I've made some terrible mistakes...

[@LilaHikes]

Jay's face posted at every customer service desk: _Do not accept returns from this person._

[@watercannonscollaboration2281]

Microcenter: well thankfully if Jay comes back for a return he’ll probably buy twice the amount in new parts

[@ashd9196]

Lmao. Full disclosure. I did the same with a GPU that I had hooked up to a lower rated PSU back in the day. I pretended that it was faulty out of the box and got it replaced from the shop xD

[@theprogrammer1]

🤣🤣🤣

[@c99kfm]

I had a savvier friend help me build a computer back in the early 2000s, he did everything correct - except he forgot to connect the CPU cooler. CPUs, back in those days, had zero protections against that, so it just burned when we tried turning it on. Another friend did the same thing a few weeks ago, only "on purpose" but without knowing of those protections, and got away scot-free, the lucky so-and-so... Anyway, brick and mortar store accepted it as a defect and I got a new one. I felt some guilt, but not that much - this was before Amazon and most online stores, so they had margins. I did not ask my friend for help, second time around. :)

[@10th_Doctor]

@@c99kfm My first build was an IBM clone in the 80s, yes, I am that damned old. Over a decade older than Jayz. My father was an electronics tech in the Navy and he taught me. I still use the same build checklist he gave me laminated and kept safe with some edits because back then CPUs didn't need an attached cooler, just a heatsink. When I do a new build I don't just "Oh I know what to do." I go item by item through the checklist because it still fits today so I've never accidentally forgotten to put a cooler on, make sure everything was tightly fitted, etc. It's general enough to work with any build but specific enough that you know everything to check.

[@mactep1]

PSU cables are the worst, one end of the cable is already standard, JUST MAKE THE OTHER END STANDARD AS WELL.

[@GroetenUitNederland]

I support this motion! ✊️

[@mikeford963]

The plug itself is standardized, it's the leads from the rail in the PSU us what needs to be standarized.

[@Real-Name..Maqavoy]

A trial n error.. Feels like ya playing: *Dark souls - IRL*

[@bland9876]

I fried 3 hard drives because of it. 2 in my system and 1 that i used tk figure out why the other 2 weren't showing up in the BIOS/booting.

[@BigTacious]

during my first build in 2006, I wasn't aware of standoff screws and installed my motherboard DIRECTLY onto the case. So, everytime I booted it up, i essentially short circuited the motherboard. It managed to last 6 months, with random crashes of course. Honestly impressive that the mobo was able to last that long.

[@Stonerman135]

I bricked my mobo trying to update the BIOS with MSI Center. Learned to NEVER update BIOS in Windows

[@michaeloneill1360]

6 Months?? My Nephew & I Fried (2) Power Supplies that way!!

[@Redmage913]

We got one of these machines in the repair shop I worked at. Thankfully, it came back once we put the standoffs in. They thankfully didn’t argue our fixed labor charge, since this was an expertise issue and not a time issue. I think we discounted it a little bit as consolation, since I really wanted this machine to be happy :)

[@WarmwaterBliss]

Same thing here. Got a couple years out of it. Never quite ran right 😅

[@m3redgt]

how dafuq did it not just turn everything into the magic blue smoke immediately

[@letalissonus]

If you're feeling bad for drilling holes into that motherboard, always remember that there have been thousands of people in the early 90s killing their i486SX CPU because of an April's Fools joke in the German c't magazine, which claimed that you could turn your i486SX into a i486DX by drilling a hole into it at a specific position. They even provided a drilling template with the magazine!

[@Dnzn]

⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️

[@jimtekkit]

What an evil joke. And many people would have done it too, even today there's plenty of fools bricking their graphics cards by flashing an OC bios onto their standard card, or delidding their soldered CPU and cracking the silicon. Anything for that extra 2% performance.

[@NerothLoD]

Reminds me of the hilarity that was the "hidden headphone jack" on iPhones a decade or so back. 4chan made Crapple-looking ad materials and distributed them online. And people went and drilled holes in their new phones. Beyond hilarious. People's stupidity never ceases to amuse me. :D

[@belther7]

@@jimtekkit This made me remember when I did a biosmod on my HD4870, but i didn't go for OC, but for a better fan curve, because it has a blower type of fan and I wanted it to be more quiet in lower temps and to go harder with higher temps, got it to lower the highest temp from 95 to 87. I don't even remember how I did it, but I remember that I did and was thinking of modding my Q8400 but I went with a simple OC in the processor because of the cheap mobo

[@daigriffiths399]

Hellfire but I remember that!

