre-move. Doing my best 'MOOOOVE' voice, I pull the vga cable to discover he has bent at least 2 of the pins reconnecting it. He was gone that week. totally useless. we had another intern that was the son of one of our vendors. First day we disassembled his PC and made him put it back together. The liberal arts major did it perfectly. Its something more than smarts, a great deal seems to be common sense and being able to work well with your hands.

Re:Jeez.

[jafiwam]

A great way to horrify onlookers;

Use one computer to power hard drives or components mounted on the other.

Imagine a 2U rack server with a semi-dead raid card (and probably a couple dead drives) with an old tower case server leaning up on it at 45 degree angle.

Four drives dangling by their power cords connected to the one on top, SCSI cables connected to the raid card.... all while the raid card squeals its "i'm dead" song.

Sorta like killing a cow by shooting a rabbit out of a cannon.

It worked tho. Got the data off.

[It wasn't my server, I'd have had backups.]

In other news, pry the good bios chip of a dead mobo to place on top of a fried bios chip (bad flash) long enough to boot into the next bios re-flash.

Sometimes the server room looks more like the Red Green show than anything else....

Re:Jeez.

[Mycroft_VIII]

Somtimes it's pure luck though. I've had a monitor catch fire while online, yet other than the slight flames comming out the monitor issue everything was working just fine. Well at least for 30 seconds or so it took to figure out what that odd noise and smell was + 10 or seconds to believe it and pull the plug.
I'm always being called by friends to fix thier computers (or anything remotely electronic) and somtimes they turn it on and it's broke, but I get within 5 feet of it and it works perfect till I leave.
I've had friends explain what they did to fix a problem I've verified exists, and yet if I do it it mysteriously works.
Now most of the time I do have to figure it out to fix it, but this sort of 'luck' happens often enough to give one a certain reputation.
Of course there is a small price to pay, I've never had a wristwatch last more than 3 months, ever. Somtimes just quiting for NO reason what so-ever including once when one quit just as I put it on, still in the store.

Mycroft

Re:Jeez.

[Mycroft_VIII]

"Sometimes the server room looks more like the Red Green show than anything else.... "

"If you can't duck it, fuck it."- Red Green referenceing his current duck-tape Rube Goldberg contraption/repair.

Mycroft

Re:Jeez.

[CProgrammer98]

Quick! Someone call MIB... He's an alien!!!

Re:Jeez.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty common, you probably emit some of those

imacs don't hold beer..

[joeldg]

found out one time that an iMac keyboard can hold exactly one pint of beer...

at least it had a use for something..

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[Psiren]

So, how much *can* it hold? Inquiring minds want to know... ;-)

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[Anonymous Coward]

EXACTLY ONE PINT. Sheesh.

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[joeldg]

one pint..
but not very well at all i might add...

poor little mono-clicker never worked again..
fried the entire thing..

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[Psiren]

Sorry, misread it as can't hold a pint. Usual excuse, shitty day, not enough sleep etc.

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[Anonymous Coward]

an iMac keyboard can hold exactly one pint of beer...

That's how much it can hold, apparently. HTH

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[abborren]

Any idea where one can find liquid-proof keyboards?

I've ruined way too many keyboards by spilling various types of drinks in them :( One thing I've learnt though is that coke is many times worse than (sugar-free) coffee. Coke in a keyboard almost surely means instant death whereas coffee is not as harmful.

I repaired a coke-attacked Microsoft Natural keyboard once (it was a pain!), and it seems to me that it shouldn't be too difficult to design a fairly liquid-safe keyboard.

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[zogger]

They make "industrial" grade keyboards (and computers) that are designed to work in very dirty conditions. I guess you can google for them. I never used them, but have seen a few, but I don't know any brand names to recommend.

I sloshed some stuff, can't remember now, might have been iced coffee, onto a mac keyboard a long time ago. I took it ouside and opened it up and blasted it out with a hose and let it sun dry for aday. It worked fine then.

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[grepistan]

Coke is instant death in a whole lot of organisms! A friend of mine wrote off a brand new PS2 controller by allowing it to fall off a table into a pint glass of coke. Not good.

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[Mycroft_VIII]

The also sell 'spill covers' for keyboards. Basically soft,clear plastic molded overlays that protects the keyboard.

Mycroft

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[bsartist]

I've had good luck with putting keyboards in the top rack of the dishwasher. Just make sure to let them dry *completely* before you try to use them again.

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[SEWilco]

found out one time that an iMac keyboard can hold exactly one pint of beer...

But how do you hold it, and where do you drink from?

Re:imacs don't hold beer..

[hesiod]

> The also sell 'spill covers' for keyboards

AKA, "Keyboard Condom"

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Summary of article:

[nekoniku]

"I shouldn'ta broke off the white thingie."

Re:Summary of article:

[AKAImBatman]

"I shouldn'ta broke off the white thingie."

You know, when I read that, I just kept thinking "He knocked out the cord to the power supply, didn't he?" Of course, he never tells us. One day it's broken, next day he plugs in a new fan and it works. Go figure.

Re:Summary of article:

[jtosburn]

Do you think that that's what Loreena Bobbit told the police?

Re:Summary of article:

[numark]

Nah, he mentions at the end that it took him, among other things, one new motherboard to fix the problem. Why he bored us with the inane details of buying a new case and the thrilling, X-TREME! process of hunting down that elusive part, the heatsink, while not telling us about his search for a motherboard is beyond me. Quite frankly, the guy's not exactly all there, based on his reaction to many of the "problems" he faced.

Re:Summary of article:

[BufferArea]

Boy, that guy better be careful going to the bathroom!

Bad times

[keybsnbits]

I sympathize with this man's problems that have to do with computer temps. It's very hard to get the hot air to flow out, instead of having a mish-mosh of air currents within your case. If fans wouldn't work for him, you could just go the hardcore road of water cooling... none of that "hot air" is involved, although a conventional water cooling system is much more expensive then fans. Its the ever debated balance between $$ and quality.

Re:Bad times

[stratjakt]

Take all the case fans off your case. Your PC will run fine, even if you have a fancy 3.4 ghz megalon 2000 processor.

All that water cooling and fan stuff is case modder idiocy.

Not that a case fan isn't a good idea, but it's hardly as important as the moron sites make them out to be.

Re:Bad times

[jelizondo]

Read the first line and tought:

What the hell does computer temporary employees have to do with the article?

Need to get off slashdot...

Re:Bad times

[Psymunn]

umm... this guy can't get fan size right (let alone check for dust in his origional fan). i really don't think that installing a water cooling system is really the task he should be assigned.

Re:Bad times

[BobaFett]

If you just have a processor, you can probably do without the case fans, there are plenty of PCs made with just CPU cooler from boxed Athlon and a standard power supply and no other cooling, and they work ok.
You need case fans if you have other heat-producing hardware in the case. Say, you have a high-end 3D video card, and RAID from 6 hard drives. Now you need to vent hot air from the case, and you need to maintain circulation to avoid hot spots (which probably means blowing air onto the hard drives).
As for water cooling, the whole point of that is noise, not cooling capacity. Numerous tests by folks from sites like TomsHardware and Anandtech show that the best water coolers cool may be a tad better than the best air coolers, and the mediocre water coolers can be beat with a good air cooler. But there is no comparison on the noise. You can even get a perfectly silent water cooler, Zalman Reserator, with no fans in it at all (does not solve the problem of cooling the rest of your stuff, only the CPU and may be video card).

Re:Bad times

[Beardo the Bearded]

I think keybsnbits is trying to encourage the writer to mix large amounts of current with lots of water. We already know that he doesn't ground himself properly.

Re:Bad times

[tomhudson]

stratjakt wrote

Take all the case fans off your case. Your PC will run fine, even if you have a fancy 3.4 ghz megalon 2000 processor.

Maybe for most computers, but the office I'm sitting in now has 3 computers, include 1 server with 17 GPUs + 1 CPU sitting in 1 case, and it warms up the whole room. Without a bunch of extra fans blowing air into the box, it would quickly go over 100 C.

Re:Bad times

[Anonymous Coward]

I sympathize with this man's problems that have to do with computer temps. It's very hard to get the hot air to flow out, instead of having a mish-mosh of air currents within your case. If fans wouldn't work for him, you could just go the hardcore road of water cooling...

Ah, yes, the "Well, that didn't work, so instead of trying to understand what went wrong I'll try a completely different and much more complex approach and see what happens" school of problem-solving...

Re:Bad times

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Water cooling generally isn't necessary.

What is needed is a fan duct. By retrospect, Apple's "zone" cooling doesn't seem so bad, every device that generates a fair amount of heat gets its own fresh air. Of course, now Apple has limited liquid cooling too, for the CPUs only.

Re:Bad times

[gl4ss]

recommending watercooling to that guy == BAD IDEA.

with watercooling there is still 'hot air', just at a different location, it doesn't magically get rid of the heat.

for normal applications with normal requirements there is no need for going watercooling, ever. you can get even reasonably quiet system without going the water route.

all that being said during the time i've been watercooling it has gone remarkably easier over the years for a new starter, because of all the information available(watch out though! there's big piles of misinformation flying around as well).

but still, watercooling IS NOT FOR THE GUY WHO CHECKS SANDRA BEFORE THINKING ABOUT PULLING THE PLUG.

Re:Bad times

[Halfbaked Plan]

Has Apple fixed the problem in the G5 yet where the fans are controlled by some intricate dab of MacOSedness, and if you install and run a non MacOS on your G5 all 27 (or are there 47?) fans spin up at their default full-speed?

Re:Bad times

[Lehk228]

I have a radeon 9700 pro, 2 HDD's (WD1000 and WD2000, 100 and 200 gigs @7200RPM) Athlon XP 2200+ all running inside a rather small eMachines Case (newer design case, with vents along the bottom edge of the removable left panel) all the heat seems to flow out nicely from the PSU fan alone

Re:Bad times

[Mycroft_VIII]

That happens to be one of my favorite methods!
Of course only when a)it's mine, thus no-one is paying me to play around. and b) I admit to myself I'm really just playing around and hoping to fix it by accident as an afterthought more than anything else.

Mycroft

Re:Bad times

[Squozen]

Why is the failure of another OS to control the fans correctly Apple's problem? They work fine with the OS Apple supply and support.

Re:Bad times

[Anonymous Coward]

I sympathize with this man's problems that have to do with computer temps. It's very hard to get the hot air to flow out


Just ask them what their favourite booth at Computex was.

Re:Bad times

[Firethorn]

Actually, the last thing you want to do when playing with large amounts of water and current is to ground yourself. It gives the current a path through you to ground.

Matter of fact, I've read that most fatal electricutions occur when the person tries to lift the appliance out of the water...

Re:Bad times

[hesiod]

> Why is the failure of another OS to control the fans correctly Apple's problem?

Because it's a design flaw, or at least a dumb idea.

Re:Bad times

[Halfbaked Plan]

It's just yet another example of how Apple continues to flaunt their closed-source hardware designs.

Whatever happened to the 'fans are bad' philosophy at Apple? Oh, right. The fanless design failed almost immediately. I remember those $350 addon fans that Apple users had to install in the 'chimney' hand-hold hole of their Mac Plus to keep it from heat-crashes. My SE/30s definitely have a fan inside.

Let's see...

[geeber]

Knocks parts off the motherboard, wasn't grounded, refused to measure fan sizes before buying them. And I am still only halfway through the article. Can be summed up in one sentence:

Feckin' eejits shouldn't mess around inside the computer!

Re:Let's see...

[eeg3]

If everyone followed that rule, 90% of slashdot wouldn't be able to touch a computer, let alone mess around inside it. Wait a second, I like that rule!

I kid, I kid... :)

Re:Let's see...

[rpozz]

I've built literally hundreds of computers, all working fine. Using a grounding strap is quite over-rated. As long as you aren't wearing nylon or wool clothing, simply touching a metal part of the case will be fine. In fact, I've never seen any component fried because of static when being removed/installed.

The 'white bit' that he knocked off was probably why the motherboard fried.

Re:Let's see...

[niittyniemi]

A sample from the FA:

> I'm not sure exactly what killed my motherboard. During the process of
> taking it out of the old case, I knocked a white doohickey thing clean
> off the motherboard. It was attached one minute and then it fell off
> the next. "Oh well, screw it...can't be that important," I thought to
> myself as I ripped the motherboard out of the old case and started
> putting it into the new case.

I think the article can be paraphrased as: "Look at me, I don't care!"

Re:Let's see...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've built literally hundreds of computers, all working fine. Using a grounding strap is quite over-rated. As long as you aren't wearing nylon or wool clothing, simply touching a metal part of the case will be fine. In fact, I've never seen any component fried because of static when being removed/installed.

Just because a component still works after being exposed to static electricity doesn't mean no damage has been done. This page has a picture of the damage that static electricity does to the surface of a silicon die.

Sometimes the static charge will only take a bite out part of a track instead of the whole track. While it will still work the life of the component has been shortened. The narrowing of the track will lead to heat build up at that point which can eventually lead to failure. As static damage is cumulative the component has a greater chance of failing the next time it receives a minor zap.

A static strap only costs a few dollars and only takes a few seconds to put on.

Re:Let's see...

[Halfbaked Plan]

Components aren't necessarily 'fried' by static. More often, mild 'latent static damage' occurs. A few pins on random chips within the circuit suffer partial damage. They become 'leaky' and inputs draw more current. The system slowly deteriorates from random mysterious problems.

Hot dogs who obsolete everything at six month intervals might not notice this sort of damage. The rest of us would.

so lame

[XMichael]

Geeze, who is the author of this lame article. Should I start writing articles about my trip to the grocery store? I wounder if I could get published, well at least I could get slashdotted...

*sigh* this articles so lame, it just makes me laugh to hard.

Re:so lame

[saintp]

You're probably not a big enough fucktard to get published. You'd have to make a really stupid trip to the grocery store.

"So I went back to the store for the fifth time -- I still didn't have enough limes! Who would have thought that you needed more than one to make a batch of margaritas?

"On the way back, I accidentally ran over the bag of limes with my car, but figured it probably wouldn't matter. A little gravel never hurt anything, after all.

"I finally got back to my house, dumped all the limes in the blender, hit on -- nothing happened! I eventually figured out you have to plug it in, or something like that."

Yeesh.

Re:so lame

[XMichael]

... when I got home, I review the recipe; I completely screwed up, after 5 trips getting limes, I actually need lemons all along!

... yahh

Re:so lame

[rjamestaylor]

I found the problem. If you look at the picture of the 'tard's arm you'll see it, too.

Yes, he's an overweight hairy Neanderthal.

There is one very useful purpose for this article: it proves that any article posted by a "competing" web site to Slashdot will become a page one story on Slashdot.

Re:so lame

[Tackhead]

> "So I went back to the store for the fifth time -- I still didn't have enough limes! Who would have thought that you needed more than one to make a batch of margaritas?
>
> "On the way back, I accidentally ran over the bag of limes with my car, but figured it probably wouldn't matter. A little gravel never hurt anything, after all.
>
> "I finally got back to my house, dumped all the limes in the blender, hit on -- nothing happened! I eventually figured out you have to plug it in, or something like that."

Turns out the power was out from the storms we've had lately. I'd forgotten about that in all the excitement over dumping the limes in the blender.

So I went to Home Depot and got a portable generator, plugged it into the mains without isolating anything, and *BAM*, nearly killed the lineman fixing the downed wire three houses down the street.

I offered him a gravelly margarita for his trouble. He seemed annoyed at me. Strange.

Re:so lame

[Anonymous Coward]

So after plugging it in and running the blender, it started making crunching and scraping noises. Who knew I should have removed the gravel from the limes? Now the blades are dull and everything is a mess.

Re:so lame

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, you know, it was a really big lime. Much bigger than those keylimes they had. And I was only making like 10 margiretias. I put the limes behind the rear tires so they wouldn't roll away. Except I put everythign else away and forgot about them being there until I go home. Limes are supposed to be smashed to make mixed drinks right? So like if they were run over they were ready for the blender. The gravel would aid in the mixing down process like in the stomaches of birds that purposely swallow pebbles. Then the gravel would sink to the bottom and wouldn't actually end up in the drinks. I didn't need to worry about the germs, because alcohol is such a great antiseptic. I thought the blender was rechargable. Like on the package it didn't show the plug, so I thought it was battery operated. I think the trials of my labor simply made it a better margerita experince for my guests. I told them the story after they were about half way threw it. They were laughing for most of it. Then they had a funny look on their face. I'm not sure why. In any case they said that I wouldn't have to make them drinks next time. Less work for me.

Boring

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is not only extremely boring, it is also badly written and spiced with some very annoying editor comment. But then again, who RTFAs around Slashdot anyway... ;)

Hit Print to read this story

[cacheMan]

This and many other sites like it offer a Print option that puts the whole story on one page. With the likelyhood that slashdot is going to take this site to task, it would be a good idea to get it all on one page before you start reading. That way, you won't get blue mouse trying to get to page 2.

Re:Hit Print to read this story

[silicon not in the v]

This and many other sites like it offer a Print option that puts the whole story on one page. With the likelyhood that slashdot is going to take this site to task, it would be a good idea to get it all on one page before you start reading. That way, you won't get blue mouse trying to get to page 2.

I noticed how slow it was to pull page 2 and was afraid of it getting /.ed, so I went through and opened page 3,4,5,etc. in new tabs. I really don't like pages like this. The story isn't that long; it's basically just text, but they have to spread it out over several pages because they want you to look at 3 billion ads. I swear the story probably took only about 20% of the screen real estate on that crappy site.

