HOW-TO: not to kill hardware
 

OK, post here all experiences and advice concerning damaged/dead hardware. there are often small stupid things that cause a lot of voltage. I started this thread because I've killed too much hardware last months, all because of stupid things

1. Mainboard fan connectors can fail mysteriously
2. if you mount a heatsink on a CPU, make sure the fan wire doens't get between the CPU and cooler (almost killed 2500+)
3. before starting a machine, after you've been modding it or messing with wires, check all components. check for loose parts. check if nothing can be short-circuited.
4. if you use a 3pin to 4pin fan adapter, watch out. because the pins of most 3pin connectors can touch things and shortcircuit it. Yesterday I forgot about a 3pin fan adapter. the pins of the 3pin fan connector touched my GF2Pro (yes the famous gf2pro, back from RMA) and killed it :grum:
5. after you've been working with the BIOS, make sure CPU overheat protection is enabled
6. If you mount a HS, use a large screwdriver
7. If you want to remove memoryheatsinks from a GFX, don't to it the hard way.
8. Zalman adhesive does NOT let go. some people already ripped off the core of their videocard, because the epoxy did not let go
9. when watercooling, tighten your hose clamps more firmly a few weeks after clamping them.
10. watch out with shims. before starting your PC after placing a shim, make sure the CPU die makes contact with the heatsink. Duron's and Palomino's are usually fine with the shims, bartons/tbreds NOT
11. when voltmodding, your potmeter usually has to be at MAX resistance. use multiturn cermets instead of regular potmeters, because you can slip when turning a regular potmeter, and give the HW way too much voltage

>>> complete this list of tricky, lousy things that can kill your HW
if the list get bigs enough, I'll categorize the info

-If you mount a HS, use a large screwdriver (killed a mobo and CPU)

- If you want to remove memoryheatsinks from a GFX, don't to it the hard way.

arctic silver adhesive does not come loose
not frozen, not heated
NEVER

(pulled core from GF4)

Buy a Dell. Keep it closed.

same with packard bell

don't connect a hard drive while computer is on (short circuited a hd - 200mb - when I was 12 years old)

don't boil a Geforce2 ..

Don't put ANY hardware in 400V

in that case only PSU blows up, correct ?

- Never place a cooler on a CPU WITHOUT clipping it on at the same time.
- Don't use loose molex connectors to power up your drives. A small nudge against them has a large chance of causing at least data corruption.
- Test a new harddrive before putting any critical data on it.

I did that to with my CDwriter and he still works :p

I did it with a cd rom drive and it died to. I pushed something in the hole, so the drive would open (i forgot a cd in it). the drive didn't open, I connected it to the PSU of my machine. the drive opened immediately when it got power, but a chip inside the drive burnt

screen and switches do. PC worked normally for about 2 min, then turned it of. Still works :)

I hope so

(it was a switch btw, *kaboem*... not funny)

Don't be to lazy to reset the bios when changing cpu's

don't put a floppy without the metal protection on it in a drive....
the floppy drive of my LC II died because of that when I was 13 :-)

- Make sure that the red wire of your inverter makes contact with the red wire of your molex conector. The same for the black one.

And NOT the red one with the black wire and the black one with the red wire of your molex. Some of you may remember the big bang @ MM8..

- Due this little edge make sure that your volcano 7 isn't mounted upside down. Fried an Athlon 1800xp by doing that.

yeah I've also done it, I didn't have the proper inverter connector so I didn't know what was + and -.

pretty scary, I was just awake, and suddenly it goes BANG :wtf:

That little thingie scared the sh*t out a me

that's a tiny capacitator, only a centimeter tall. go figure if those HUGE capacitators in your PSU blow up

hmm, perhaps it's an idea again for a [M]ad movie. in school i'm learning about power supplies

change the direction of the diodes in the PSU, so the electrolytic capacitators get the voltage in the wrong direction. this makes the liquid react wrongly with the metal in the capacitator and it forms a gass. the gas creates a huge pressure in the elco. if we cover the breather hole (it lets the gas get out in case stuff goes wrong) it'll give us a nice BANG

same but with memory: put it in SPD before switching ram.

Be careful removing a hdd if there isn't much room too slide it out. I turned it and cut a trace (twice :o ) and now it only works as slave.

make sure fan leads are insulated, shorting the red and black can mess up a psu

(possibly not kill it, but takes about a day for it to recover)