[@abelgutierrez3603]

It was an Asrock Fatality X99 board you drilled thru, that is the day I subscribed to your channel. Testing out the EK Custom AIO with the pump built in the radiator. Found your channel because my EK AIO leaked and was googling if anyone else's leaked. The answer was yes, 50-60% failure rate.

[@HenryOfGnarlia]

The best part of this video is the number of people that didn't know about you drilling through the motherboard, that now now. Like myself. Lmao.

[@David801644]

Yep

[@danarcher3415]

Same

[@Xyler94]

So here's a fun story from myself. I built a PC for the son of someone who works with my dad. years later, the boy spills something in the PC, won't power on anymore. Happens, whatever. I was too busy to properly diagnose it myself, so I told the mother to bring the PC to BestBuy to get them to diagnose it first. They diagnose it, power supply is dead. They replace the PSU, give it back to the mother. However, they must not have fully tested the PC afterwards for some reason, and the PC still didn't boot. So I took it to diagnose it. I mean hey, liquid damage, anything is possible. You'd flick power on, press the power button, the PSU would trip one of its protections, and no more boot until you reset the PSU. After a bit of troubleshooting, I thought it was motherboard. Told the mother that I'd need to replace it, she paid for it and I replaced the board... however, new board in, same problem. The issue? The SATA power cable for the 1 HDD in the PC (main boot was an SSD). When it was plugged in, it caused the PSU to trip. The mistake? The Best Buy employees didn't replace all the cables when swapping PSUs out. So they mixed some cables, and thankfully, it was only the SATA Cable, as without that plugged in, the PC booted just fine. However, this was after I killed not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 SATA devices trying to figure this out. I knew the general manager of the Best Buy, so I went and told him what had happened. I didn't raise a stink, I simply told him I want his Geek Squad techs to understand the grave error they did. I used to work at Geek Squad too, I've been there, so I wasn't gonna raise a stink about it... but they did reimburse the hard drive I bought that was one of the 4 drives I killed with the bad SATA cable. Once I got the correct modular cable in, the whole PC worked just fine.

[@bland9876]

Having the power supply end of the cable not only not be pinned correctly but also be keyed correctly so that they still plug in even though they're not pinned correctly is the dumbest thing to ever exist and I'm still super mad. Literally every time I computer turns on the username says pissed off because that's how freaking mad I was that had the freaking reinstall windows and all my software. Thank God for the back up hard drive I had If that thing ever dies I will definitely cry because it's not backed up anywhere.

[@ffwast]

@@bland9876 Back it up. Right now.

[@10th_Doctor]

It's crap that PSUs are not standardized enough that the cables from one sometimes don't work with another. Not that I have ever had that issue since all my PSUs are Seasonics. It would be like requiring specific brand SATA cables for specific brand SATA drives instead of being able to use any SATA cable and it just works.

[@emc_gamercats1897]

Wow seems to me like a simple cable that helps boot the drive could cause no post. The littlest thing yet not the most common assumption. That’s what makes figuring out an error so difficult.

[@azmotorhead3614]

Feb. 2001. I bought a 20GB hard drive off a classmate (high school.) I took the drive and my shiny new copy of Windows 2000 Pro home that Friday. And by "home" I mean "brand new apartment we just moved into *that day*." I plugged the new hard drive into my HP Pavilion desktop, booted off the Windows 2000 CD, and started the install. One of the first steps was to format the new drive. Since it was going to take like half an hour, I figured I'll go help unpack more boxes while it's doing its thing. I go to walk out of my room, hit the light switch, and I immediately froze as I could hear my PC behind me whining down. *Apparently* my new room in this new apartment had THE ONE OUTLET I DECIDED TO PLUG MY PC INTO wired into the light switch. I flipped the switch back on in a panic, booted the PC back up, but alas, the hard drive died during my simulation of a blackout. That was not the first time I borked a PC, and it certainly wasn't the last... but I think it was the most emotionally devastating one.

[@lorddashdonalddappington2653]

What kind of fucking monster wires a lightswitch to a power outlet?

[@tguit-fiddler5692]

@@lorddashdonalddappington2653 my house has them, the 70s were a different time lol

[@SmittyAZ]

@@lorddashdonalddappington2653 It's actually pretty common to have a switched outlet. At least, it used to be.

[@Real-Name..Maqavoy]

@@lorddashdonalddappington2653 oh sweet! Summer Child.