About the story, he must have really been desperate for a story. "Whoa! My deadline is tomorrow. I'd better come up with a humorous anecdote to share with my audience or risk losing my job."

"And then when reaching for my new heatsink, I knocked the whole computer off the desk. It hit so hard it broke the case in two! HA HA I was incapacitated with laughter."

Food fight with spritzer bottles?

[sammyo]

I dunno, I tried real hard on a graphics card comparison to kill a board, swapping cards fast, and, oops, forgot to power off before reboot...

That was several years ago and all the boards survived. Buy quality components is probably the best lesson!

Re:Food fight with spritzer bottles?

[gotr00t]

No its not! A year after much manhandling and absolutely no protection, no caution, and sometimes just intentionally being dumb (swapping non-hot swappable disk drives, adding/removing memory while it was still up) with an ECS motherboard (which I got for $40 new, the brand is absouletly TERRIBLE) nothing bad has happened.

And this board, it is the exact opposite of "quality" because it _came_ with IDE channel 0 broken and some other problems that I had to work around.

Re:Food fight with spritzer bottles?

[ckaminski]

Lucky bastard. My first ECS K7S5Apro caught FIRE the first time I powered it up. Yup, a pair of doohickies (resistors) between the dimm sockets just burst into flames...

Lucky bastard. 2 drop shipments later (the second one arrived DOA, and the 3rd from a different reseller), and I said Fuck-All and bought an ASuS A7V600-x instead. Much happier.

1000+ machine builds to my name, and never once had one caught fire on me...

I'll agree with the poster

[Weaselmancer]

It should stand as a shining example of What Not to Do for DIYers everywhere.

You betcha. Here are some gems:

When I returned, I smelled the distinct odor of something burning. -snip- Just for the heck of it, I checked the temperature of my motherboard with SiSoft Sandra.

Mistake number 1. If you smell smoke, go for the plug, not Sandra!!

You knocked off a "white doohickey" and didn't check to see if it was something that was soldered to the board?

Yeah, that could be a problem. Learn the names of your doohickeys, at least. Then post here - we could use the giggles.

Re:I'll agree with the poster

[MagiGraphX]

Could've been worse. He could've said dongle.

Re:I'll agree with the poster

[Merle Corey]

Mistake number 1. If you smell smoke, go for the plug, not Sandra!!

Mistake 1a: If for some reason you go for software after smelling the smoke, don't compound the error by then posting dumbass questions on a tech forum.

I can just see the next "Ask Slashdot" now: "I'm on fire. Should I get a bigger fan or try out some of that fancy water-cooling?"

Re:I'll agree with the poster

[stanmann]

Couldn't be a dongle... Dongles plug into the back of the computer not the motherboard.

DUH

Boy

[Otter]

I'm not sure exactly what killed my motherboard. During the process of taking it out of the old case, I knocked a white doohickey thing clean off the motherboard. It was attached one minute and then it fell off the next. "Oh well, screw it...can't be that important," I thought to myself as I ripped the motherboard out of the old case and started putting it into the new case.

The first time I built a computer, I figured that if a few of those metal support posts were good, more would be better. That's why they gave me a whole bag, right? I assembled the system and it wouldn't start. I did some troubleshooting, succesfully booted with the board out of the case and eventually solved the problem.

That's as dumb as I've gotten -- perhaps I should be writing for ExtremeTech instead? I know my first response to trouble isn't to ask in a forum what new heat sink will make me more 1337.

Re:Boy

[Konowl]

That's funny, I did the exact same thing about 8 years ago when I was 18. I was building my second computer ever... I installed the mounting screws and then installed EXTRA ones, as in behind the ISA slots the motherboard tended to "bend".

I never thought, of course... metal conducts electricity. However, find the source of my problem took about 4-5 hours. No matter what I did, what I unplugged and reinstalled, I would turn the computer on, and it would continiously reboot itself.

I was getting so frustrated. And then I realized the extra mounting screw, took it out, and voila. Hours of my life, wasted.

Doh.

Re:Boy

[traveyes]

A friend of mine bought an ASUS P4 mb here a few months back. I walked him through installing it in his new fancy case. I thought he understood.

Well, the next day at work, he's got the mb box under one arm, and an RMA in the other.

"What happened?"

"Well, I put the motherboard in the case like you said. I was a little hard getting it in, but I got it in and screwed it down. You were right, it was obvious where the screws went.... But they woudln't screw into anything so I just went ahead and plugged in all the cables like you said, and the power, etc.... But when I turned on the power it made a loud buzzing sound and there was a little smoke."

"Holy shit." I said.

He didn't use the little brass posts. The motherboard was flat-out grounded against the case.

I thought it was common sense.... I was wrong. Some people should stick to playing games.

.

Re:Boy

[ByteSlicer]

Hours of my life, wasted.

Good thing you have /. for that now ;-)

Re:Boy

[Nuttles]

I work with the parent posts author and I will verify that at least 25% of our company could do this AND WE ARE A SOFTWARE COMPANY!!!

Re:Boy

[Creepy]

I can relate, but I knew better than to put all the posts in - I just didn't know they all didn't match up to a hole and put two too many in. Thankfully, it didn't damage the board, it just didn't work until I took the extraneous posts out.

Later, on a different board, I had a clip stand (or whatever those things are called - the alternate for posts - because the mobo maker didn't use the standard ATX post holes) that came loose and bent, hitting a far-too-close solder connection and blowing the board. I now use electrical tape to tape those things down whenever I have to use them as well as insulate the connection.

The other problem I've had is a fairly early revision of a board that defaulted to CAS 2.5 when using dual-channel memory, and I only had cheap memory handy (I got some Kingston Value Select DDR for $65 for a Gig from a friend who works as a wholesaler). I first tried the 100MHz bus without luck, then as a last resort, I tried a stick of PC2100 I had handy, and it booted. I then made all the changes necessary in BIOS, shut down, inserted the gig of CAS 3 memory, and reboot (which worked). Too bad I couldn't find CAS 2.5 or CAS 2 memory for less than $130 when I was looking - I needed the extra dough to put into my graphics card (which is much more important than RAM latencies in a gaming PC, at least usually).

Re:Boy

[Asterisk]

I used to work an a computer shop, and one of the new hires -- whose job was assembling PCs -- did exactly this.

This was back when everyone used AT cases and boards, so thankfully there was no damage, since he'd come to me asking "why won't the keyboard plug fit in the port?" before trying to turn it on.

Re:Boy

[pclminion]

He didn't use the little brass posts. The motherboard was flat-out grounded against the case.

I've done this one. Luckily, the system simply wouldn't boot. No damage done :-)

Re:Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show you that people who are new to PC building don't have the same things on their mental stack. Because you had seen PCs before, or deconstructed them, you knew about the brass posts. If someone had never torn a PC apart or put one together, I can see why they would overlook this. It's just like naling 2x4's together, right?

Re:Boy

[silas_moeckel]

Ah the reason why programmers should not be allowed near hardware. Thats a general rule. Programmers with degrees in EE can touch hardware otherwise they dont have a clue.

The other reason is if programmers are allowed near hardware they will start to blame hardware for there issues.

Re:Boy

[Tmack]

Having worked as a computer repair tech, you would be supprised at the number of people that would buy barebone kits from us one day, and be back later that day or the next saying it wouldn't work. Most of the time it was that exact problem... screwing the Mobo to the case without standoffs. Luckily with the ATX boards we used, it tended to short the power jumper and the power connector, so pushing the power button didnt do anything. The other fun ones to fix were the ones where they painted the CPU in thermal grease (as in, everything under the heatsink got a good coat, enough to fill the gap) and complained that it would only work for a few minutes at a time (hated scraping that crap off), and the ones that would buy the most expensive CPU/Mobo, but get the cheapest power supply or buy a case w/PS and bring it back dead within the week. Most common non-software/C-K-I computer failure is dead PS.

Tm

Re:Boy

[dmullenaux]

I too had a friend of mine try to build his own computer. Once he told me the processor kept falling out everytime he raised the tower, I relized that the concept of the lever on the zif socket could be confusing. I'm just impressed he had the sence enough to call before trying to get the heatsink on!

Re:Boy

[DigitalHammer]

Haha, wow, I did the same thing while building my comp a few weeks ago. Thankfully, my components didnt fry.

Re:Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmers with degrees in EE can touch hardware

What the hell is that? Elitist Engineering?

It doesn't take EE-degree knowledge to fuck around with modern PC hardware. Screw the elitist prick who gave you even a single mod point.

Re:Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying the most expensive CPU/mobo - customer's choice. Buying the cheapest PS - bad judgement. Selling a PS of such bad quality that the seller is aware it will break other hardware within a week, no matter how cheap it is - simply unethical.

Strangely enough, I did exactly the same thing with my previous PC (1998): bought a non-brand PSU but otherwise then top-of-the-line components. The PSU failed after about 3 months, blowing the mobo with it, but the replacement (same model, doh.. blame my teenager-y cluelessness) then went on to last along with all the other components until.. well, they're still all working, although the PC was decommissioned from regular use about 6 months ago.

This time round, I bought an Antec TrueBlue and BackUPS CS 500, cos I don't want another infant death even under warranty, and PCs these days run hotter - the PSU chosen makes a lot of difference. What's more, a good PSU is much cheaper in the long run, because it's likely more power-efficient.

Re:Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a lot of people around here try and run dev boards bare, flat on antistat mats or conductive bags. Then wonder why they don't work any more...

Re:Boy

[Hognoxious]

The only thing more dangerous a than manager who thinks he can program is a programmer with a soldering iron.

Not that you nbeed a soldering iron much these days ... perhaps that's why.

Re:Boy

[stanmann]

If a programmer can't put a motherboard into a case and install it correctly, he likely shouldn't be programming either. I've been programming for as long as I've been building boxes. And I know you can buy as cheap as build these days, but I want to know exactly what's going into my box. Altho I must agree that the brass and screws tend to be a major PITA.

However nothing works to secure the MB as well. and changing MBs or cases that have been hard installed with those stupid plastic risers in every slot drive me completely batty.

Re:Boy

[Tmack]

The "cheapo" power supplies were exactly that: cheap. The store sold them for $19, simply so they could advertise having power supplies for $19, matching/beating what other local stores sold them for as well. Its not that they would inevitably die, they can last a long time on older systems. Its that when used on more powerfull systems, such as what these customer's would purchase, they simply did not provide the power needed. Trust me, we would much rather have sold them the more powerfull high-quality Sparkle or HEC PS as those had a higher profit margin and guaranteed less warantee work, and we would warn them about the PS they selected. But alot of times the customer was stubborn and as you know, "customer is always right". Those customers would be back for a new one in a day or two. It got to the point where the store only offered a DOA warrantee on them (yes, customers were plenty warned about that as well), because customers would go for the cheap ones and come back for replacements repeatedly.

As a side note, the cheapo PS's I mention were normally pulled from cases we used to build higher end PC's. Since we knew they wouldnt last long with such systems, we replaced them with better quality ones. Tip: dont buy a case/PS combo and expect to use the PS, unless you know what specific PS you are getting.

One of the best selling points was having the customer hold the "300W" cheap PS with a true 300watt Sparkle/HEC. The weight difference alone makes you feel more comfortable with the better quality one.

Most common failure on PS's: exploding capacitors. Symptom: turn on your PC one day and hear a loud POP and smell smoke. If you open the PS, you will find the Capicitor Cap rattling around inside with bits of paper and foil.

Tm

Thank You.

[Psyko]

I'm so happy that there are so many people out there like this, otherwise a lot of us would have to go out and get real jobs...

Re:Thank You.

[randyest]

No doubt. Moreover, during the lulls in fixing that which was broken by morons, we can just keep thinking up dumb "modz" to sell the lunkheads:

I also love the see-through door. I'll never, ever own a case without one again. I like being able to peek in and check up on my components. I can check what's going on without the bother of having to remove the door.

Check what's going on?! Not much, unless you are awed by fans spinning and semiconunductors sitting motionless on immobile printer circuit boards. What a stupid thing to say. But then again, I suppose if one is in the habit of ignoring "thingys" that one knocks off of one's mobo, that glass window might show some interesting firewroks.

Dolt, that author is.

Re:Thank You.

[mcrbids]

01:36AM up 126 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05

Oh yeah? Try THIS on for size...

4:40pm up 189 days, 22:17, 5 users, load average: 0.11, 0.16, 0.10

My personal record is over 400 days, and it would have been more except that the server had to be moved.

(Going back to work, now...)

Re:Thank You.

[Michael Hunt]

12:55PM up 618 days, 17:52, 15 users, load averages: 0.92, 0.93, 0.70

Sparcstation 4, 128MB ram, 4.3GB HP SCA disk. Bought it for $40 off some dude on ebay, put NetBSD on it, never needed to be touched except to patch libssl a couple of times when SSH vulnerabilities surfaced.

Re:Thank You.

[sp0rk173]

Pfftt... oh yeah?

11:57PM up 2 days, 8:09, 4 users, load averages: 1.02, 1.05, 1.00

I so kicked your ass.

Oh, and...

5:05PM up 59 days, 10:42, 1 user, load averages: 0.27, 0.12, 0.09

OH YEAH!
Huh...now that i look at that...i should probably run ntpdate on my router. It was 5:05 PM 6 hours 52 minutes ago.

Re:Thank You.

[Anubis350]

here here!
I for one make my spending money (being a poor college student) from fixing peoples computers and teaching them how to use it. If we had less people like this I'd be out of a joband therefore a significant amount of money.

Re:Thank You.

[Anonymous Coward]

we can just keep thinking up dumb "modz" to sell the lunkheads

No posters on your wall? Decorations in your house? Style in your clothes (ok, that's not a geeky trademark)? Toys in your bedroom, electronic or otherwise? Do you visit Slashdot only for utilitarian rather than entertainment value?

Perhaps you ought to regard your customers more highly. Hm, I wonder if doctors also walk around discussing how stupid their patients are not to be able to diagnose and treat their own illnesses.

Ironically, all mods I've made to my case have utilitarian and aesthetic value, for example:

1. a spacious, elegant Chieftec case with all sorts of bits allowing easy removal/addition of kit (they OEM the Lanboy's, IIRC) and other nice features such as place to fit a fan to blow over the hard drive;
2. cable wrap to improve airflow;
3. some reliable Thermaltake-branded quiet case fans vs random sleeve-bearing break-after-a-year ones;
4. a Zalman passive graphics card cooler (1. no mechanical breakdown causing overheating 2. quieter);
5. a Thermaltake copper-base CPU heatsink, with Panaflo Hydrowave style slits to keep the thing running quiet, and cooler(*);
6. Zalman passive northbridge chipset cooler - bliss with no more 40mm fan buzzzzz, and again less chance of mechanical failure (indeed, that fan was the only part of my original setup that started going bad);
7. Antec TrueBlue PSU - ooo, it comes with blue LEDs, but more importantly it's a reliable PSU with separate voltage rails, active PFC, inner extraction fan, good voltage regulation - this particular addition measurably reduces my computer's power usage (cheaper electricity), makes my system run so much cooler(*) that you can *feel* the difference on the case.
8. APC UPS - swiped this from the office. Is it overkill for a workstation? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but it includes anti-surge/anti-spike, and I've had filesystem corruption *even on ext3* before.
9. Cold cathode - no, my case doesn't have a window, and this light only goes on when I need to open the case and check something. Actually, this was my most frivolous purchase, and I've only ever used it when I want to show people my system. Oh well, $4 wasted ;).

(*) I've starred the word "cooler" because I'm aware that motherboard monitors are unreliable and that the window of what makes for safe temperature is large. So, a bit of subjectivity is in order - I am aware fast RPM drives get hot, I buy a case with space for an inlet fan to blow immediately over the hard drive, and I feel the drive noticeably cooler when the fan's been running. My data is worth the "risk" that that mod might have been a waste of money because component failure might not be due to heat stress over time, even though I keep backups etc etc.

NB I have a long upgrade cycle - at least 5 years - so I make sure to get the best components and built a machine which allows them to last.

Heart Pounding

[MikeDawg]

My heart started pounding as I first opened the page. I saw the exact same case I am slowly building into my dream system (well. . . ok, so I only have the case, and power supply, but one day, it will be my dream system). BTW. . . I don't like his harsh comments about the case, he should have known by the posted diminsions and specs that it wasn't a light little case.

Maybe I should start writing articles for various computer tech sites, I have more experience (as I am sure most of /. does) than this guy.

This article all in all is okay for any beginner that is considering building his own system, but by know means is there anything worthwhile for a professional.

Re:Heart Pounding

[mobby_6kl]

The article seems to be somewhat retarded anyway, so I hope nobody minds some OT.

Is it a Chieftec? The case surely looks like Chieftec Dragon. Some details are different though so I'm not sure. I noticed it because I'm a proud owner of a black Matrix case.
I must say I'm very pleased with the overall quality and construction: no screws to open the side door, easey to remove the front door and panel, etc. I wouldn't agree that it's ugly, but it is heavy - about 16kg or 35(?) pounds *empty*, and now with 3 dvdrw/cdrw/cdrom drives, a few disk, racks and other stuff is a almost unmovable. Oh yeah it is a full/big tower =)

My guess

[daeley]

The reason the motherboard started smoldering? The CPU maxed when he tried to load one of that site's webpages. It's impossible to pick out any actual content on that page amongst all the adverts, links, and folderol.

Re:My guess

[ncc74656]

The reason the motherboard started smoldering? The CPU maxed when he tried to load one of that site's webpages. It's impossible to pick out any actual content on that page amongst all the adverts, links, and folderol.

The ad-blocking lizard is your friend.

Re:My guess

[gl4ss]

no adblocking you'll ever do will increase the amount of content on that site though.

Re:My guess

[vrt3]

On many sites including that one, it helps a great deal if you click 'Print this page' or something to that effect and read that instead. In this case: http://www.extremetech.com/print_article/0,1583,a= 130946,00.asp.

Re:My guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla or Firefox,
+ AdBlock will make this and similars very readable :-)

If you are a retard, don't build computers

[hattig]

^^ Overview of the moral of the story.

Seriously, "white doohickey" ... :wtf:

Yeah, I've done the "install heatsink after motherboard" thing in a tight case, and it wasn't amazingly fun but I just calmly did it. Approaching anything in a hurry will lead to a fuck up ... cooking, DIY, car repair.

On burning motherboards & cooling

[ultrabot]

Quite often, fans on motherboard (north bridge, to be exact) are redundant. Those fans also make a lot of annoying whining noise (obviously, being small & all).

I replaced mine with just a heatsink, and so far everything's been fine. Almost broke my motherboard in the replacement process, of course.

So next time you are shopping for a motherboard - ensure that there is *no* fan on the north bridge. Overclocking the north bridge is so 90's anyway ;-).

he refers to things as white do-hickeys?

[aberant]

Well this should be your first sign.. i'm not saying that you have to be an electrical engineer to plug some PC boards together, but atleast spend 30 seconds on google to find out what it those capacitors are. I know he's prolly joking, but as simple as microsoft and apple try to make them, certain aspects of PC's are far from simple, so my suggestion is atleast have SOME familiarity before your act suprised that it blows up.

Re:Stop it

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac's dont let you feel the geek-feeling, if you destroy them.

Whatever you say. Gimp RulZ anyway

In other news

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Area man who didn't know anything about cars filled up his radiator with motor oil and overheated his engine. News at 11...

What Not to Do

[ackthpt]

What Not to Do:

Eat while working on PCs

Attempt to wash circuit boards, unless you have a ready source of de-ionized water, and it's still iffy

Dry sensitive electronic components with a blowdryer with the heat on

Install/remove heatsinks with wrong tools. I nearly chopped one of those tiny resistor packs in half with a cruddy old screwdriver

Let dust accumulate until it looks like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag

Also, keep an eye on those electrolytic caps, in the past some leaked and caused a real mess.

In other news:
Every now and then Google News does something weird, I thought the combination of heading and article were interesting:

Buy and sell tickets to premium and sold out events
USA Today - 2 hours ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) Actor Marlon Brando was cremated after a private memorial service attended by a small group of family members and friends, his attorney said Wednesday.

Re:What Not to Do

[stratjakt]

You can wash a circuit board, just make sure it has ample time to dry out completely. I'm talking days to be safe, not minutes..

You're better off using alcohol, but hey, sometimes you get peanut butter and jelly all over your brand new Radeon card. Shit happens.

I've done so and been none the worse for wear.

Building PC's is the easiest thing in the world, all it takes is a little common sense.

Re:What Not to Do

[Aeiri]

Oh, days?

I once spilled an entire cup of water all over my GFX card. Took a paper towel, dried it off (minute max), and put it back in (yeah, stupid...).

It worked amazingly enough.

Just take your time

[Fiz Ocelot]

This is just a simple case of someone not having any patience and rushing everything. But to anyone who has never built a pc, it's actually very easy if you take your time and make sure you do things right.

There are some tips you should know, like installing the cpu and heatsink before the mobo is in the case. And making sure you screw in the mobo with the correct standoffs.

Re:Just take your time

[Sicnarf]

"with the correct standoffs" oh yeah. i once REPLACED a motherboard and forgot to take out the OLD standoffs! they interfered and the system couldn't access the harddrive, because of those standoffs. took us two days messing around, blaming windows (and linux) until we braught it to a store: "you forgot to remove the old standoffs" D'oh!

Re:Just take your time

[hackstraw]

This is just a simple case of someone not having any patience and rushing everything.

A motto that I follow is that its easier and cheaper to do it right the first time then two or more times half asked.

Re:Just take your time

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

You know, it's never all that easy in my experience. There's always some awkward to reach bit of plastic or metal you have to push in a direction that you can't reach or a screw where there's no room for a screwdriver or a bit of plastic you have to buy that nobody told you about, or the pieces that need to come apart and yet are more challenging to separate than the lid of a Japanese puzzle box.

Re:Just take your time

[JJahn]

Unless of course you have a Pentium 4 and are using the stock heatsink/fan combo. It takes about 10 seconds to install and if you follow the instructions even a first timer will find it really easy. Best part of the Pentium 4 (the rest kinda sucks ;-)

Re:Just take your time

[duckpoopy]

And never preview before posting :)

Re:Just take your time

[Jeff DeMaagd]

People scoff at manuals, but this is where it is important. Only when you do know your shit is when you ignore them, but for a first timer? Read the docs. It helps to have some common sense too.

Re:Just take your time

[ptlis]

For first timers? I've been building computers for years and if its a mobo I have not encoutered before i'll flip through the manual to the obligatory diagram just to make sure there's nothing weird I have to deal with.

Re:Just take your time

[Anonymous Coward]

no it's a simple case of a complete moron that thinks he can do something...

Like the losers in the poser-ricer car with the screwed on exaust tip and a nitrous kit that they are scared to even try because the idiots probably never ordered the right injector size or dont even HAVE an injector because they can get expensive.

The local junkyard here has lots of "tricked" hondas that have obliterated engines because of nimrods that think they know something, try it without reading anything or even trying to learn about it and ruin something expensive.

(ever see what a aftermarket turbo does to an engine if you dont install the intercooler?? "that part is expensive!" was the excuse. lots of detonation at high revs blows the hell out of aluminum and CroMo engine parts.)

there will always be really braindead people that "think" they know what they are doing. they dont, and they are way too stupid to read or learn first.

the real student or person trying to learn will read the fricking manuals and other information at least 5 times before they try it.

when I rebuilt my first engine I read the manuals at least 10 times and I had to STILL refer to it during the process...

and that is simple mchanics, not electronics!

Re:Just take your time

[stanmann]

The professionals, typically still refer to the manual in order to make sure they don't skip a step. It's just like building software, there is a step by step guide for a reason. And yes, if you are coding for fun/seat of your pants, you won't have any design to reference back to, but if you are getting paid, these days, you will have a complete skeleton of the system on paper before you start writing the functional code.

And it tends(long term) to save time to take the extra steps of planning before doing.

On behalf of many /. ers

[UnknowingFool]

let me say this:
[Nelson voice]
Ha ha!

Re:On behalf of many /. ers

[Anonymous Coward]

Marge, we don't have to call one of those expensive computer repair people. I can install a simple fan.

D'oh!

Long story short

[kensai]

If you don't know what you are doing, then either take it to or buy from someone who does. I mean come on, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out. I don't know how to fix cars, so do I fix my car when something breaks? No. I take it to a mechanic. Jeez, some people are really hurting in the common sense department.

Re:Long story short

[dvdeug]

If you don't know what you are doing, then either take it to or buy from someone who does.

That's no way to learn. You probably shouldn't be missing around on a computer you need for more important stuff, or if you can't afford to burn something out, but otherwise it can be an interesting and educational progress. Much better than sitting on your ass and watching what Hollywood or even Slashdot is feeding you for a few hours.

Re:Long story short

[hostyle]

No. Buy your first PC. Thats right. Buy one. When you get bored or it gets old start playing with the innards. Read the mobo manual. Unplug stuff to see what the connectors and slots look like. Put them all back in. Do this a few times. When you figure you know what each slot is and looks like and the box still boots after your messing around - take everything apart. Reassemble and consult your manual if its not working. When you finally understand all the components you may be capable of building your own system.

New heights for masochism

[mdielmann]

Used to be, back in the old days, if you were feeling a little masochistic you'd do a little bit of self-flagellation. Nowadays, you see if you can get a quarter million people to laugh at you all at once.

Fried memory

[Punk Walrus]

I lost a computer once after upgrading memory. I installed another SIMM and upon boot, zzzzzt*BAP! The CPU actually sparked and smoked. Unplugged system. The CPU was coated with some white powder. How the hell could I fry the CPU after a memory upgrade?

Later, I found that when I had put the memory in, one of the plastic pegs that separated the mobo from the metal case fell off and the half the mobo was touching the metal case. I am not sure which short circuited first, but... game over, man. Lost everything but the hard drives, CD-ROM, and floppy drive.

Re:Fried memory

[SoCalChris]

I had something similar happen at my previous job. One of the ladies computer's quit working, so we took out her hard drive to back up the data before giving her a new computer.

After we put her old drive in the new computer to copy data, we turned it on, and there was a loud pop, a small cloud of smoke, and a burning smell. Somehow the hard drive had shorted out the motherboard of the old and new computers. The pop on the new computer was a capacitor bursting. We ended up losing 2 motherboards, 2 cpus, 4 RAM chips, the hard drive, and everything that was stored on her local drive.

Re:Fried memory

[scharkalvin]

I can top that one. Back in the S100 days (age showing) I worked in a shop that sold and repaired Imsai's. The owner was working on a customers memory card in his imsai test bed. The box was open and the computer was running. He reached for his soldering iron, which had impailed a brillo pad used for cleaning the tip. The brillo pad flew through the air and landed in the imsai onto the mother board shorting out an unused s100 socket. FOURTH OF JULY!!!! Would you believe the only dead ic was an el-cheapo SN7400N on the front panel board? Talk about luck! Took me a few hours to fix it though armed only with a logic
probe and a schematic. Me good!

More Stunning Incompetence

[joeldg]

From the article, as a heading..
"More Stunning Incompetence"

yes.. that sums up this entire slashdot article and that article and everything on that page.

and this makes news today.. wow.. geeks everywhere must be finally getting laid..
*sigh*

sheesh

[cyrax777]

the only MB i fried blew a capictor and from what the tech people could tell it was just a bad part and nothing I could have done about it it was going to blow eventualy.

Re:sheesh

[satoshi1]

The tech people at my local computer store said it was heat that did that, the people at another store said that it would've happened anyway. It left a nice mark on the side of my tower though, capacitor guts everywhere!

Re:sheesh

[Michael Hunt]

Few jobs ago we had the misfortune to have incompetent management purchasing about 50 HP e-Vectras for staff without high-end computing requirements. (The e-vectra, in case you were unaware, was really small, and one of the space-saving considerations was moving the power supply outside the case, and putting a round DC jack on the back to accept power from a power brick.)

Fair enough, except that every employee also had a Cisco 7960 with a -48V power supply.

You can see where this is going. One of the not-so-tech-savvy office-admin types was moving desk, and decided to plug everything in herself instead of ringing the 'desk. Nice move.

When I opened the case after one of the desktop guys went and collected it, there was shredded condensor guts all through it (it looked kind of like metallic confetti.) By all accounts, every single capacitor on the entire motherboard had smoked.

I still have the motherboard as a souvenir. HP didn't want it back, and just charged us for a new one (they were only about $A500 at the time by virtue of being so crappy.)

The phone obviously didn't _work_ at 9V, but there didn't appear to be any damage to it either.

requiem indeed

[bersl2]

The ultimate lessons are "Use your head." and "Check and cross-check the specs."

you know

[HBI]

i've built dozens of computers since 1987 and have cracked the case on thousands of others, literally. I've never toasted a part but for once, and that was an improperly soldered CPU board on a Compaq Proliant 2500 back in 1996. A surface-mount capacitor just fell off the board. Warranty replacement - the system was brand new.

Now, i've seen bad boards, particularly in the lower quality side of the Taiwanese parts market back in the late 80s, when if you ordered 10 motherboards you might expect 2 or 3 to fail. Never got any, though. I hear the same thing is true with some of the cheaper SiS based boards today.

I don't think it's all luck. Quality parts selection and careful handling will take you a long way.

Re:you know

[Umrick]

Similar experience. Built 200+ machines (custom shop for 3 years), and worked on a bunch more... Only board/cpu I ever toasted was my first week when the manager handed me the mb/cpu (486/66) with cpu already in place as we were rushing.

*faint pop* and a low dense ground-fog kind of smoke on the mb later...

She put the cpu's in 180 degrees from proper... Probably why Intel started pin keying.

Like most of you, when I need a question answered,

[gl4ss]

***Like most of you, when I need a question answered, I usually hop right into the forum. The ET forum is blessed with the presence of many extremely experienced DIY people who almost always have helpful suggestions or at least a definite point of view on DIY issues.
***

welll, it might shock you but if the question is "what's burning??" I DON'T CHECK INTO THE FORUMS as the first thing, I'm kind of old fashioned in the sense that in a case like that I turn off the computer and see wtf is wrong with it..

This guy is a dumbass.

[cpeikert]

Wow, he knocked a 'white doohickey' off his motherboard, walked around with it while his arm hairs were standing up straight from static electricity, and still expected the thing to work? What a chump. But not nearly as chumpy as someone who would do these things (i.e., me, with my first DIY system):

1. jammed a DIMM in backwards (this is hard -- the slot is asymmetric to avoid this very thing), turned the machine on, and quickly smelled the sweet smell of burning plastic as the DIMM holder melted, then tried to turn the machine off but forgot that you have to hold the power button down for several seconds, and stinking up the entire house before just pulling the damn plug...

2. vacuumed the dust out of the inside of the case while the machine was running, accidentally tapping the spinning CPU fan with the tip of the vacuum attachment, and snapping one of the fan blades off, making it spin out of control like a unbalanced centrifuge and making a horrible loud noise...

3. speculated that random machine crashes were being caused by a poorly-mounted heat sink, so removed the sink and turned the machine on, heard a loud "BEEEEEEP" and no start-up, then put his finger on the exposed die of the CPU to feel what was going on--OHDAMNIT'SHOTHOTHOTHOT, and enjoying the sweet smell of burning fingertip flesh...

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it's probably a good thing you're in Comp. Sci. theory instead of engineering, eh?

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Jim Hall]

3. speculated that random machine crashes were being caused by a poorly-mounted heat sink, so removed the sink and turned the machine on, heard a loud "BEEEEEEP" and no start-up, then put his finger on the exposed die of the CPU to feel what was going on--OHDAMNIT'SHOTHOTHOTHOT, and enjoying the sweet smell of burning fingertip flesh...

I'm guilty of that last one, but my excuse is it was my very first computer job. Had a '386-SX40 (8MB memory and 120MB hard drive .... wooooo!) running with the case off, and suddenly wondered ... "I wonder how hot these things are?" Touched it with the tip of my finger - and immediately realized how hot a CPU can get.

A good way to get a 2nd degree burn on the end of your index finger, BTW. :-)

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Pedrito]

jammed a DIMM in backwards ... vacuumed the dust out of the inside of the case while the machine was running... so removed the [heat] sink and turned the machine on...

Hi, this is MIT calling. Uh, we've decided to reconsider your eligibility for our Ph.D. program.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[cpeikert]

So, it's probably a good thing you're in Comp. Sci. theory instead of engineering, eh?

That was my conclusion as well.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[cpeikert]

running with the case off, and suddenly wondered ... "I wonder how hot these things are?" Touched it with the tip of my finger - and immediately realized how hot a CPU can get.

I had seen in my BIOS that the CPU was running at about 65 degrees, with an auto-shutoff at 90... "and if the heatsink's on wrong, it won't get much hotter if it's off altogether, right..?? And, worst case, an upper limit of 90 doesn't sound too dangerous..."

In retrospect, one can see the flaws in that reasoning as easily as one can see the reversed burned-in AMD serial number in one's fingertip. Also, those measurements are in Celcius. Damn metric system.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[cpeikert]

Hi, this is MIT calling. Uh, we've decided to reconsider your eligibility for our Ph.D. program.

I'm in theory, where you live in math-world, computers don't crash, and you can't get hurt from touching a Turing machine -- in fact, the above story is probably some kind of credential...

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[silicon not in the v]

You know, back in those days of the early 90's when processors were ENCLOSED and didn't have heat sinks or fans on them, I'll bet most of us did that. I got a toasty finger from a 486 SX33. I figured if it actually got hot enough to burn you, it would have some kind of cooling mechanism on it. Well, looky what showed up on processors shortly thereafter!

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chris Peikert,

I represent extremetech.com, and I believe you have what it takes to write articles for us.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

Touched it with the tip of my finger - and immediately realized how hot a CPU can get.

I can sort of top that one. Way back when, I was working on something or other and finally finished with the soldering iron. So, thinking that soldering irons are dangerous, I left it to sit for like 20 or 30 minutes while I went to the other end of the house and got a snack or beverage. Then, confident (over-confident, you might say) that it was safely cooled, I went back to the bedroom and just grabbed the soldering iron by the metal part.

The one thing I forgot was to actually unplug the soldering iron before the supposed cooling process. Oops.

I ran downstairs to the kitchen as fast as I possibly could and put ice on it, but it was too late to do much good. The two fingertips that had come in contact with the soldering iron were burned quite a lot, and I got to smell the oddly sweet smell of human flesh burning. It healed up eventually, after a few months. I can say one thing though: I cannot actually imagine how burn victims who have a large portion of their body burned live through the pain. Serious burns on just two of my fingers were enough to cause a great deal of pain, and drugs didn't really help. (I guess the burn ward of a hospital they have better drugs, though...)

By the way, my only excuse is that I was young and stupid.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[dcam]

jammed a DIMM in backwards (this is hard -- the slot is asymmetric to avoid this very thing)

I thought I was the only one to do this! It gets kind of hot doesn't it. This wasn't my first DIY system.