[@bland9876]

​@@SmittyAZsadly my entire condo is like that. Literaly unscrwed one of the sockets removed the side that was connected to the switch and then wired up the always hot wires to both of them.

[@aleksandramitic1062]

I used to replace parts, open and clean components, but the first computer I built entirely by myself is my current main computer (for work), a bit more than a year and half ago. And I chose hell of a computer to test my building skills - Meshify 2, Aorus x670 Elite, 7950x, 4090, DeepCool Ls720, 128GB RAM... Fortunately, it went well and it started working the moment I pressed the power button. However, I've dealt with much more expensive stuff (high end printers) back in 2001, because there was no service in my country for that particular model, and my parents' business depended on it, so they asked me to try and fix it, their 14 years old daughter who liked to tinker with electronics. For comparison, that printer was a bit cheaper than our 56 square meters apartment. I didn't really fix it but I didn't break it either. I managed to get rid of a black stripe while printing.

[@LBXZero]

My dad's best memory of breaking a PC, he just installed something or fixed something inside, booted the PC before closing up, and then he decided to finish closing up the PC while it was on. He passed the tip of the screwdriver across something on the motherboard while tightening a screw.

[@LBXZero]

In my experiences, I can't say I have unalived anything except for one 2.5" SSD drive. This drive was being mounted in an ITX cube case... where the 2.5" mounts are flat on the outer frame. The challenge was plugging in the SATA cable. The drive needed stand offs in the very least, but when I finally got the straight connector plugged in, the tongue of the SSD's SATA port broke into the cable. Miraculously, with natural pressure of the cable on the socket, the drive was still functional, just noted to replace the drive next time something needs to be done. The tongues in those ports can be fragile. I wish SATA would come out with SATA-C, a SATA connection based on the USB-C design or something can be done to bring U.2 to HDD drives. The reason SATAExpress failed was because the connector was nuts. The great benefit of SATA was the small connector and less landscape per port on the motherboard. I strongly believe our bulk HDD drives can make use of speeds higher than 600MB/sec.

[@xeres14]

The one that I remember the most: I started a new job and we were moving the servers to a new room. One of the servers was in a tower case that was up to my waist. The case was pretty janky and old, and had those 5.25 faceplates but some were missing. Most were missing. Anyway so I pick up the server and something just shoots out the front of the case from the 5.25 bays. That would have been the 2 unsecured hard drives and they hit the ground. They were in the bays without being screwed in. Now they were on the floor. Sure enough the inevitable clicking sound arose when I turned the machine on (after putting the drives back in).

[@ArtisChronicles]

I was all, doesn't sound that jank until the hard drives flew out of the front. Still wouldn't have been too jank if they were actually secured... How unfortunate.

[@qwertyuiop.]

Every time Jay says to minimize the video I put it on fullscreen instead. I need to see that face better.

[@31337_alex]

I nearly killed a motherboard trying to fix a game crash issue because I thought the socket was dirty. I cleaned it with WAY too much 70% IPA as a last resort and it stopped turning on. I thought I was going to have to buy another board until I let it sit for a few hours and it miraculously worked again and has been working since. Tip: Don't get desperate while troubleshooting your PC or else you start doing stupid crap and end up with broken hardware.

[@ttrev007]

i absolutely agree with your tip. if you get desperate walk away and maybe take a nap.

[@31337_alex]

@@ttrev007 For sure. For me it was taking a walk and coming back to it the next day that gave me a better mindset for troubleshooting.

[@natefunk1]

What you did wasn't technically wrong; maybe not necessary. You just needed the alcohol to evaporate. It is not conductive enough to create a short, it just wasn't allowing proper flow of electricity.

[@Dizz-vd8df]

Did you every find out the cause of the game crash? I'm assuming the GPU setting is set too high.

[@31337_alex]

@@Dizz-vd8df The SSD was loose in its slot, the screw was finger-tight. The PC would run benchmarks just fine. It probably crashed from failing to load assets.

[@Kaysa56]

When you drill through that X99 board, I was there when it happened! 3000 years ago. I saw that video the same day when you first uploaded it.

[@MrVman93]

Love this vid, I always get asked how I learned everything I know about computers and fixing them and it really comes down to Ive broken enough things to have to learn how to fix them or avoid those problems in the future. Also I think Jay left out the 780ti he bricked by flashing the wrong bios.

[@SamiJuntunen1]

Exactly. Thing is to never repeat same mistake!

[@colinmclean1300]

Motto of the story! Patience and due diligence. Take your time. Building a computer is like driving a car. You go like lightning, you can stop like thunder. The thunder part is never good!