My other gem was to blow several power supplies in exactly the same way. That is by shorting the power pins of the front panel connector using a screwdriver. It is hard to get a good contact and the intermittant contact tends to be bad for the power supply. I've blown 3 that way. After the third I ripped a button out of the front panel of an old machine.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[dedeman]

Yeah, here's one for you. It's real simple.

Don't let your cat use your mobo and associated hardware as a springboard.

Anyone have an extra sock 370 lying around?

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Halfbaked Plan]

A 386sx chip that got hot?

That's a cpu that's in the tiny plastic case which has no way provided to heat sink it even if you wanted. I've never seen one of them get so hot as to burn.

I put a heat sink on the Z80 processor in my CP/M machine, hoping that would solve some heat instability problems. Those are 40 pin wide DIP parts.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Halfbaked Plan]

Heat sinks appeared and became 'default' with the 486DX-2 66 MHz chips. A regular 486DX 50 chip can get mighty hot as well. I ran my 486DX 33 system for ages with no heat sink. Those machines ran considerably quieter than machines now, except for the big 5-1/4" full-height 330 Meg ESDI drive I had in the machine.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Halfbaked Plan]

You would be amazed at the tremendous damage highly educated people (particularly EEs on the rampage in the electronic lab at 5:30 on a Friday night) can inflict on electronic equipment and delicate prototypes.

Best advice is to disallow Ph.D's from any access to soldering equipment unless they are one of the few with a tech background.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[canadiangoose]

My roomate's cat pissed on one of my motherboards that was in storage in my closet. It was a really cool old 486-VLB board that I was eager to play with. I got my hands on some VLB expansion cards and plugged it all together, but when it powered up all it did was stink up my bedroom with the most terrible sour-smelling smoke.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Frogbert]

I had a coworker that had a nasty scar in the shape of an AMD heatsink across his hand. Aparently he had touched the think after the fan had died and ended up with a 200 degree branding he wouldn't likely forget.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much safer to drop a cube of ice on the CPu and see how fast it melts to determine the temperature.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that to many people here that the author clearly violated almost every single aspect of good engineering practice but...

From what I have observed this is not uncommon amoungst your average not-a-technical Joe. I got a good laugh at the article but admired the author for being brutally honest and sharing the experience.

I learned the consequences on not RTFM before I even touched a computer in the navy. I was starting a distilling unit and following each step of the operating procedure to start it up. Well on step umpty squad the procdure said "Ensure valves 20-26 are shut". Looking at the system and equipment diagram including the equipment itself I could not find valves 20-26. WTF? I probably spent 15 minutes looking for them....no dice. I thought I knew the system fairly well. Oh well I thought, if I can't find them they are probably still shut as that _should_ be a safe posistion. Once the remainder of the valve lineup was complete I ran down to lower level to light off the seawater pump. By the time I got to the stairs to go back up a mountain of water was rushing across the enginroom and down to lower level. Agggh!. I killed the SW pump and isolated it but for a good 30 seconds I had vented the ocean to the people space. Valves 20-26 were the stage vents. Open to vent the equipment on shutdown. Doh...RTFM.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[silicon not in the v]

A regular 486DX 50 chip can get mighty hot as well.

The 50 was also a DX-2. I thought all the clock doubler chips would have had heat sinks then. The regular SX or DX chips came in clock speeds of 25, 33, or 40(rare). The DX-2's were 50, 66, or 80.

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[netfist]

wrong. There existed a true 50MHz (non clock doubled) 486DX chip before the introduction of the
clock doubled series - can you say Dream PC of the very early 1990s...
It wasn't long lived since most board manufacturers at that time simply could not cope with the RF demands of a 50MHz FSB design... and cooling also proved to be a problem (This was way before fan cooled heatsinks became a staple of the PC world)

Re:This guy is a dumbass.

[Halfbaked Plan]

The 486DX 50 was the 'top end' of it's day, and screaming fast, but as you said, it had some stability issues.

No fanatical CPU IC collector has 'the full set' without a 486DX 50 part, along with (of course) a ceramic 487SX chip, which is the REAL rarity.

What's the real point of this article?

[redNuht]

Why has this article been published on Slashdot anyway? Just to make fun of the poor fellow?

Or maybe Slashdot readers suddenly became a bunch of dumb wannabe geeks who really need that kind of "tips" and I haven't noticed yet.

Re:What's the real point of this article?

[JamesKPolk]

If I recall correctly, a majority of the readership does use MS Windows, you know.

I'd not be surprised if the percentage here that has assembled a computer from scratch is below 10.

Keep organized

[xray_dude]

I find that having everything you might need next to you before you start building/reparing a system is the best way to avoid danger. Then ESD is not a problem as long as you periodically keep touching the case, as long as there is no potential difference between you and the case you should be fine. The more you move around the more chance of you building up charge.

It also helps to read manuals and how-tos if you are new to this stuff.

xray

Watch for a next Slashdot story

[genka]

Submited by GeorgeW.
In my last radio address I discussed how it was like to rule USA for the first time. As time went by, unfortunately, my country wasn't all wine and roses...

Re:Watch for a next Slashdot story

[ChrisMaple]

Imagine how much fun Lincoln had!

Re:The outlet is the key

[micromoog]

Clearly you should have used a UPS, then set up a script that detects when the power is killed and starts looping a WAV file of sirens blaring and a robotic voice saying "MAIN POWER FAULT" at 90dB.

What a twit.

[ezzzD55J]

I agree. A twit makes one mistake after another.. while I make plenty of mistakes (not in the least in the hardware department), there's no point in reading about another twit's ones on slashdot.

Re:What a twit.

[XMichael]

I wounder if anyone would be interested in seeing some of the really bad code I've written while *high*
Think thats a good story?

White Doohicky

[istartedi]

Where can I get white doohickies? I'm a EE and this is a new one on me. What is the V-I characteristic of the doohicky? Is it a linear device? Please, someone who knows, tell me more.

Re:White Doohicky

[builderbob_nz]

I have seen these on the motherboards that we build with here. They are similar to the brown ones but a lot smaller than the older black ones. The good thing is they are a standard device but I have been reading about this new tech where the white doohickies are going to be replaced with little white doodads.

Pride

[NoxiousB]

Is it just me, or does this guy seem kinda proud of the fact that hes a total idiot ?

What the?!

[SQLz]

How is the 'Extreme' tech guy just nnow installing his first mobo? I mean, that shit should be a prerequisite to having a writing gig at a site called 'Extreme Tech'. I guess they are so extreme that their people have never built their own machine before.

Re:What the?!

[joeldg]

His bio:
http://www.extremetech.com/author_bio/0,1589 ,a=112 0,00.asp

lists his "favorite movies" ...

yea.. techie all the f---ing way.. yea...

Re:What the?!

[SQLz]

I guess he is so extreme tech he has been unable to update his PC by himself for like 5 years or so which is why he still plays Tribes.

Re:What the?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sad part about being modded both "funny" and "troll" is that you lose karma for the "troll" mods but don't gain any for the "funny" mods.

Re:What the?!

[Anonymous Coward]

their machines are so extreme the build themselves.

Re:What the?!

[Frogbert]

How much more extreme can you get then completely winging a hardware installation with no manuals, drivers or previous experiance at all.

Re:What the?!

[JimLynch]

I'm actually the CM over at ET. Loyd, Dave and Jason are our hardware gurus. I'm new to DIY for my own PCs so it's a whole new world in some respects to me. Thank you though for the warmth. ;-)

Re:What the?!

[SEWilco]

Who is better qualified to write about things which the experts forget about? He's making good use of his ignorance, by providing details of his learning experience.

Fortunately he didn't remember the white doohikey and the static until after something died.

...and to top it off he Slashdotted the boss' computer.

dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

so basically, this guy is a dumbass, don't bother with the article

Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[jwcorder]

If this guy works in IT he should be fired. This is a prime example of why I have a job and why I give people too much credit. Doohicky? If you don't know a resistor or a capacitor when you see one, you probably don't need to build your own pc. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[demonbug]

If you don't know a resistor or a capacitor when you see one, you probably don't need to build your own pc

That is a load of crap. There is no need whatsoever to know the difference between a capacitor and resistor to put together your own computer. You just plug the pieces in - it doesn't really matter what the things on the MB or any other component are unless you actually have to plug them into something. The fact that I know ecxactly what each chip, resistor, jumper, capacitor, etc. is has never once helped me put together a computer (okay, knowing the jumpers used to help, but now you pretty much never have to touch them, except maybe on hard drives).
I mean realy, unless you go around knocking pieces off your motherboard, how does it help to know that "that thing is a resistor" and "that thing is a capacitor"? It doesn't. Just be a good monkey and plug tab A into slot B.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[pclminion]

To be totally fair, some of the parts on motherboards are not easily identifiable.

I've seen devices that looked like ceramic disc capacitors but were actually ICs in unusual packaging. I've seen chips that look like power regulators which are actually crystals, things which look like crystals which are actually transistors, etc.

You see those donut-shaped components with thick coils of copper wire wrapped around them? Can you name what that is? (Yeah, I'm sure lots of us can, but I'm also sure that a fair number of us can't, and that doesn't make us incompetent).

In some cases, "white doohicky" is the best you can do to describe a part without looking up the part code. Of course, he didn't go into much detail so we can't really know exactly what part he was talking about.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[randyest]

You see those donut-shaped components with thick coils of copper wire wrapped around them? Can you name what that is?

I guess you were looking for inductor, but you might want to re-phrase the question to be a little more difficult, since coil is a perfectly acceptable name also :)

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[Anonymous Coward]

and that is why I am still employed at my job and all the "good monkeys" that worked there are unemployed.

there is a really good reson to be educated at what you do.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[Hubert_Shrump]

bonus points for 'toroidal'!

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[Halfbaked Plan]

Not necessarily. If it has two windings on it, it's a transformer, not an inductor.

And you mean torroidal inductor, to be more specific. Most likely the torroid is made of ferrite. Also the term 'coil' is usually reserved for air-core inductors, of the kind used in RF gear. The kind in the microHenery range with often quite fine wire.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't tab A plug into slot A?

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[Anonymous Coward]

and a rally gud raisin yew are doing a monkey's job and knot teeching england.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[evilviper]

There is no need whatsoever to know the difference between a capacitor and resistor to put together your own computer.

I'm sure that was just a benchmark... Like "You must be this tall to build your own computer."

Also, there is lots of benefit in electronics knowledge. Those that don't know what an IC is, typically have destroyed their computers due to static before they have it put together. You wouldn't believe how many people I've seen that will put things right in the way of their CPU fan, with absolutely no thought at all.

No, I must say, I don't think the ignorant should be putting together their own systems until they understand the detailed workings of a computer. Wouldn't be surprising if somebody put the heatsink on the CPU without any thermal grease.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[stanmann]

If you have a tab A and a slot A, STOP, one of the parts doesn't belong. There should be exactly 1 A, 1 B, 1 C.... 1 AA, and so on. Unless of course you are talking about a slot/socket type. Tab A always goes to Slot B.

Re:Damnedest thing I have ever seen.

[randyest]

If you have a transformer mounted on your motherboard, you might want to consider an upgrade :)

I was kidding around, so lighten up. If you want to be a pedant, you might want to note that "toroid" and "toroidal" each have only one "r" and the unit is a "Henry." And a transformer has two sets of windings -- usually with a lot more than one "winding" each.

A "coil" and an "inductor" are both "coils" and both have non-negligible "inductance" so I don't buy your distinction. But whatever . . .

zxc

[Anonymous Coward]

zxczxczxc

what a story

[KillaKen187]

IMHO this was a great post I loved it... This was like a good book, couldn't wait to click to the next page and read on. I am sure every DIY has done at least one dumb thing that cost them some monitary pain. It was just humbling to know that I don't have the worst story :)

Why?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

So this guy who doesn't know what he's doing decides that he can tell others what to do?

The clueless leading the clueless.

I mean, it would be expected from somebody at THG..

Actually, now that I think about it, THG will probably post these article soon enough.

Worst I ever did....

[Bingo Foo]

The worst I ever did was put a 486 in the socket turned 90 degrees. But I did it because the motherboard manual had a picture showing to put it in that way.

After smelling smoke, I reached for the plug, and turned to find the ZIF socket a smoldering mass melted into the motherboard. Removing the Bright green Cyrix heatsink from the ZIF socket revealed that I had shattered the ceramic block that encased the CPU chip.

I took the melted motherboard, cracked CPU, and the faulty manual back to the store and they acknowledged that the manual was wrong. They gave me a new mobo, and a used but working CPU, even though I had only bought the board from that store.

Re:Worst I ever did....

[RatBastard]

I was working in a computer store when a tech installed a 80387 math co-processor. The ZIF sockets were symetrical and wouldn't you know it, it was mounted 90-degrees off. Melted the ZIF socket and fried the chip in the few seconds it took us to start smelling smoke. Lovely.

That's almost as bad as the computer that was brought with a defective Exerex RAM 3000 card. We looked at that thing every way we could and could not get that extra 3 megabytes of RAM to show up. I put my hand on the top of that desktop case and it was as hot as hell. Powered it off, opened it up and saw that the user had installed all of his RAM chips in backwards. Luckily it all still worked after we got them rotated around. We told him that we could not gaurantee (sp?) that the thing would work and refused to warranty the repair.

Re:Worst I ever did....

[Halfbaked Plan]

And in the era when you would have been installing an 80387 chip at a computer store, that was a damned expensive chip to smoke.

Re:Worst I ever did....

[Trinn]

I had a similar event, stupid non-keyed chips. Anyhow, I managed to put a 486DX-2/66 in 180-degrees (I think, it was a long time ago) off, causing a rather impressive show when powered on. Fortunately I knew enough to not only test it with my hand on the switch, but to actually -power it off- right away. Somehow, it blew a crater in the thing, but it -still- works today, after being inserted properly. Don't ask me how. I always think back to that instance when I hear these stories. Well, that and fixing ancient SIMM sockets with bent wires by hand...oh the glory days ;)

Mini-ITX boxes

[DrCode]

Perhaps a beginner like the author should start with one of the mini-ITX's, like the ones made by Shuttle. I've built several PC's, but this was the easiest by far because it's already mostly done. The MB's already in with all the outside connectors attached, so all you have to do is add the CPU and RAM, then plug in the drives.

a new type of article is born... patent pending

[jdallien]

With "Loyd"'s comments, this is sort of like MST3K for bad computer articles.

What a whore

[Anonymous Coward]

Useless article. Should be titled "How to screw up your computer for dummies."

Watch for my article "how I turned on my computer", then I'll submit it to slashdot for free publicity and put a bunch of advertising on the page.

slashdot-forum for geeky assholes

[Anonymous Coward]

God, it amazes me the types of answers coming out about this poor mans problem. ALL of you have had issues building systems.

get off your geek high horses and fuck yourself. At least someone will get pleasure out of it.

also, get a real job
move out of your parents basement
get a girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever
shut your mouth

Please Support Your Local CompuTard

[killdashnine]

For all the disparaging comments, the one good thing that comes of all this is this: Cheap Hardware. I've built a lot of machines and only once had a problem with overheating when I didn't quite get the heatsink on the CPU perfectly ... no burning smell, just the temp in BIOS rising swiftly was enough to make me pull the plug.

I've got another "jinx" friend who fries motherboards and graphics cards regularly. I laugh at him quietly so as not to give myself bad computer karma and realize that the more people feel that they can DIY, the cheaper components will get. Good can come from idiots of the world, however reading this is like reading Darwin Awards for computer retards.

Lynch meets Tommy Boy

[Anonymous Coward]

Tommy Boy: I was just checkin the specs on the inline of the rotary girder...I'm retarded

Jim Lynch: Are you sure you weren't looking at the white doohickey that fell off?

No user serviceable parts inside your head

[Anonymous Coward]

Your screwdriver license has been revoked.

Really, not trolling

[Anonymous Coward]

No matter how you kill it, dice it, slice it, or wire it. No matter how it glows. It's still not a Mac.

Re:Let this be a warning to...

[parawing742]

...all geek chicks out there: Don't breed with this guy unless you WANT stupid children!

Picture = 1000 Words

[mdielmann]

And here it is.

Why? So that we can all reminisc about being dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of the time my brother was helping our little brother out over the phone:

Bro1: "Now, plug in the cables for the harddrive."
Bro2: "Ok, they're all in."
Bro1: "Now, we'll test to see if it works: turn the computer on."
Bro2: "Oh...it was already on."
Bro1: "..."

Keep organized-MB express.

[Anonymous Coward]

So people here's the question. MB that'll take an Athelon or better, DDR, non-Nvida chipset. Integrated is OK as long as they are good, and can be disabled if need be. Or should I just wait for PCI-X next year?

Origin

[zorcon]

Ahhh...the origin of a future Macintosh zealot!

WTF would this guy do with 9 fans?

Re:Origin

[RatBastard]

What does being a hardware moron have to do with liking Macs?

Oh, I get it. You're a jackass.

Re:Origin

[hesiod]

> What does being a hardware moron have to do with liking Macs?

Ummm... maybe because using a Mac pretty much excludes you from doing any hardware work? I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but given the context of the article, you're jumping a bit too quickly.

That, and it's a joke! He wasn't trying to insult you, as you took it, he was trying to make other people laugh.

Damnedest thing I have ever heard.

[Beardo the Bearded]

In my last co-op term before I graduated, I heard one guy call it a "campacitor".

No, that's not a typo. He put the "m" in there when he talked. It wasn't just once; every time he meant to say "capacitor", he said "campacitor".

Oh, right: My degree is in Electronics Engineering.

All I can say is "wow"

[Secrity]

Wow, this guy is a piece of work. Whoever accepted the story for publication must REALLY have a sense of humor. I seriously hope that the article is either a spoof or the article is real and the editor has a really twisted sense of humor, the alternative reasons are just too terrifying to consider.

mysterious white doohickey

[Ubi_NL]

It was probably one of those spacers that sit between the motherboard and the case. these things drop off easily when lifting the mobo from the back plate

Re:The outlet is the key

[stratjakt]

Why would cutting power kill your motherboard?

Worst that could happen is if power dropped in the middle of flashing a BIOS, but that's recoverable via a quick trip to the nearest little computer shop that has an EPROM burner (or warranty replacement if your bios is a TSOP)

Patience is a virtue - but be realistic

[snuf23]

When you get a new part its hard to contain your excitement - you want it installed yesterday. This agitation can lead to all kinds of mistakes. Throughout my long history of building upgrading computers some of my favorite moments include:

Plugging my nifty Amiga video chip (Super Denise)upgrade in backwards. Causing all kinds of nice colors to appear on the screen. Luckily it didn't fry the chip.

Cranking down the lever on the socket to my brand new Pentium 200 - and then noticing that one of the pins was sticking out of it at a right angle. Several anxious seconds with a pair of tweezers straightened the pin out without breaking it off but it was a close thing.

Before embarking on any upgrade I try to sit down, lay out the components, make sure I have all my tools and get a plan of attack in my head. Oh yeah and suck down a cold one before I begin hehe.

Re:Let this be a warning to...

[itwerx]

Don't breed with this guy unless you WANT stupid children!

I'll say! This guy is a class-A moron...

Someone tried to take my PC apart with

[Tandoori Haggis]

a knife! (as in knife and fork)

Ok this was years ago. I was sharing a house and one of my colleagues asked if he could borrow this PC while I was on holiday....

When I got back he said it was u/s and didn't know why. The hdd didn't boot because he had unplugged the IDE cable and put it in the wrong way around -
not all cables were polarised back then.

Prior to this butchery, undertaken with a knife, no antistatic protection and zero common sense, he had found a problem occuring with the OS. So he panicked and duplicated it...

Oh yes. The parallel port gave up the ghost.

And then I found out that he'd taken out the BIOS IC to try in another computer!!!!!!

Never ever lend anyone a computer you value even remotely. The motherboard he gave me as a replacement was a faulty piece of junk.

To this day I really don't know how I managed to hold back from punching his lights out. He was very very worried for a few weeks...

Lets face it. Some folk shouldn't be let near anything electrical, mechanical or chemical.

Meta-bugs upon meta-bugs.

[Tackhead]

> Knocks parts off the motherboard, wasn't grounded, refused to measure fan sizes before buying them. And I am still only halfway through the article.

The meta-bug: Failure to isolate problems one at a time.

If he'd simply concentrated on what was wrong (bad fan on heatsink), he never would have purchased the new heatsink. He would never have purchased a new case to fit the new heatsink. He would never have had to remove the motherboard and fuck it up by knocking parts off in his failed attempt to put it into the new case. He would never have needed a new motherboard, and he never did need a new case.

> Can be summed up in one sentence: Feckin' eejits shouldn't mess around inside the computer!

You have a gift for understatement. Describing this guy as a "feckin' eejit" is akin to describing Valles Marineris as a "ditch".

Constructive advice: The difference between feckin' eejits and the clued is that the clued try to solve one problem at a time. CPU running insanely-hotter than normal? Solve that problem - and only that problem. After you've solved that problem, then you can think about getting better solutions like a quieter heatsink/fan, a snazzier case, or a new motherboard. Solving one problem at a time means that the "solution" to the first problem doesn't necessarily have to fix anything -- it could be that you wanted to upgrade the old box anyways, so just power off the damn thing and buy your new box.

Re:Meta-bugs upon meta-bugs.

[Azureflare]

Actually, there was something that happened to me a while back. I've got a cat in my house that is shedding a lot (I also have long-ish hair). Yes, I'm a bad boy and I do stuff to my case on the floor in my room.

I was putting in my new amd 2400+ cpu, and I failed to notice that a hair had fallen on top of the cpu, because I don't have terribly good eyesight (Also hairs are hard to spot, and it was 3am in the morning). I put the heatsink on, and was immediately shocked to see the temp skyrocketing to 50C at idle. Usually it's around 35C idle.

So, I'm like "WTF? I thought the 2400+ was cooler than the 2200+"

I thought, "OK, maybe I didn't seat it properly," so I take off the heatsink and see the offending hair. I rip it off (I hope there aren't still bits of it in there somewhere... could start a fire) and the temperature went back to normal levels.

Just goes to show, sometimes it isn't the equipment that's a problem, it's how you put it together. But yeah, the author of this article really needs to learn some basic methods of solving problems (or at least take a few calculus classes... that should teach you the necessary skills).

Re:Meta-bugs upon meta-bugs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Weird. I thought you were calling a woman named Valles Marineris a "bitch" but censoring yourself in a really odd way. I get it now. IT'S ABOUT MARS.

AMEN!

[quarkscat]

Nothing quite like getting overruled by a manager
to go out and buy XYZ brand (BTO) computers just
because the OS (linux) was tested on same. More
than 50% of arrived computers either "rattled"
or suffered "sudden infant death" syndrome. Turns
out the BTO manufacturer hired employees' kids
to assemble them, and they tore off the flashcard
socket on the bottom of the MB when putting them
in the case.

I could have built the same number of computers
myself in less time than it took to straighten
out this mess. The manager was under the
mistaken impression that using another platform
(like Dell 1U servers) would have been too
costly, and would not have worked reliably with
linux.

WTF was my opinion, with 8 years of linux
exposure, worth? ZIP. And the cost was
a serious slip in production delivery. Pretty
damn glad to see the last of those boxen.

The entire point is: "Don't let some newbies
in a big fscking hurry get near the insides
of a computer, let alone ones destined for
production use ..."

MOD THIS SHIT DOWN.

[Anonymous Coward]

What in fuck's name are you blabbering about?

Your post seriously has no point to it whatsoever.

MOD THIS SHIT DOWN.

Re:MOD THIS SHIT DOWN.

[Anonymous Coward]

u teh lose!

Sealed inside every chip....

[callipygian-showsyst]

...is compressed smoke. If the chip ever fails and the smoke leaks out, the chip won't work any more.

At least that's how it was explained to me!

Motherboard vs Needle-nose

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing that entered my mind when I lifted a particularly flakey aopen i815 motherboard out of its case was "so THATS what happened to my needle-nose pliers!!". Then I though how it looked like one of those awful x-rays you see when surgeons forget to take a clamp put.

Turns out the pliers had been in there for a couple of months and had shorted between a pci slot and the case. Funny how it would randomly reset when I bumped the desk... Good thing the handles were coated in plastic, otherwise it would have died instantly.

Stupidity is its own punishment

[No Tears In The End]

It bothers me to no end when people try to pretend that their stupidity is normal and that they're trying to help you out by telling you not to do the thing(s) that they obviously should not have.

Gee, did you guys know that you shouldn't stick a lit cigarette in your eye?

Don't use hot sauce for you 'roids!

NTITE

Re:Stupidity is its own punishment

[hesiod]

> Gee, did you guys know that you shouldn't stick a lit cigarette in your eye?
> Don't use hot sauce for you 'roids!

OMG, Yoo jus savd I a hole latta hurtin'. Tancs fer the wyse ad vise, frend!

Anyway... I agree. However, isn't that the whole point of slapping a warning label on everything in the store? Like idiots who want Surgeon General warnings all over the front of packs of cigarettes? Like I just hadn't ever noticed them before, being on the side of the box.

BTW, next time you're walking down the street, it might be a good idea to restrain yourself from diving headfirst through a plate-glass storefront window screaming "Allah be praised!" Just a bit of everyday worldly wisdow from a guy who's made "mistakes." (apologies to any Muslims reading)

Why, oh God, Why?

[suckass]

Why on earth is this on the front page of /.???

Someone please tell me. I am confuzzed

Good List

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

But I prefer shopping at well known internet sites than compusa. The guy behind the counter earning min wage doesn't give a rats ass about your problem. It doesn't do any good to kill him for the corperate policy, and unless you have access to pig farm body disposal is a major headache.

Re:Good List

[AKAImBatman]

But I prefer shopping at well known internet sites than compusa.

Actually, I found that local computer stores often do a good job. I built my last computer from parts I bought at a small computer store in Concord, CA. All the parts were ASUS or Intel (including the ASUS GeForce 2 GTS with shutter glasses which I didn't know what to do with). The only things I got from CompUSA were a midrange case (largest they had) and a new 19" Monitor. Put all the parts together, and that self-same system is still running today. The quality parts have stood up through extreme temperature changes, always on operation, and have been so compatible that they've allowed me to review just about any OS I wanted to try.

Believe it or not, the prices weren't much higher than the online retailers. And as I said, many online retailers will sell you some foreign jobby like "AZUZ" instead of the true blue components.

Re:Good List

[Metallic Matty]

I agree that you can find reliable products and support from a local store. But I'd like to say, you can also find a reliable online company as well. Its all about making sure they are actually reliable first. Although, it is more of a hassle if you have to return parts or anything.

That said, I ordered most of my parts from online vendors (namely, Newegg, who I've never had any problems with.) And I also bought my case from a local CompUSA. I'm not a big fan of CompUSA. I usually only go up there when its something small that any generic brand will do. But this case was basically a Lian-Li replica, but fifty dollars less. Worth the purchase.

And yes, ASUS is definitely a great company. I've never had a problem with any of their products. Right now I'm running an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe mobo and an ASUS Radeon 9600XT.

Re:Good List

[WuphonsReach]

Believe it or not, the prices weren't much higher than the online retailers. And as I said, many online retailers will sell you some foreign jobby like "AZUZ" instead of the true blue components.

Around here (on the east coast), it's exactly the opposite. Local dealers are stocked full with off-brand parts and it's difficult to find the good stuff. (Same with the local computer fairs / swap meets.)

But then, I only ship from reputable online stores where I've had good experiences in the past (MWave, TheNerds.net, Computers4Sure, CDW, ProVantage and NewEgg). They always send me the right part, they carry the good stuff, and it's never a mystery about whether I'm getting Asus or Azus. Some have better return policies then others, but since I do my homework ahead of time, it's rare that I have to do returns/RMAs.

Can't build a computer, but they have a website?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they can't build a computer, why should we trust anything they have to say about computers on their website?

Bad times-Huff and Puff.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You need case fans if you have other heat-producing hardware in the case. Say, you have a high-end 3D video card, and RAID from 6 hard drives. Now you need to vent hot air from the case, and you need to maintain circulation to avoid hot spots (which probably means blowing air onto the hard drives)."

I have 4 HD's and two case fans right in front of them, and they still get too warm. I've been looking at some $20 turbo fans. Unfortunately they are a bit thicker than a regular fan. But they do blow the air. Ideally would be if I could mount the HD cage 90 degrees vertically so intake and exit fans could be mounted for a cross-flow effect in this tower. Time to get a Dremel I guess. Oh does anyone know which is the best Dremel tool to get?

Why the heck did I bother to read all of that?

[superflytnt]

I kept thinking there was going to be a punchline somewhere.

A one sentence summary would have done nicely -- "I fecked up my board because I have no clue."

Dumbest

[Apreche]

I've been building many a PC in my day. The first one I ever did is still humming away in the other room with my blog running on it. The BX chipset is by far the most reliable and stable motherboard chipset ever made. And the Abit BX6r2.0 is the best board with that chipset.

Anyway, I've never had a problem putting computers together. The reason for that is lots of research on the internet. Before I get ready to build a box I check everything. I never buy incompatible parts. I don't skimp on cost and risk getting a part by a no-name manufacturer. You don't know how many times I see people with broken hardware from no-names. Pay the extra 30 bucks and get the big name brand stuff. Abit, Asus, Leadtek, Gainward, Creative, Seagate, Corsair, Crucial, etc. If you get a video card from randomtaiwantech and it doesn't work, there's a reason.

However, me and my roomate did make a big mistake once. The reason was that there was no documentation concerning the issue on the net, and to this day, there still isn't. The first time I built a computer with a Duron isntead of a Pentium it wouldn't boot. I couldn't figure it out. The company I bought the computer from either didn't know. But what they should have noticed on my invoice was that I had a 300W power supply and that I needed more. Eventually after several RMAs I had a 300W power supply that worked somehow magically.

Later my roomate got a new PC and it had the same trouble. My computer died soon after and we realized something. The power supply is important and 300W isn't enough anymore. Motherboard manufacturers! In the documentation for a motherboard list how big a power supply is needed! You have no idea how long it took us to figure out what was wrong with several completel seperate machines not booting in the same fashion.

Let this be a lesson.
1) do research
2) do more research than is possible
3) don't be cheap
4) if you know what you're doing it wont go wrong.

Needless to say my current box has a huge expensive 450+ Watt Enermax PSU. I will never have THAT problem again.

Re:Dumbest

[mbourgon]

But what they should have noticed on my invoice was that I had a 300W power supply and that I needed more.

Why? I'm running an Athlon 1.4 (aka 1700), Geforce 3, PCI NIC, PCI Audio, CD-RW, and 4 drives. If a 300 can power all that, you should be fine.

(But yes, my next machine will have 450 or so as well - I want a bigger RAID)

Re:Dumbest

[Anonymous Coward]

The first time I built a computer with a Duron isntead of a Pentium it wouldn't boot.

Yeah, done that. Those Durons just don't quite fit the sockets. You have to get a pair of needlenose pliers and bend a few pins into place first.

Re:Dumbest

[Anonymous Coward]

Needless to say my current box has a huge expensive 450+ Watt Enermax PSU. I will never have THAT problem again.

And 640 ought to be enough for everyone :) [sorry, couldn't resist].

Re:Dumbest

[Anonymous Coward]

funny, I'm running a duron system on a 180Watt PS.

it's the quality of the PS not the wattage. I paid more for my 180Watt PS than most pay for their 450+

yes, I have 2 Hard drives and a CD burner installed in there... and it's a nice tiny case too.

Re:Dumbest

[evilviper]

But what they should have noticed on my invoice was that I had a 300W power supply and that I needed more.

Doubtful... Very doubtful...

I've got a 1.2GHz Duron system running on 40watts, and my older 2GHz XP is running on about 90 normally, and up to 120 when the DVD-ROM is spinning, full-speed.

If 300watts isn't enough for you, you must have multi-processor SMP machines, with a dozen hard drives, CD-ROMS, etc. In fact, it's far more likely that you had either a defective motherboard, or a cheapo Power supply (what was that you were saying about paying more for a name brand?) that doesn't supply nearly as much power as it claims to.

BTW, I'm not running low-end accessories either. 7200RPM hard drives, 16X DVD ROMs running regularly. Half a dozen fans. Geforce 4 video card/ATI Radeon 8500, etc.

Re:Dumbest

[smchris]

Let this be a lesson.
1) do research
2) do more research than is possible
3) don't be cheap

Oh, all right -- given all three. I was going to say even following the requirements won't work, but _more_ research will. I've been traumatized that the last two AMD XP systems I've built have both been unstable with "lower" name brand ram at the rated speed. Run memtest for hours with no errors but they'd consistently crash programs in practice. Premium overclocker's memory, or just memory rated at a speed faster, and both have been fine.

Seems like one of those things a person has to learn by hard experience. Can't trust the motherboard manual. Found a web page at AMD that "recommends" premium memory. But there you are -- how many people are going to research the requirements of _each_ component?

Re:Dumbest

[scharkalvin]

It's not the watts, it's the AMPS.
Look at the current spec's for each voltage output. They differ from power supply to power supply, even if all are rated at the same watts. Some supplies are heavy on the 12v (to run more hard drives), others beef up the 3.3 and 5v lines (to run bigger cpu's and more ram). And still others must be using
Enron accounting to add up the figures to reach that 300 watt rating.

Its all in the budget

[dj245]

Budget components are cheap for a reason. The first computer I built had problems, and issues, and woes. It crashed randomly and when under no load. Eventually I blamed it on the el cheapo memory.

There are places in a computer where you can scimp and buy cheap- Go ahead and get a 5400 hard drive, cheapo sound card, integrated video (Nforce video isn't horrific). But Motherboard and Ram are the heart of a system. Cheap components there will lead to an unstable and frustrating DIY experience.

Related: How To Destroy a Computer

[Ratcrow]

Dan's Data has an amusing description of the various things you can do to destroy a computer, mostly in the form of bad habits that people have when it comes to care and feeding. Examples include not using static protection, blowing compressed air under chips or through fans, using excessive force, screwing up connectors, etc.

Link is here.

i did read the whole thing

[doorbender]

the part that made me ill was him not knowing what doohicky he knocked off.

I can relate to components not fitting in certain configurations;CD rom drives that were 2cm to long for the mobo/case combination i was trying to install them in, or powersupplys right up against cpu heatsinks blocking the air flow. with infinite combinations comes infinite ways to screw things up.

I once put a HUGE heatsink/fan combination on a CPU for a friend. it was an aerocool deep impact limited edition (gold plated heatsink with iridescent fans) as seen here without the 80mm fans mounted on it or the gold plating. i had to use a dremel to trim the shroud around one of the fans so it would clear a memory module. but I figured "hey, you can't see it from my house"

Re:i did read the whole thing

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

My worst experience in this regard was trying to fit two cartridge style P3 500's into a Tyan Tiger dual motherboard. With the stock coolers, the slots were too close together to fit the modules in - the fan on processor #1 was actually touching the back of processor #2.