[@ryanwachs4808]

Love how you put it out there, people should not be afraid to make mistakes everyone dose.

[@drgapinski]

A long time ago I was helping a friend of mine build his first real pc. I let him do all the work and just gave him instructions so he wouldn't do anything to brick it. Well, after a couple hours, his first build was complete and we went to boot it up and it was just black screening us. The power was on, but otherwise nothing. My first worst fear was that he simply had a dead gpu so we went through the process of troubleshooting part by part. Well, it turned out the gpu was fine since it worked in my PC so we moved on to inspecting the wires, the power supply, the cpu, everything! All that was left at this point was to check the ram so I popped his ram out and discovered... he somehow had forced his ram in backwards. Something that shouldn't have been physically possible with DDR3, but he had somehow managed. I told him, "Well, I guess we know what the problem is... it'd be some kind of miracle if these things still worked." I flipped the sticks into the correct orientation, pushed them back in, and attempted to boot the system... THEY WORKED! Somehow, they miraculously still worked. That was the closest I ever got to being part of a dead PC build.

[@samadel.a765]

I have a recent similar story but its not as long a friend of mine wanted to get a rig we went and bought a used one and everything was connected properly and all is well Then he wanted to get a GPU so we got a used sapphire nitro Rx 570 4gb and we tested it it was fine and all is fine again then we realized that the PSU is not strong enough so we got a used bitfinix 600w PSU and he didn't test it (noob mistake but what do I say it's kinda my fault for not doing the job myself lol) sooo he got it and tried to wire it it didn't work I told him to send me a pic of the device and to highlight each cable and he just gave me a calculator quality pic the shows nothing soooo after a bit of arguing I told him to bring it and I'll see what he screwed up He managed to clip the CPU power in an incorrect orientation💀 so I preyed that it would still be OK (the board is a Samsung h81s it has a 4pin CPU power connector I took out the thing and connected it properly and tested and it was just fine (thank god)

[@apollosaturn5]

6:30 OMG! I thought he jumped into a "Nationwide" commercial.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@ArdyneusTheGod]

Nationwide is on your side

[@MarsMan1]

Thanks for Sharing. Your Pain in Our Gain. I can see new builders making these mistakes, especially the power supply & cable mistake.

[@Alex-w6x3c]

1. "Never drill a hole in your motherboard" 2. Never use PSU cables from different PSUs. Use ONLY cables that came with the PSU that you want to use. 3. Make sure to unplug the PSU from the power socket BEFORE you're going inside of your system.

[@longjohn526]

After you unplug the mains cord you should also hit the start button a couple of times to discharge the capacitors in the standby power circuit

[@PureRushXevus]

I always leave the cord in the PSU personally, I just turn off the switch on the back and hold the power button down to drain the caps. that way it's grounded

[@BobBobson]

I'd like to add, if you're using something that might possibly be a nonstandard power supply, check the pinout first. I upgraded from a Dell T7500 to a custom rig. Kept the 1000W Dell power supply, as a workstation grade power supply should be of decent quality, and with that much wattage I'd not be stressing it. It turns out on a standard ATX power supply pin 20 is blank. Not connected. On the Dell it's +12v. I made the magic smoke, burnt up the motherboard, and luckily that was it. RMA'd the board successfully, bought a 24 pin extension, and physically removed the wire connecting pin 20. Works beautifully now.

[@ArtisChronicles]

​@@PureRushXevus This is the best way to do it "lazy". It achieves the same thing.

[@jacobmech1]

Cable mod has psu specific cables if for some reason you need more

[@joostvandijk6901]

Small, but i think important remark on the: "make sure you unplug your power-supply". Do not only unplug (or use the switch) but make sure you turn on your PC after! This makes sure that any residual power that is in any capacitor is drained. This just does not only apply to PC's but all other sorts of electronics. My PC really goes "on" for a quick second, all LED's and everything on, before dying down again. Prevents you for getting a nasty shock or worse, end up like Jay.... :)

[@Skorsis]

Very good tip. Friend of mine decided one day that he could be a PC tech and attempted a fix on a work machine. He did unplug the power but didn't, as you can guess, drain the board. He got a mild shock when touching something, and completely bricked the GPU he was trying to unseat. MoBo survived but I told him not to touch stuff without me about in future xD

[@glebglub]

you want to hold the power button down for 7 to 10 seconds - source: the maintainence engineers at the factory I used to work at that ran 480V machinery

[@pistachiostars]

Reading comments like this makes me feel like building my PC right the first time was just a stroke of luck, I wouldn’t have thought about this

[@samadel.a765]

Its not just turn on but rather hard shutdown to hold the button for about 30 secs or something like that I think

[@joostvandijk6901]

@@samadel.a765 yes Wenn the PC is powered on. But we were saying if the pc is turned off normally and you want to work on the internals that you should remove the power cord and then push the button fur the pc to turn it on.. Of course this won't power on the pc, but it will drain the big condensators on your power supply which prevents getting a shock or damage some components because of the residual power.