My friend and I sat there and drank our cokes thinking "Awwww fuck." And then finally, we grabbed both units, squeezed them together and slammed them both into place at once. No worries mate!

YLFI

P.S. Eventually this machine did go under, but I'm not convinced of a related problem... everytime you tried to use the 3d acceleration features of the graphics card, or several other graphics cards, it locked up hard after a few seconds. Temps all looked good, still suspect it was something with the AGP.

Water & Electricity & This Guy!??!

[Cordath]

What are you, homicidal?

Wait, I know this guy....

[TiggertheMad]

I was working at ChimpUSA about 7 years ago in the upgrades department. A woman with the 'clueless drone' expression came up and asked for a new cpu and mobo.

"Would you like us to istall it for you?" (Not an attempt at selling over-priced services, just an attempt to prevent the inevitable.)

"No, I'll do it myself"

After the requsite hour she called back and claimed that the mobo didn't work.

"Did you hook up the power supply? Make sure the CPU was properly seated? Checked the RAM? Plugged in the drives? Proper grounding on backplane screws?"

She answered yes to each question as I explained each of them to her. After a good 30 minutes of trouble shooting...

"Oh yeah, when I was putting the motherthingy in, I poped off a brown cylinder with my screwdriver. is that important?"

"Hmmm, yeah, capaciters can be important. They probably didn't put it on the board to look cute."

And that is how I know the guy. I sold a mobo to his mother. "...

Guess you've never heard of "profit!"

[Anonymous Coward]

- Write really lame article.
- Publish it on site with lots of ads.
- Submit article to slashdot.
- Slashdot publishes article (and gets cut of profits?) with link to article.
- Thousands of slashdotters visit lame article page.
- Profit!

Annoying Advertisements

[JohnPerkins]

I'm sorry, but the advertisement on the left of that story is just too damn annoying to make reading the story bearable.

Moral of the story....

[errxn]

If you start referring to motherboard components as "doohickeys", *stop what you are doing immediately* and call someone whose head is not firmly planted between his/her buttocks.

no

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Damn you for using imperial.

Damn you straight to wherever people get sent for that. There shall be a day of reckoning, and all these guys that make me measure and convert stuff in inches and feet will hear the bell toll for them.

High School tech class.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the privilege of having a lab partner in my electronics tech class back in highschool who was a successful Social Engineer. Like how you think the guy was an idiot that called a capacitor as a "campacitor", the lab student I worked with came to class already educated in electronics and he socially engineered most of the class and the teacher to pronounce various measurements and old wives tales.

His most successful social engineering feat was successfully convincing every to pronounce the 10^-6 as not "micro" but instead "uqui"! He had them convinced that squiggly-looking contortion of a "u" was pronounced as a "." I couldn't laugh my ass off 'till the class was dismissed. I bet it makes this slashdotter crowd wondering what kind of crack that teacher was smoking and which dealer to avoid if they are employed as an introductory electronics teacher. Sure the teacher sucked, but I'm glad I wasn't there when the teacher was getting his material and competancy evaluation by a supervisor or board.

lol: 100 Microfarads (?)= 100 Uquifarads

Those students and teachers were idiots!

Re:High School tech class.

[pclminion]

Haha, this reminds me of biology class. We were discussing the structure of ozone, which has shared bonds between the outer oxygen atoms and the inner oxygen atom. In diagrams, these are marked by dotted lines. What it really means is a shared orbital between all three atoms -- a quantum electron state that encompasses all three oxygen nuclei.

I said "These bonds are called Ghost Bonders." Everyone referred to them as ghost bonders after that. Hah!

Re:High School tech class.

[Anonymous Coward]

roflmao!

You and I are the reason they have "college prep" classes! Oh wait...we keep teachers employed. Damn!!

Fast and Light on His Feet!

[roccothegreat]

After the switch to a new case, I decided to rename it to "Legolas" after one of the characters in the Lord of the Rings. Legolas is an elf; he's very fast and is very light on his feet...

You should have named it JIM, he is a man who is very fast at making a complete pile of junk of a working system!

Rocco

If this were Fark...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the story would have a "dumbass" tag plastered all over it.

Re:If this were Fark...

[JimLynch]

Hey, fark you man. ;-)

One more tip for the handymanlessness...?

[Anonymous Coward]

7. Get an iMac! ...oh wait.

Re:One more tip for the handymanlessness...?

[AKAImBatman]

7. Get an iMac! ...oh wait.

Correction: get an iBook or Powerbook. Much more portable and overall useful. PC Desktops tend to be bigger deals because everyone has to have at least one game machine/server combination. These days I see my iBook far more than I see my Desktop.

Re:One more tip for the handymanlessness...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much more portable and overall useful.

Portable, yes. Overall Useful? Only if you depend on it for everything, which you shouldnt unless your job requires it.

Remember kids, Laptops are easy to steal, and even easier to drop/smash/break.

PC technician on how much it costs to replace the LCD on a Laptop: "You might as well get a new one.."

Re:One more tip for the handymanlessness...?

[AKAImBatman]

You've obviously never used an iBook or Powerbook. I swear those things are indestructable. At the very least, they'll live their 3 year lifetime without complaint. I should know, my youngest son has ripped it off my desk (bending the power connector!) three times, and I've dropped it at least twice. (damn cables...) Save for having to replace the power cord a few times, it's as good as new.

Switch?

[why-is-it]

One night, I was upgrading my PC, when all of a sudden it went berserk. The screen started flashing and it was like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

And then, like half my motherboard was gone. And I was, like, Nnng?. It was a really good motherboard too. And then I had to do it again and I had to do it fast and so it wasn't as good. It was kind of a bummer..

Celebration of a motherboard

[amightywind]

I built my first GNU/Linux PC this spring. It worked out surprisingly well. Here is my advice:

• Familiarize yourself with PC components. I read Anandtech for several months until I felt comfortable enough to place a complete order for components that should work together.
• Get all of the tools you will need and a good workspace, including ESD grounding before you start assembling. I used a souveneir smock from my last job and an ESD wristband. I looked funny but it is worth it because it is easy to wreck memory.
• Read the instructions. Assemble slowly and precisely. (It was still scary clamping the heat sink to the CPU!)
• Check your power and wiring connections 5x before powering up.
• There is no need to install your hard drives of CD/DVD drives to see that your BIOS comes up.
• Get good cables. Stock ribbon cables block airflow and lead to case clutter.
• Be patient getting to know your machine. It took a couple of weeks to get Linux kernel drivers just right on Gentoo.

Re:Celebration of a motherboard

[gnu-generation-one]

"Get good cables. Stock ribbon cables block airflow and lead to case clutter."

Yet rounded cables put all the signal connectors next to each other and form capacitors down the whole length of your IDE cable, conveniently bypassing the "ground wire between each signal wire" solution which the people who designed those cables used to ensure that you can reliably transmit data that fast...

You might want to get an audiophile-quality IEC mains lead for your computer though, that'll really improve the airflow through your case...

Re:Celebration of a motherboard

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/Linux? Oh, you mean Linux. You're trying not to anger the crybabies.

Re:Celebration of a motherboard

[amightywind]

I have no wish to anger anyone. I meant to use the term GNU/Linux to refer to the GNU system I run which happens to use the Linux kernel. Read about the issue here. I hope you will use the term GNU/Linux too.

Dumbest thing I ever did to hardware...

[bgeer]

A couple years back the fan in my comp's power supply went bad and off and on was making a horrible cycling buzz-saw sound. To verify which fan it was, I stuck a pencil between the blades to stop it, and sure enough the noise stopped. Happily, when I took the pencil out again the fan spun back up but the sound didn't come back.

An hour or so later the noise comes back so I do the pencil trick again, but this time the buzz returns too. Thinking that maybe I should keep it stopped longer, I leave the pencil stuck between the blades. I go get a drink of water and start to feel sleepy and, forgetting about the fan, take a nap. Just as I drift off to sleep I'm woken by the loud *CRACK* of exploding electronics, and I rush in in time to see a plume of smoke rising above my deceased computer. By pure dumb luck the short hadn't spread beyond the PS and the rest of the computer survived.

Re:Dumbest thing I ever did to hardware...

[cr0sh]

Want to know what the buzz likely was? A dry bearing on the fan. Vibration sets up, "finds" the resonant frequency, and "buzzes". When you stop it, and let it start again - it is OK, for a little while. Sometimes, if you let it go on long enough, it will drop out of the frequency for a little while, but then sooner or later, it will be back.

The best way to fix it is to get a new fan, and install it into the power supply (don't just buy a new PS unless you need it for a good reason, a fan will be a lot cheaper).

Barring this, remove the fan, remove the label from the fan, and pop the retainer ring (don't loose it!) off the fan shaft. Remove the fan blade/magnet assembly, apply a drop of silicone oil (or a bit of petroleum jelly) to the shaft, reinsert it into the bearing (spin the fan to distribute the oil on the shaft), and reattach the retainer ring. Clean the area for the sticker (of any grease or oil), and put on a new one (a cheap paper "garage-sale price" label works good).

Such a simple repair takes only minutes, and will last for several months, if not longer (why spend the money if you don't have to?).

Re:Dumbest thing I ever did to hardware...

[Anonymous Coward]

pop the retainer ring (don't loose it!) off the fan shaft

No problem, if you loose it you could always tight it again later. But if you were to lose it, it's game over, man.

Not always component failure

[Anonymous Coward]

Powering on a cold (~3 C) computer in a warm room will toast it too.

Re:Not always component failure

[LurkerXXX]

Cold items cause moisture to condense. Moisture adn electricity don't mix. Always let all electronics warm up to room temperature before plugging them in.

Ask and ye shall receive....

[Spoticus]

How To Destroy Your Computer, a step by step guide.

I've never killed one

[Alioth]

I've never killed a mobo, but I've had one killed by a faulty power supply. One day, my computer just turns itself off. So I switch it on. It doesn't stay on for long - no, instead, there's a BzzzzzzTTT...>KAPOW!KAPOW! sound), the video card error light was on solid, and an IC on both hard drives had melted.

Re:I've never killed one

[inviolet]

That 'kapow' is the sound of capacitors blowing up. You can open the box and find bits of capacitor corpse strewn about. If you collect the bits, you can redeem them for Geek Points.

Memory won't fit.

[headkase]

The dumbest thing I've ever done when upgrading my system is to use the wrong stick of RAM in my system. It was about 1mm (1/16 inch) too long for the memory socket it was supposed to fit in. So figuring it was just a tolerance issue where my sockets were just a bit too small and the memory was just a little bit too big I pulled out a knife and shaved off the PCB until the memory stick fit into the socket. It worked. For about a week then I turned on my computer one day and heard a loud !pop!. It turns out the memory was ECC (or something like that :) and my motherboard memory sockets were not. I was lucky, the only thing that happened was that that memory slot was blown completely (I tried multiple correctly sized memory modules after the fact). This was about 1998, I hope I've learned a bit more since then.
Oh yeah, my first motherboard I ruined (again while installing memory) by not knowing how to insert the memory. You're supposed to put it in at a 45 degree angle and then rotate it to the vertical position where it will lock in place. I tried to insert it straight down vertically and when it wouldn't go in applied force. The force ruined the memory slot and that motherboard didn't work at all after.
Well, I hope I've learned a few more things nowadays but I really don't build that many systems anymore - the market is so competitive nowadays that it's almost worth it to buy a prebuilt system because you get a warranty for it while being practically the same price as doing it yourself from parts.

the brutal truth

[Anonymous Coward]

you're an idiot and should not be allowed to open your pc case.

and your editor should have fired you when you submitted this article, rather than printing it.

i mean, really...

Re:the brutal truth

[JimLynch]

Thankfully my editor has a better sense of humor than you, apparently. ;-)

Re:the brutal truth

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully my editor has a better sense of humor than you

No, he's just such an Uebertard that he doesn't recognise what a 'tard you are.

the best computer investment I ever made

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

When I put together my last machine in 2000, I decided to break from the path of buying whatever shit case presented itself under 20 bucks, and spend a good chunk of change on a
It is the best piece of computer gear that I have ever bought. I expect to use this case for as long as the ATX specification is standard in mainboards. That should be your main criterion for purchasing a case- spend a good deal of money on it, because if you're posting on slashdot, you are probably enough of an enthusiast that any PC case you own will house several different boards and processors over its lifetime. This one is certain to stand up to many upgrades, and it won't annoy me by forcing my fingers into contortions or slicing them on sharp edges while I'm fixing it.

Re:the best computer investment I ever made

[Halfbaked Plan]

I still have 'dream cases' that I acquired in the baby-AT era. They're such good stuff (and I paid so much extra for them) that I haven't the heart to get rid of them. I also have the nearly ideal ATX cases. Those extra-wide Inwin mid-tower cases. Unless you're a color fetishist who deplores beige, there really isn't, and hasn't ever been, a better case.

But now I'm running cruddy Dell Optiplexes. I have so damned many of them, since I got 80 of them, about 1/5 Pentium III systems, on two skids at auction for $40. I have so damned many of them that I don't think I'll ever be able to justfy buying any more hardware.

I've only killed one.

[pclminion]

It was hot, and there was no air conditioning in the cramped little house. I leaned over the running system (tower case turned on its side, motherboard facing up, case cover off) to grab a screw from the table behind it... And a bead of sweat fell from my forehead into the case.

Bang. That machine never worked again.

Re:Let this be a warning to...

[sTalking_Goat]

The sad thing is most girl geeks I know end up with guys like hio (or they're esbians). I don't get it. Its not like there's a shortage of geek guys, and there are actual geek guys who shower daily and can hold a conversation about something non-geeky.

Women are strange.

Bullshit Story

[Nintendork]

While reading this, I couldn't help but think that someone made this whole story up. The best example is the static electricity. I know it's best practice to wear a strap, but I've found that touching the power supply before touching anything else is enough to prevent mishaps. Before I was doing that I never had any zapped parts either. I'm not saying static electricty won't kill a part, but I am saying that in my own personal experience, it's not so common that it should happen to this guy along with all these other mistakes in one building experience.

To top it off, he claims that after going from a VIA KT400 chipset (The Soyo mobo) to a Nvidia chipset (The Asus mobo), everything booted up fine. Bullshit.

-Lucas

Re:Bullshit Story

[pclminion]

Yeah man, that totally makes sense: a guy makes up a fictitious story to make himself look like a complete idiot!

Right, that's likely.

Re:Bullshit Story

[Nintendork]

Well the guy sure did add a lot of fiction to the story to make it more interesting. And why wouldn't he add more details to get another story published?

-Lucas

Re:Bullshit Story

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read a different story than I did? How is it bullshit for the computer to work after going from a motherboard he BROKE A PART OFF OF to a brand new one that he hasn't ruined yet?

Practice safe computing

[Hoi Polloi]

I wonder if a sheet of anti-static mylar could be used as a liner between the mb and the case. Just punch a few holes where the standoffs go and at least it would protect against accidental contact.

Re:Practice safe computing

[thebigmacd]

Um, using antistatic mylar would be the same as touching the case directly. Mylar works by conducting electricity so a charge won't build up between two dielectrics. Put mylar between and watch board go zap from electrical short to ground.

Re:Practice safe computing

[sevensharpnine]

Sorry, no. That would cause the price of cases to raise by approximately two dollars. People don't want quality. As the story's author has shown, people would rather have pretty windows and lights. (The mylar is a great idea though.)

Get this guy a Darwin Award.

[HedonismBot]

The Zalman heat sink, cool as it was, just didn't fit.

So, let's see. This guy got a fan too big for the case he had. Fair enough.

[Later I] bought another Zalman heat sink that looked smaller than the first.
While at the computer store, I discovered the Antec Lanboy 350. (...) I had to have that sucker!
The case I had at home was gigantic

Then, he proceeded to buy a smaller fan, which he tried to set up in A SMALLER BOX.

I ripped [the new fan] open eagerly and then realized to my utter chagrin and embarrassment that the new one didn't fit either!

I rest my case.

My lesson learned:

[Matey-O]

I've built a good half dozen computers over the last (good god) 15 years. This last one kicked my butt.

Never EVER go cheap on the motherboard.

Had the system up and running perfectly, plugged in the iPod a week later. zzzt. magic smoke escaped. Turned out the case wasn't providing adequate grounding/ backplane support.

Do you know how FUN it is trying to find the dead parts when you just dropped $900 on them and you DON'T have an identical system to swap parts into to check?

Cat got your tongue? (something important seems

[vbrtrmn]

I can't wait for the next "Who the Fuck Cares?" story to be posted!!

Wow - BX chipset, you must have YEARS of exp.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the first computer you ever built had a BX chipset - then you couldn't have been "building many a PC" for too long.

Re:Wow - BX chipset, you must have YEARS of exp.

[Anonymous Coward]

The BX was (very) late 90s, IIRC.
Unless my aged memory has degraded more than I'd thought. :)

Re:Wow - BX chipset, you must have YEARS of exp.

[Anonymous Coward]

1998. So he's been building for 5 years. He goes off like he's some kinf of super-veteran computer builder. "In my day" and all that... When the PII's came out and BX boards and everything, system building simply became a cake walk. You talk to guys that have been building since the mid-80's and before, when there were no CMOS's, and you actually had to know electronics, and on and on - THOSE guys were true PC clone builders.

Baby steps, Bob.

[C10H14N2]

I started building out computers 20 years ago when components were so #$%ing huge and cast-iron that you'd have to be a total idiot to accidentally destroy anything. By the time a faulty heat-sink could destroy a system, I had built about a hundred of them, so I've yet to destroy a single machine by my own stupidity. Knock on wood, but there is something to be said for tinkering with something you don't mind losing before dropping $2k on a soon-to-be door-stop.

Definitely, though, the huge case advice should be heeded. Sooooo many problems can arise from that, not the least of which is, ta-dah, heat dissipation. To say nothing of proper (and improper) grounding. Finally, DON'T SKIMP! You're saving money on the labor, put it into quality parts -- especially cables (power/hdd/cat5 etc). There's no sense shorting out a $200 HD or $95 power supply, and potentially a $200 MB and $400 CPU, all over a 39-cent cable that you should have spent a buck on -- (or for that matter, the $20 power supply you should have spent $50 on)... and for the love of god, don't build this thing on the floor of your shag-carpeted living room walking around in new trainers, OKAY!??!

Re:Baby steps, Bob.

[LurkerXXX]

Ohh, your right. I might step on something and crack it. I'll just wear my soft fluffy wool socks instead.

Re:Baby steps, Bob.

[ndavidg]

Back in the day when I was building computers, I had to walk 20 miles through rain and mud just get a parallel cable. There was none of this so-called "modding" that these kids talk about nowadays. We bought good-old beige cases that were durable and only took up half the floor space. None of these kiddie neon-glow blue-led covered transparent cases. And if we wanted to cool a computer, we'd put it under the ceiling fan, damn it!

Re:Baby steps, Bob.

[C10H14N2]

The point was simply that it is much easier to lose a lot more money by being stupid, thus a certain amount of caution is advisable. Oops, didn't clip that fan on tight enough, *poof* there goes $500.

300 watt power supply

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey numbnuts - it's possible that motherboard could have gotten by with a 250W power supply, if all the computer had in it was a cheap-o video card and a 5400 rpm hard drive.

A 300W supply should be sufficient for any computer with just a normal video card, a CD-ROM, and a hard drive.

Start putting 2 or 3 hard drives in it, two CD-ROMS, a $400 video card with on-board fan, and then 2 or 3 extra cooling fans... and yeah, you'll need a 450 watt supply.

A sidenote

[empaler]

I saw 'Requiem for a Dream' today for the first time.
Great movie, but very depressing.

Requiem for a video card fan

[Hard_Code]

So at some point my computer started emitting a irritating buzzing sound, that I finally narrowed down to the video card fan (after painstakingly unplugging EACH fan to find out).

Ok, so I hop on google and discover that these things happen and that a decent solution is to peel back a simple label that covers the axle, and drop a few drops of machine oil in. Easy enough.

So I detach the fan and start looking at it and can't really find what they are talking about, but you know, it looks like I can just pull it apart. So I try to pull it apart and it is designed sort of weird but I apply enough force and pull the bitch apart in the process breaking these little rivit thingies. Well fuck. I turn it around and discover there was the freaking label staring me in the face. I peel it back easily to expose the axle.

With that fan fucked (well, it DID actually go back on and "sorta" work), I got a new video card fan. This fan didn't fit very well because the stupid plastic pegs that attach it to the video card were too thick. So I had to get a pair of pliers and squeeze those bastards down. I finally got the new fan on the video card (in the process leaving circular indents in my thumbs and loss of sensation that lasted several DAYS). Why the hell do they not make these freaking things STANDARD SIZES for fucks sake.

Moral of the story: Build a couple of machines for geek cred but when you grow up, realize that groveling on the floor losing freaking dust speck sized screws (you do know there are 4+ types each with their own purpose and subtle difference only detectable by scanning electron microscope right?), getting cut on sharp pieces of case metal, is just Not Fucking Worth It.

Next machine I buy will probably be a name brand. After all, even if you build your own machine, you won't be able to sell it without a hassle because newbies won't freakin understand your homemade specs, but will understand a name like "Dell FooBar 2000".

My experence on "build it yourself"

[Felinoid]

My first PC was a PC-1. Obsolete by the time I got it. It was ok. It was cheap.
Then I took it apart keeped a mental note of where everything belongs
(Rule 1. Keep paper notes not mental notes you forgetful twit)
After successfuly guessing where everything belonged I got my hands on an XT motherboard.
(Rule 2. Just becouse it's the same type of computer don't expect a motherboard upgrade to fit in the same old box)
I was VERY nervous about using a woden box for the case. A hack job at best but it worked out ok when I made sure the motherboard didn't touch anything metal.
(Rule 3. Paranoia is a good thing)
I got my hands on a nice XT flip top case and remebered how the old PC case was laied out.
(Rule 4. Keep notes handy.)
(Adendum: Keeping notes in your head is bad unless your memory is REALLY good.
I got lucky)
Then comes the AT motherboard.
(Rule 5. Avoid dangerous hacks and don't puch your luck. Just becouse it worked once dosen't mean you should try it again)
After getting my hands on an AT case I transfered parts to the AT.
Knowing the AT won't work on an XT powersupply prevented me from trying the woden box case a second time.
(Rule 6. Notes be dammed remember the important stuff ok? Notes are backup memory not primary memory)
Later I upgraded to a 386.
(Rule 7. You did it once you can do it again)
Then I added a VGA card but had no VGA monitor so I hacked my RGB monitor to turn it into a VGA.. kinda.
(Rule 8. Only insain morons overdrive monitors)
When it died a year later I got a real VGA.
(Rule 9. Actually get real hardware. Some hacks aren't worth the effort)
Then I started over from scratch and built a Pentium MMX 200 (this was when the fastest Intel chip was the Pentium MMX 233)
Actually no.. I got a clone chip.. Forget who made it.
(Rule 10. Research before buying.)
After buying a motherboard and Intel brand name Pentium MMX 200 to replace the now fried CPU I had kinda damaged my 20 meg hard disk.
(Rule 11. Back up everything. Always. You know this already right?)
I managed to use 15 megs of the 16 megs of ram as a ram drive and restored my backups to it.
Then I got fanatical about backups.
After all up to then I've been using Dos and restricted to 640k (except on the PC-1 where it was 512k)

(Rule 12. What can do more can do less)
Then I got a 1 gig hard disk downloaded Linux put em on floppys and installed from floppys.
(Rule 13. A bucket of used floppys is not as great as you might think)
After 2 or 3 reinstalls (due to bad floppys) I was happy and had my Linux box.

Side note: Originally the PC-1 was just a terminal for my AT&T 3b2 but the 3B2 died so I embarked on this quest to build a Linux box.
I fully intended to take it a step at a time so I didn't overwhelm myself and that worked out.
The 386 was originally planned to BE the Linux box but at the last second I changed my mind and desided if I was to build a Linux box I'd build something current.
I wasn't too thrilled with having only 3 ISA slots on my P5 but later came to be more annoyed with having only 4 PCI as I upgraded all my ISA cards.

That system has served me well but I've already obtained a new ATX case and shopping for a new AMD processor and mothrrboard.
And a video card..
And ram...

I've already replaced the hard disk.

Re:My experence on "build it yourself"

[stanmann]

Minor correction, the only power supply change has been AT to ATX. An XT power Supply should work if it has sufficient power(140W I believe) to power your components...

Re:My experence on "build it yourself"

[Felinoid]

Minor correction, the only power supply change has been AT to ATX
If you ignore the fact that the AT powersupply uses more of the plug than the XT counterpart.

Some AT motherboards don't use that so they will work with an XT powersupply but I didn't have such a monster.

Also I guess you missed the part where I said I started with a PC powersupply (not an XT powersupply)

An XT power Supply should work if it has sufficient power(140W I believe) to power your components...

However a PC powersupply shouldn't work as it is a 65W powersupply.
(And there is a very good reason why XT powersupplys are typicly 150W at the very least but I've been able to surive on 65W)

Re:My experence on "build it yourself"

[stanmann]

MY PC(IBM 5150) has a 140W supply. I don't have an XT for comparison, but I believe it was the same... I assumed when you said PC-1 you were referencing IBM, if not, I apologise and stand corrected.

Zen, Motorcycles and You.

[OgGreeb]

A screw sticks, for example, on a side cover assembly. You check the manual to see if there might be any special cause for this screw to come off so hard, but all it says is "Remove side cover plate" in that wonderful terse technical style that never tells you what you want to know. There's no earlier procedure left undone that might cause the cover screws to stick.

If you're experienced you'd probably apply a penetrating liquid and an impact driver at this point. But suppose you're inexperienced and you attach a self-locking plier wrench to the shank of your screwdriver and really twist it hard, a procedure you've had success with in the past, but which this time succeeds only in tearing the slot of the screw.

Your mind was already thinking ahead to what you would do when the cover plate was off, and so it takes a little time to realize that this irritating minor annoyance of a torn screw slot isn't just irritating and minor. You're stuck. Stopped. Terminated. It's absolutely stopped you from fixing the motorcycle.

This isn't a rare scene in science or technology. This is the commonest scene of all. Just plain stuck. In traditional maintenance this is the worst of all moments, so bad that you have avoided even thinking about it before you come to it.

The book's no good to you now. Neither is scientific reason. You don't need any scientific experiments to find out what's wrong. It's obvious what's wrong. What you need is an hypothesis for how you're going to get that slotless screw out of there and scientific method doesn't provide any of these hypotheses. It operates only after they're around.

This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.

From "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Pirsig. (Chapter 24)

Re:Zen, Motorcycles and You.

[merlin_jim]

BTW, the correct answer to this problem is to drill out the center of the screw. Start small, watch your alignment carefully, and gradually step up the size of the drill until you can remove the screw.

You will have to clean out a ton of metal filings. You might also have to re-tap the screw hole...

why would the motherboard documentation have it?

[rebelcool]

the motherboard doesnt determine how much power you draw. Obviously, what components you have does.

Especially things with motors. Harddrives, CD, DVDs. After the processor and video card, they're your largest draw.

So, an "I'm an idiot" article?

[Spaceman40]

I stopped reading when he got to the "knocked off this white thingie" part. I mean, the other stuff before that was just impatience, but when you buy a nice motherboard, everything on it should have a purpose, right?

"So I knocked this thingie off my car's engine - didn't bother to check what it was. It couldn't have mattered, could it?"

Yeah! Who knew that thing was so important to make the extremely complicated piece of electronic equipment work? I'll understand the other stuff, but if it's your first time putting together a system, wouldn't you be extra-careful to follow all the steps right?

Wouldn't you kill yourself if you BROKE (and that's what he's talking about: seperating a piece from the mobo that isn't meant to be seperated...) an expensive piece of equipment, and IMMEDIATELY see if you can send it in for repairs or something?

What's up with people today?

</rant>

You're web site sucks btw

[Anonymous Coward]

You look like a rube standing by the water there. And why do you have to vote on boring pictures of your house and your japanese gardener? Vote for what?

boneheaded...

[qtothemax]

I see everyone bashing this guy for being an idiot, and i'm not saying you are wrong, but I'm sure everyone who has done much inside the case has had a few fuckups here and there, and we learn from them. Fortunately, the only real mistake i'v made so was was back in 1997 or so. The BIOS chip in my box went bad. I was so excited to finally have the replacement so I could my computer back after having no internet access while the damn thing was being shipped for a week that i actually put it in backwards. After firing it up and hearing the bad bios beeps that I'd been getting all along, I was really dissapointed, and immediately smelled somthing burning. After burning my fingers pulling the chip back out, I realized my mistake and put it back in the right way. Incredibly I saved it in time, and the box actually still works. I now use that box just to play with the hardware and get a feel for removing/replacing/examining parts, so if i do bust somthing, its just on a worthless pentium 75 that I don't actually use anymore. Of corse most of the sockets and everything are different now, and the processor doesn't even have a fan, just a heatsink, but it helps to have somthing you woulden't care if you broke to experiment on. I don't know if this guy has an excuse since he appears to be a professional tech writer, but we were all noobs once. "Don't poke around inside your case unless you know what you are doing" doesn't fly, because the people who are saying this didn't know what they were doing once. Learn from your mistakes, and this guy's.

Finger Tatooing....

[Grog6]

...I once had "LM7805" branded backwards on my fingertip, by seeing 'What is hot in here?" ..But that wasn't nearly as bad as the other tech who ran his finger across the inkjet printer head while it was printing. (They design them so you can't do that anymore)( without major effort)

The ink almost made him have to have his finger amputated; It is very toxic, injected under the skin like that.

You could clearly read "The quick brow" backwards, fairly distorted, across the tip of his index finger, afew days later, after all the swelling went down.

Re:Finger Tatooing....

[scharkalvin]

Hey, an instant tatoo machine!
Think I'll patent that!

Maybe not.

Re:Finger Tatooing....

[Net_Wakker]

You could clearly read "The quick brow" backwards,

Why backwards? It was printed almost through his finger and you could read it from the other side? I mean, printers are meant to produce forwardreadable prints, no?

Fixing your cooling problem...

[deacon]

Your problem is probably due to not having enough inlet and outlet area on your case.

Unfortunately, a lot of cases have decorative plastic front bezels that don't let air thru, even though they seem to have a grill in the front.

On all my cases, I use a 7" diameter AC fan on the front. I cut a hole thru the plastic bezel, thru the sheetmetal, and mount a 240 volt AC 7" (6.75") diameter fan on the front, blowing in so as not to fight with the power supply fan.

Using a 240 volt fan on a 120 volt system makes it run slow so it is not noisy. You could also use a 120 volt fan and a speed control suitable for inductive loads ( a light dimmer usually isn't). The ideal is to use a 200 volt fan made for the Japanese market (where the voltage is 100 or 200 volts, vs the 120/240 in the USA) but these are a little hard to find.

You absolutely need to have outlet area to dump the hot air, and I try to put my cards in every other pci slot, and leave out the blanks covering the slots in between. In this way you make a card cage like in the mainframes, where air used to flow between every board.

The fans are cheap on the surplus market, if you check the ads in Nuts and Volts magazine, you will find lots of surplus places listed. If you get a used fan and it has noisy bearings, you can pull them, read the part numbers, and order replacements for them from a bearing place like E. B. Atmus.

Once you make the proper holes in your case and put in a big fan, you should get lower temps than you do with the cover off.

If you want to be less extreme you can use smaller 12 volt fans, just make sure you cut the holes to let air in and out.

Here are some cheap fans at marlin p jones. The 24 volt fans may not run at all on 12 volts, unfortunately, but the 12 volt ones should run on the 7 volts you get between +12V and +5V on your power supply.

Good luck!

Re:Let this be a warning to...

[MrSin]

I dunno. The las several girls I've dated would get more fustrated at a game watching it than I was playing it. Then I'd be like "let's go to a movie or something" the words "But...yer not done with the level" came out of their mouth.

Too bad I couldn't stand any of them. Strippers are crazy....

No, no, no, no.

[pilsner.urquell]

This this the right way to build a system.

1. Research, research, research. Read, ask questions, and look at systems that work.
2. Follow directions, my P41 Fire Dragon main board came with a 150 page manual and is very detailed.
3. Don't even think about forgetting about the anti-static protocols.
4. Get the right parts the first time around, I waited 3 weeks to get all my parts together.
5. Burn that bad boy in, run the machine 24/7 for 5 days after you have determined that it runs right. If there is any problem with the machine, such as over heating, return the offending part(s) for replacement or refund. To do otherwise may void any warranties.

This guy's problem...

[cr0sh]

...was simple - a lack of patience. Indeed, throughout life one learns that most mistakes are caused by not taking time (to think things through, to actually do them, to looking at causes, etc).

This is as true today as it was 50 years ago. Furthermore, I think if you can't name "major" components on a motherboard, you shouldn't be messing with it - or at the very least, you should know this and *really* take your time.

I remember upgrading the memory, as a kid, in my TRS-80 Color Computer 3, from 128K to a whopping 512K. This was about 15 years ago. I remember the instructions (which I still have, along with the computer, and upgrade - and yes, it still runs great!) warning about handling the CMOS devices to avoid static electricity (when inserting each of the DRAM chips into their sockets). I ended up grounding myself using a length of steel wire tied to the kitchen faucet, then looped around my arm as I did the upgrade.

All in all, it took me about an hour to perform that first true "upgrade" on my Color Computer - being a 15 year old kid, impatient to get my upgrade going, but knowing that if I screwed up, my parents would be pissed (they paid for it, after all) - I took my time, grounded myself, and made sure I did everything right. So what do I have to show for it?

Well, patience, number one - but I also can still whip out my Color Computer 3, with floppy drive, monitor, and 512K of RAM - and boot it into OS-9 (8 bit multiuser/multitasking, baby!)...

Re:This guy's problem...

[JimLynch]

Well you're sure right about the lack of patience thing. I do tend to be impulsive sometimes. Usually it serves me well but when it doesn't...well my god...what a freaking mess! ;-)

Re:The outlet is the key

[Detritus]

Some chips can be destroyed if the power supply does not apply or remove the various voltages in the correct order. Usually there is some circuitry in the power supply to sequence things correctly and to shut down all voltages if any problems are detected. The power supply could damage the motherboard if it did not shut down properly.

thermal tape

[kardar]

The only problem I had that was really unexpected and devastating was when I touched the thermal tape to the CPU core more than once. In other words, thermal tape is only good on the first application. If you move it around, take it on and off, trying to double-check your work, to see if the heatsink is on there properly, you kill the thermal tape. You have once chance with the thermal tape to put that on properly, and if you remove the heatsink after the tape has touched the CPU, it's no good anymore.