[@DJH316007]

Jay: We have to go WAY back to the 90s Me: Wow I feel old

[@falkwulf3842]

I know right.

[@rtyler1869]

I feel older. While is messing around with the of Pentium Cards, had been working 6 years and messing around with my first build as an adult. Also rember installing sound cards into a 286 and 386 system

[@3dchick]

My first "pc" ran DOS and Word Star. 😀 I never touched its parts however.

[@thefirsted]

I know for sure those were Pentium II's he was talking about.

[@midniteoyl8913]

Ya, I still have an AMD Slot A CPU here that works asfaik. But way older than that is a Spider Graphics video card..

[@creamepiecharlie]

Your dad was a fine man. I know he retired from the military and how much you loved him. It's beautiful you got to share in your passion or at least to discover your passion with your dad.

[@PXAbstraction]

These kids today with all their individually keyed power connectors, they don't know what it was like in the 286-Pentium era, where you could freely plug stuff in in the wrong places and fry your machine when you turned it on. And overclocking? Back then, we had to set our CPU speeds with dip switches! Ain't no setting multipliers and crap in BIOS menus, oh no. You wanted to overclock, you had to do math to figure out the jumper positions and gods forbid you set it wrong. We have it so easy now. 🤣

[@Amarouq2]

Dip switches? Lucky you, I had to deal with jumpers. Also, I didn’t see anyone mentioning AT (not ATX) power supplies where nothing was keyed and it was totally possible to reverse the connections to the motherboard. Super easy to cook your system with one of those.

[@MrEdioss]

Doing 775 overclock was the best math I ever did to calculate fsb:CPU:ram, the multiplier overclock could be deceptive and leave ram unchanged.

[@ArtisChronicles]

This is why it was only meant for trained technicians for the longest time. It was too easy to really muck something up. These days people say it's like Lego.

[@helenHTID]

@@ArtisChronicles PCs have always been easy to build once you know where everything and how everything plugs in/connects to. But I guess that process has become more fail safe and even easier with today's designs.

[@mariano3113]

This and manually timing cars. Heck, I at least got to use a timing-gun. (Haynes Repair Manual days...R.I.P.)

[@KellicTiger]

Drilling into a motherboard........I.....but......how........Never mind. LOL. Congrats. I wasn't aware of this, and I swear I've watched all your videos.

[@kennethhowerton3983]

Another tip to add to your "Unplug the PSU" tip. Also unplug Ethernet if you have Power over Ethernet. I noticed my S5 motherboard lights would stay on after unplugging PSU, but finally cut off once ethernet is removed.

[@TheCnf]

Very funny "story time with Jay" kind of content. liked it a lot

[@napoficial7123]

The Truth: Jay was trying to push a Sega cartridge on a PC motherboard 😂

[@David-ln8qh]

Trying to use Game Genie to cheat at StarCraft

[@johnt.848]

Did he blow on it first? 😂

[@napoficial7123]

​@@johnt.848😂😂😂😂

[@PyromancerRift]

Sonic cartridges make PC go BRRRRRRRRRR

[@omegajvn1]

Omg!!! I LOVE the transitions and how the interactions are with Nick and Phil! AWESOME!

[@feeterican]

I was here watch you drill out the holes in the MoBo. Just as you were doing it, in my head I was saying "well that MoBo's a goner" and then imagined one of the voices from Boondock Saints yelled in my head saying, "I can't believe that just Fkin happened" in that oh so recognizable Irish accent that most of us love.

[@razielshadow2372]

I can see that whole scene in my head from just that vague description 😂

[@PlanetLinuxChannel]

5:16 Same! Second PC I had ever built (first for someone besides myself) and I managed to plug a 5V ARGB cable into a 12V RGB header or vice versa, powered on the system to get a short blip of lights followed by a “pop”, then nothing. Diagnosed the issue and managed to get the system to still power on, but just the primary NVMe slot was shot, wouldn’t recognize a drive anymore. So I boxed the board back up and returned it to Amazon saying I had “bought the wrong product”, then promptly bought another of the same board. I’m not proud of it, but at the time, I just absolutely couldn’t afford to be out $250 on a motherboard!