Anyway, at the time the Duron 750 was like a $30.00 part, and memory was incredibly cheap and getting cheaper, so a new stick of RAM and a new Duron 750, a Thermaltake vacuum cleaner and some thermal grease, and everything was back to normal.

It's been since upgraded to an XP 1700+, so that's pretty nice. Still works well, solid, reliable, weeks-of-uptime BSD machine.

Careful with that thermal tape!

good for the economy

[capt.mellow]

God bless 'em, we need more people like this to help rejuvinate the economy!

Most of you are being childish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this guy f***ed up. ALOT.

But guess what, he freaking tried! He learned from his mistakes, and then wrote an article for the other newbies so they wouldn't f*** up.

How many of us lament the fact that people are afraid of technology, treat computers like mysterious black magic boxes, and then come to ask you to fix it when things go wrong that they could fix themselves?

This post will probably be labeled a troll, but I don't care. Screw you elitist bastards. You all probably look and sound like comic book guy from the Simpsons.

Re:Most of you are being childish.

[JimLynch]

Thanks for the positive feedback and support. You're a good egg. :-)

thermal tape-Degrade.

[Anonymous Coward]

Over a long time (years) does thermal tape lose it's effectiveness?

Re:thermal tape-Degrade.

[HBI]

It disintegrates.

I've seen the powder residue.

and remember: Never drop any liquids next to SMTs

[Cheezeman]

Here's a bad mistake. NEVER work on a computer while sweating profusly 8-( I think it was July 4 years ago, got the case open on its side, had to be 95 degrees out that night. One drip of sweat started to fall down my nose, DRIP, tried to catch it with my hand... Dang, missed it. Right on to the leads on my MB's intergrated 7890. Whatched helplessly as I watched the salty fluid wick under the chip. Bye bye SCSI. Got some distilled water.Driped with an eyedroper from the other side, with a wad o paper towels on the sweaty side to try to geet the salt out from under the chip. Followed up with Denatured alcohol. Then acetone to get the last of the H20. Oh how i hoped i got all of the salts and moisture out from under that chip. Waited servral days. Heated area of the chip with hair drier every day. Finally powered the beast back up. Nope, right the first time... Bye Bye SCSI I'm just glad I never did this at work repairing old 1970's hand laid circuit boards. some of the ones in my old machines cost $6000+ apiece used in 1995. Beautiful hand laid Gold wire boards, Also high voltage 680 Vac stuff.(its complicated.. shop had triple phase 380, machine wanted 500 VAC internaly, steped up to 680 routed through one or two boards then back down to 500 to the machine tool, I think, but i've slept since then) (industrial Wire EDM equiptment one had serial # 0002, Yep sill prototype. Always stumped the Techs from the manufactuer)

Users not as stupid as you'd think

[Chris Siegler]

Last year I got a good deal on about a thousand Asus motherboards. I sold all of them on ebay and pretty much figured that I would have quite a few returned because the buyer damaged it and claimed it was broken. Suprisingly, only about half a dozen got returned and of those 4 actually worked and were resold. Of the two others, one had a mark where the screwdriver had slipped and damaged the PCB and the other had a heatsink fall off the bridge.

Of course maybe a lot of people broke the boards and never returned them, or perhaps sent them to Asus for repair instead of back to me for a refund. But I was still amazed at the low return rate and have to conclude that the buyers were smarter than I gave them credit for. Or maybe it was the line in my auctions that said "NO IDIOTS". Hard to say.

What I can say for sure is that they were all smarter than the extremetech writer.

Uhhh thats not DIY

[jonnystiph]

That is definably KIY (Kill It Yourself). A white doo-hickey? Alright, I am not going to say that I have never done stupid, irrational and down right non-sensical things while working on hardware, however if I knock something off the mobo, "a doo-hickey" if you will, I will not be suprised when it doesn't boot.

Wow, next time perhaps this guy should just pay someone to do his work for him. That or practice on old 286/386's till you know better what you are doing. Expensive lesson, I hope he learned from it.

Patience is indeed a virtue!

Advice For The Novice

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't practice on new hardware. Around here you can pick up Pentium 1 and 486 boxes for nearly free, if not free (As in beer). That way, if you screw up, you can say "Hey, at least it wasn't a P4!". I started by picking up old systems and mismatching/rebuilding the systems.

I'll probably get moded down for this offtopic rambling, but I wanted an extra box so I could have a Gentoo box for a bit of variation. (All my boxes run some variant of *BSD, be that OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or even NetBSD). Anyway, I bought a "bare bones" 700 MHz AMD Athlon box, which I built on to. It suffered a strange problem where it would hang after running for several minutes. Changing the RAM fixed the problem until the next morning, then I tried adding more cooling fans, no change. I finally changed the power supply, this fixed the problem permantly. It ran for several months, then I was ready to install Gentoo (It was previously running FreeBSD). After preparing the slices/partitions, I rebooted and the system was dead. It would not put out a video signal to the CRT, nor would it reach the boot process. So I still have only *BSD boxes. I love *BSD, but I really wanted to try Gentoo and see what all the riot was about it, *sigh*

Re:Advice For The Novice

[Mycroft_VIII]

Faulty power supplies are responsible for a LOT of problems, most people blame half of them on the software or other components and never think to check the ps. I've solved more than a few issues with new power suplies.
Probably somthing got damaged by the old one and finally died when a borderline component couldn't take one more power cycle.

Mycroft

CompUSA

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Since you mentioned CompUSA...

http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=compusa_sucks

Ret me get this stlaight...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you'le saying you've NEVEL had a downroad that faired CLC?

You ale tlury a Velly Rucky Man!

Re:Ret me get this stlaight...

[John Courtland]

Maybe I'm stupid, but what the fuck?

Friends Don't Let Friends

[sharkey]

I destroyed my motherboard through a series of ill-planned and stupid actions.

Install Windows.

Re:whoopy doo

[JimLynch]

Geez. I just thought I'd share my experience. You don't have to click to read it you know. LOL

Re:The outlet is the key

[Mycroft_VIII]

If a sudden loss of power to the ps causes a mb to fry in any consumer PC then, IMHO, somthing is defective, possibly the ps. It shouldn't happen period. Power outages are to likely in typical home or small bussiness to guarantee it'll never go out suddenly.
Turning of a switched outlet is no worse, and often better, that a random outage.
I've been through lots of outages, and even had my comp connected to switched outlet someone (ok,ok, me somtimes) would turn off without making shure the comp was powered down. NEVER have I had that dammage anything more than data on the hd.

Mycroft

The article HAS to be a joke

[The Meshback]

I've never been to ExtremeTech.com, but I would guess by the name of the site and the writer's completely ridiculous mistakes, that this article has to be a joke. I could understand if this was some random blog, but this article is coming from a site that seems to be about upgrades/mods/etc. Did they decide to get the mailroom guy to build a PC? It just doesn't make much sense.

As quite a few other posters have pointed out their tips for building a new system, all I really want to add in is RTFM. I'm not saying you have to read the entire thing, but everytime I've built a new system, that's my method. Open the box, ogle the motherboard, then take 5 minutes to look over the manual--that way you at least know the random jumpers on the board. And it gives you a moment to step back from it and calm down--at least for me. If I'm about to be building a new PC, I'm raring to go. I think the key to building a system is to SLOW DOWN! Think before you ram that $300 CPU in the wrong way and bend all the pins.

That's just my advice.

Re:The article HAS to be a joke

[JimLynch]

Actually I'm the Community Manager over at ET. I manage the ET forum. Unlike Loyd, Dave or Jason, I'm not a hardware guru. I write software reviews and opinion pieces. So DIY is new to me but I'm learning fast and having a hell of a time along the way, as you can tell from the column. ;-) Please do drop by the forum and say hello sometime.

Re:The article HAS to be a joke

[Anonymous Coward]

Hardware guru? It's not an art... It's more like LEGO. I bet all the stuff you built as a kid turned out as square houses with holes in the wall even when the building instructions were for a spaceship or a fort...

Re:The article HAS to be a joke

[kaatochacha]

I've gotta say, it's interesting reading the replies knowing the person who wrote the article is reading as well. Don't sweat the bad comments: talk is cheap. How many would put THEIR silly mistakes out for all to see?

Re:The article HAS to be a joke

[JimLynch]

Hey, no problem. Everybody is entitled to their opinion and I'm glad some got a good chuckle out of the article. :-)

Re:The article HAS to be a joke

[The Meshback]

I have to say that you've taken it like a pro. I wish you good luck with your system.

And remember, learn from your mistakes. ;)

Re:Jim Lynch is a rock

[JimLynch]

Thanks for the warmth, my friend. LOL

Not all of us live in Cali.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

In the midwest local computer stores died along time ago. Its pretty much bigbox (compusa, bestbuy, circuit city) or internet.

Re:Not all of us live in Cali.

[AKAImBatman]

In the midwest local computer stores died along time ago. Its pretty much bigbox (compusa, bestbuy, circuit city) or internet.

Funny you should mention that. My current homes are in Wisconsin and Chicago. Putting Chicago aside, there are small time computer stores that I know of in Reedsburg and Portage. I'm pretty sure that there are more in the Sauk county area, but those are the ones I know off the top of my head.

What I've seen is that these stores haven't disappeared. Instead, they've refocused on becoming computer suppliers for small companies in the area. As a result, their existence may not be immediately apparent.

Happened to me!

[DrunkenTerror]

Indeed it can.

Once upon a time I installed an operating system on a desktop computer with NO connection to any network. I wrote the root password down in a sooper-sekrit place. I used the machine and the root password successfully for three days. The password was hard-to-remember, and I consulted the note several times over those days. On the forth day, the root password would no longer be accepted. I spent much of the forth day trying and retrying the password, using the same keyboard, different keyboards, and getting other people to try to type the password in, just to take myself out of the equation.

Nothing worked. Impossibly, the password had been changed. On the fifth day, I reinstalled the operating system.

At the time, I lived alone. No one else had access to this machine until I asked folks to try to type the pswd. The only possible explanation I could come up with was that a cosmic ray had hit the hard disk and twiddled a bit in the password file, changing it from the password I had set, written down, and used successfully.

Anyone else have an alternate explanation or a similar tale? I'd love to hear them.

Re:Happened to me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else have an alternate explanation or a similar tale? I'd love to hear them.

*cough* your username?

slashdotted

[Anonymous Coward]

R.I.P.

Case Window? Naah...

[SEWilco]

From the rest of the article it is apparent he is a beginner at case mods. So by the time we read about how much he likes the case window for viewing we understand why he doesn't have a webcam inside his case.

I know somebody like this

[Anonymous Coward]

He once built a server for us. Cables all over the place, loose hard drives, MTBF about three weeks.

Nothing like the cold sweats when in too deep!

[garyisabusyguy]

Just trying to identify my three 'worst moments with electronics', seems like there are more than I can go into... 1. Learning about the magic smoke that lives in integrated circuits while miss wiring a bread board in electronics lab. 2. Realizing that the FMU 113b that I just pulled out of an alcohol tank still had the detonator in it. 3. 'Discovering' that the fan in the powersupply of my daughters recently upgraded PC had failed by frying my hand on the top of the case. Luckily, all situations were survivable and cost me nothing more than an elevated heart rate ;)

author takes idioting seriously

[Petersson]

author takes idioting seriously... Before reading the article I expected he destroyed his hardware with *style*, but he did not. I knew one guy who screwed motherboard directly to metal plate of computer case, without spacers. Motherboard circuits were shorted out and the mobo was gone. Unfortunately I never experienced to burn motherboard or processor.. once I was sure I have fried my old Duron 800 MHz - cpu fan fell off, fan-holding brackets on cpu socket were too weared. Motherboard overheat protection shutted all down and after some time this system went back to life. And I've managed how to *nail* cpu fan to motherboard. There's some leak from condensers, it looks like they're about to explode however system still works (ECS K7VZA rev.1.0 mobo).

Webcam inside the case.

[LuckyStarr]

Thanks. Nice idea. Will try that.

Re:Webcam inside the case.

[SEWilco]

Remember to post the URL here.

Just say no to DIY

[iamacat]

At least if you want a good computer rather than just doing it once out of curiosity. Every time I tried, I ended with mysterious lockups, resets and random failures to boot when powered on. I have a suspition that various components do not implement standards precisely and some combinations are more reliable than others, for example a video card might have problems with a particular motherboard. In this case, big PC makers would have a chance to discover the problems and substitute components. For home made PC - good luck finding which part to exchange and getting the store to believe you didn't damage it yourself.

Have you ever reversed an EPROM BIOS 180 ?

[LuckyStarr]

Thats fun. A friend of mine did that with a mainboard (w/486/DX66+3 PCI!) of ME! He is still a friend, though. :)

He stuck the chip in the socket and I reckoned he did it correctly, as that is his job. I reckoned incorrectly. EPROMS have a tiny little window where you can direct ultraviolet radiation inside to erase the content. A bright flash of radiation came from INSIDE the chip when I turned the system on. I knew instantly that this was not a good sign.

The chip was fried and I had no BIOS Backup. I wrote emails all over the world but could not find the manufacturer. The funny thing of the story is that if I had remembered the BIOS-ID string which is on the screen when the system boots, Award could have told me the manufacturer.

No BIOS, no bootup, no BIOS-ID, no Manufacturer, no image. Damn. :)

Re:Have you ever reversed an EPROM BIOS 180 ?

[miller701]

Yeah. Been there. I was working as a co-op, and I was all excited about the new code I had programmed and wanted to test it "right away". Got too excited, lost focus, put the chip in the wrong way.

In my case, I had the tech burn me a new one. All was well.

I call it my "First Engineering F*ck-up" and I keep it in my office. It keeps ya humble

Because...

[LuckyStarr]

...its funny. :)

Not my own stupidity, but nonetheless...

[apederso]

So, while I can't lay claim to the stupidity that caused my most interesting hardware failure I still laugh every time that I think about it, so here goes nothing interesting:

One day I am sitting at my computer, minding my own business trying desperately to finish a contract job that I have to deliver in about 12 hours. I haven't showered for two days, slept in about three or really had a meal that didn't involve junk food or cup o' noodles at the computer all week. I am almost done, I can feel it, so I stand up and go into the other room to call into the office and make sure nothing else has gone wrong while I have been dealing with this.

As I stand up, my cat assumes that I am going to pet him, and I have to gently remind him (read: shove him away) that there are other things that I have to do. So, I go into the other room and make a phone call. I am on the phone for about five minutes and everything is grand. I walk back into the room and go to sit down at my computer and notice several things wrong, listed in the order in which I noticed them:

1) My computer was off.
2) My computer was smoking
3) My computer smelled like cat urine
4) My cat was angry

Apparently when I refused to pet my cat, he decided to get back at my by marking the object that I was ignoring him in favor of: my computer. I, like the tower of intellect that I can be, had that side off of my case and a big house fan blowing in the side due to air flow problems at my, then, over-clocked system.

Well, enough to say that the computer didn't work, the job didn't get finished that day and the cat has never been the same. He won't go near computers anymore.

(I do have to say that this experience is the reason that I don't mind hearing the 'Jesus Saves' joke anymore because if it wasn't for that lame-ass joke I wouldn't have remembered to save my work and I would have been out a contract and not just 14 hours late with a great story to tell.)

Re:whoopy doo

[Hognoxious]

You don't have to click to read it you know.

It's painful but you can't help yourself, you just have to look. Like a traffic accident.

[hoping for negative answers]
BTW, you don't drive, do you? Maintain your own vehicle? Take flying lessons?!?
[/hope]

Noob DIY mistakes

[cyclocommuter]

Reading some of the nasty comments here on /. actually makes me feel sorry for the ExtremeTech guy. Ok so he made a couple of noob DIY mistakes, but who doesn't? Hopefully by the time he builds the next PC it should be easier... if he is smart to remember the mistakes he did.

OTH there are people who are just too hamfisted to be successful at handling/building delicate electronic components. I remember a manager I had once who kept on breaking stuff that we were building software for, almost everytime he "played" with one of them...

Re:no doubt.. (Forcing cables)

[Havokmon]

4. Find out what every cable is *before* you plug it in. Also, make sure which direction it goes. Sometimes they need forcing, but only force after you're SURE that it's supposed to fit that way.

I used to work as a tech at Best Buy - I SWEAR TO GOD, one time I had an IDE cable where the filled in hole was on the bottom instead of the top.

No, you can't just flip it over - there's an extra 'chunk' of plastic on top to be extra sure you get it in right. Fortunately, I haven't seen another one of those in the 10 years since then..

that's why they sell macs ...

[Anonymous Coward]

next time safe yourself time and money
and get a mac ...

i'm not a mac user, i'm 99.9% DIY computer guy, but
serious, don't waste all this ... get a mac!

*blink*

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope that guy was aiming to be funny, otherwise he shouldn't be griping that he has to rebuy equipment... he so obviously doesn't have a whole lot of experience in such things...

Christ!

[talmagwa]

I read the whole article, and was LOL. I've got to admit he's a pretty good writer. I really thought the article was hilarious. I used to do helpdesk stuff, and it just really seems to me that non-tech people are just afraid to do anything other than their tasks. I had one guy ask me "how do I create a new folder on my desktop" in windows, he was the VP of Sales. Then there was the time I had to go out to one of our distributors and consult with their "tech guy" on a problem with the printer not printing. He told me had it plugged in and everything, yeah plugged in the wall, luckily I had a spare printer cable with me.

Thank you!

[Da VinMan]

That was just too damn funny. I'd mod you up, but I'm fresh out.