[@rytek4274]

You managed to point out I've been watching u for over 10 years.. 😅

[@MrBenprout]

I really appreciated this video. It made me feel better about the mistakes I have made in the past as a 90s computer user. A professional is someone who has made every mistake there is in their field (and hopefully learned from them) Thanks J and crew! You probably just saved me from making more computer mistakes in this decade with this video.

[@jacobormsby9241]

First computer I ever worked on was the family computer. I wanted to upgrade the 256mb of ram to 512 so I could play command and conquer 3. I bought ddr2 instead of ddr.. I made it fit and Kingston support was flabbergasted that I was able to actually get it to fit. Luckily I didn't break anything. Ordered the right ram and everything still worked great.

[@ArtisChronicles]

Now that's crazy because I can't even figure out how it would actually fit. Usually different versions of ram have pinouts that just don't physically fit together. It's a mystery lol

[@jacobormsby9241]

@ArtisChronicles it was indeed, I have no idea how it fit or how literally nothing broke. That was the first time I learned about "compatibility" lol

[@bland9876]

How do you upgrade the ram on a Famicom?

[@jacobormsby9241]

@@bland9876 who said anything about a famicom?

[@shawnbretthauer]

A weak man hides their mistakes. A strong man learns and helps others prevent the same mistakes. I also nearly destroyed a system I was building for my mom’s home business. I put a PCI-E into one of the CPU power plugs. Thank goodness for the protection on that mobo.

[@greenus1737]

As a scientist, mistakes are beneficial to learning, but not helpful to your wallet. :D

[@seanobrien7169]

But only as a scientist? 😂😂😂😂😂

[@Dizz-vd8df]

Yes! Accidental mistake(s) can lead to uncharted discoveries.

[@Mrwouter1231]

as an engineer my booboos are deadly. so i have some1 double check

[@HShango]

True 😅

[@kabulbolan]

As an astronaut, mistakes are beneficial to learning but I’m in space with very little oxygen left

[@scotianbank]

Gotta say, kudos and mad respect for the production and direction for this video, a total breath of fresh air for the PC KZbin scene!! Keep the great content coming guys!! 🤘

[@TwinShards]

10:16 I'll let you speak against yourself instead of typing it out. 🤣

[@liar2]

I just love that Jay was a patron of PC club. I loved that place in the late 90s /early 2000s. Got a lot of my early hardware from there. I feel like it was the precursor to microcenter

[@awilliams1701]

I actually unplug my PSU and then try to turn on the computer 5 times. You'll be surprised how much power remains if you don't. You'll get maybe a 15 degree rotation on the fans.

[@greenbow7888]

Yeah I think it's the caps in the PSU store power for a while. I do the same. Unplug mains power from the PSU, put the PSU power switch to on, and press the PC start button. Only after that would I attempt any maintenance.

[@PHAD-rf3oe]

11:29 Só recognizable and só heart felt, the need for misery to love company😂😂

[@Cyberpunk_2023]

As someone who, in their teenage years, grew up around friends who thought a DNS server was a storage server and had a small background in fixing phone screens and upgrading laptops (I never had a PC). I only had you and LTT to watch to learn about PCs. I was 14 (2014) with the sober equivalent of a drunken stepfather. My friends had all the money given to them for their PCs and I didn't ever get pocket money.. I tried to Frankenstein two dead family PCs from early 00s and £60 for my 14th birthday. I upgraded the motherboard, CPU (to AMD APU series) and RAM (to DDR3). I even had to buy SATA to MOLEX cables so I could plug the hard drives into the motherboard. Unfortunately, judging by the prices of PSUs I couldn't get one and assumed the one that worked out of one of the old PCs would be fine. It wasn't. It turned on and instantly fried everything including itself. The only time I unalived PC parts. My /sober/ father was SCREAMING at me that he was going to call up LTT and tell Linus exactly what his thoughts were on his "dodgy teachings", since you know.. Linus was obviously teaching me the wrong things - totally not making a rookie mistake lol

[@MrEdioss]

I feel sad for you, next time short the pins on the PSU you don't trust before installing it.

[@Cyberpunk_2023]

@@MrEdioss I didn't think about it I could trust a PSU, all it was to me was the power supply. Nothing more than the name or it's job - I didn't understand how they actually worked at the time. These days I still have anxiety and insecurities about working with electronics. I always wanted a career in building or fixing PCs but I've gone a different route in life for work. This year at the age of 24 I finally plucked up the courage and built a PC (first since that moment of my life) I built what would've been my dream PC back then. I've rinsed all the titles I dreamt of playing and they all run perfectly for the appropriate age PC. It only cost me £320, which is a lot less to me now than what £60 was then

[@Cyberpunk_2023]

@@MrEdioss thanks for the tip on shorting the pins too. That will be useful thank you

[@ArtisChronicles]

Once I heard the harvested PSU thing my thoughts were oh no. That could've been any unit and that's when it scares me lol

[@Cyberpunk_2023]

@@ArtisChronicles these days I could never. Ignorance is bliss, but ignorance is dangerous lol

[@johnkersley4743]

Extra tip: After unplugging the power cable press and hold the power button down, that should drain any caps on the mother board, so if you do drop anything metallic in the case there is less likelihood of damage.

[@gzxmx94]

15:30 .. every time someone mentions unplug the PC.. they forget to say "push the power on button to make sure it's off and capacitors are DISCHARGED". Please add this Jay.. can save someone from unliving a piece of hardware.

[@auturgicflosculator2183]

I learned it as: Shut off PC; touch bare metal in the case while switching off the PSU or unplugging the power; remove CMOS battery, set CMOS jumper to clear. I'm not sure I trust the power button to discharge every cap in the ICs.

[@0nyxghost]

I like watching J. I learn a lot of what not to do. Helps a lot thanks J!

[@justintran7740]

Commenting before watching, if one of the tips to not ruin a computer doesn't refer to him actively drilling holes into a mobo I'll be a little sad lmao😂

[@DarkHorseCom]

Hi Jay! I've been in the business for almost 40 years (next year will be #40). This is the reason I watch videos from you, Steve from GN, Kyle from Bitwit, and Linus from LTT. Let's not mention 'The Verge' and their horrendous computer build fiasco. I learn from everyone's mishaps and I do remember the PSU cable swap issue, I don't swap between brands or even different PSU's if I can avoid it. All-in-all, these videos are categorized as 'What not to do' videos. Keep making them please. Almost as good as 'hands on' without the fireworks. Bless you sir!

[@francoisleveille409]

Learning from your mistakes is always good. Especially if "your" is actually somebody else's mistakes.

[@tomp538]

Nice confession video. We all make bone headed mistakes, sooner or later. But, here, you have the huevos to make and post a video chronicling your biggest mistakes. Respect!

[@hrafnafadhir]

There’s that Jay guy. Don’t let him around your motherboard with a drill.

[@310_Latchkey_kid]

I wouldn't go as far in call them embarrassing stories... but experiences..... Thanks to you and your videos I was able to gain confidence enough do my first build.

[@richardbeckenbaugh1805]

Never killed a computer. Started with a KIM-1 microcomputer module in the late 70s. Apple 2e was my second. My first pc was an 8088. That was in 1987. Second was a AMD 386 with 16 megs of RAM. Most people had 2 or 4 megs. Had a 21” vga monitor too. All my buddies used to come over and play games on it while I slept in on Saturdays. Went to a AMD 500mhz processor with 4gigs of RAM after that. The operating system could only address 3 gigs of it. Kept that computer for 11 years. Next up was an AMD A-10 processor with 16 gigs of RAM and a 1 gig Nvidia graphics card. Skipped the whole AMD FX processor debacle. Next was a Ryzen 2400g with an AMD RX 580. Current system is a 5700x3d with an RX 6600 XT with 64 gigs of RAM. Expect that it’s my final pc because I’m 61 years old and have had a stroke. It should be good enough to last me another 10 years. I hope I last another 10 years.

[@mattrogers6646]

You have a mastery of English that many would envy. Regardless of your stroke, it appears your mind is still sharp. I hope you have many happy decades ahead.

[@Ou8y2k2]

Same. Started with a 286 gift and now I have had an i7-4700 for the last 12 years. I'll be building either a 9800X3d rig or buying an AMD 10000 series APU in one of those Geekom SFF computers. The closest I've come to 'killing' a computer is deleting files in the root directory in DOS.

[@solidghost4525]

I like this show because I learn what could possibly go wrong without wasting my own money. Excellent video. Educational and entertaining. And you know you’re an experienced builder when you feel comfortable enough to take a drill to the Motherboard. Impressive

[@jjhijoe]

I was 16 years old and I cleaned my pc, every nook and cranny with alcool. Except I used peroxyde by mistake, that pc never booted again.

[@clb1024]

Being honest and humble are the main reasons I will scribe to a KZbin channel. I've been sub'ed to your channel for a good bit before thus video as every video I've watched on your channel has those two things.

[@Midnightmare03]

Zooming in more... enhance... enhance... enhance 😂

[@BshidoBanzai]

"I'll believe that when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet" 😂😂😂😂

[@justinmcclung7555]

Just print the damn photo!

[@BshidoBanzai]

@@justinmcclung7555 😂🤣😂🤣

[@Transit_Biker]

Hearing this from someone I look up to in the tech space makes me feel so much better about the terrible mistakes I’ve made repairing or upgrading things.

[@deepbludreams]

It's wild how quick the bots are to spam meaningless comments on new uploads.

[@Loki_Firegod]

Love the "storytime" format. Also love that you're "showing off" your errors - it's easy to see your years of experience and expect you to do little wrong (apart from a bunch of minor blunders that I'd consider normal by any standard, like accidentally dropping a CPU or bending some ARGB pins or whatever). I started "late" building my own PCs. I did put together a couple of parts after buying the basis (like, the case containing an already installed mainboard, CPU and cooler where I later added a graphics card and some drives), so my Pentium 2 and Pentium 4 Dual Core (might've been Pentium D but it always told me it was a Twin-Core Pentium 4) never got wrecked by me. I did however ruin a PSU when I asked it to draw twice as much power as it was intended for - that made the "ping" and blue smoke. And I fried a Colorful GeForce GTS 250 by repeatedly playing Skyrim with a (too large) bunch of mods, ignoring the regular crashes and odd System shutdowns to the point where it made a "ping" and the PC shut itself down. To be fair, to this day I'm not sure what exactly went wrong because I checked it and everything looked fine, but I never got a signal out of it ever again (and the fan stopped spinning too). But since then I learned, and the only thing that I killed since was a CPU fan. Never replaced it because I had removed my side panel and hung a 22mm fan in there (because why wouldn't you) and that kept my entire system nice and cool :D Anyway, accidents happen, and we will see what happens the next time I tweak my system or build a new one.

[@__-fl5rn]

Jay's sneaky motherboard return is why ASUS RMA went dark side...

[@AndreaZambon87]

Back in the 90s, when I was still a kid, one afternoon that my parents were not home I was looking around the computer case. I noticed the little red switch behind the PSU (the 230V / 120V selector switch). BANG!!!

[@SmookinJoe]

I once shut a computer down and rearranged the gpu's in the slots and upon bootup it never did perform again at it's full potential. (near as I can figure I should have booted with the gpu's removed...power was off) I bought a new board...returned the old board using the new boards info and felt sooo guilty I bought a bunch of new boards from a really great company...that continues to make me look good today. Yer a good guy Jay...we all need someone to help us fix our mistakes.. Thank You!

[@alderoth01]

My son's PC that we built together has stopped working for some reason. I bought a new power supply from Corsair, but it didn't work out of the box! I live on disability so I'm just waiting to save up enough cash to find a decent 1200w power supply for him to use. Soon as I get that taken care of I plan on saving up to get him an AMD 7900xt like I've got. It sucks being poor.

[@timmybgaming]

Jay, Jay, Jay… it is perfectly ok to look at your fret board when you are playing guitar. The aimless eye scanning around the room while you play hurts so much to watch… love you Jay!!

[@tbrayden3694]

Might be jinxing myself, but have been building my own PCs since mid 90s, and have yet to kill anything. Did get a deep cut one time in late 90s while trying to drill a hole in a piece of metal that had a small fan mounted on it. One of those thin metal things you screwed into a slot to provide extra cooling. Damn thing wrapped around the drill bit due to my stupidity (forgot to reverse direction when pulling out). Like Jay said, plugging in the power cable to the PSU should be the very last step after you’ve triple checked everything is connected properly (using correct type of PSU cables, no bent pins, no partial insertions, no leaks, etc). That and waiting to put on the side panels until you know everything is working properly.

[@yensteel]

At least you didn't share the "I have no hand" section of your past embarrassing moments video. I felt so much of your pain that it overcame any laughter of how awkward it was. Your double face palm was priceless. What a story. XD. Second hand shame is rare to receive, and that was one of the biggest so far. Keep sharing, keep teaching, keep learning Jay!

[@javierbanos28]

Some mistakes I've done 1-. I was playing with a cmd instead of the GUI during Windows 10 installation and selected the wrong HDD with all my College information 2-. I damaged a CD bay from a Friend's laptop because of one hidden screw 3-. I was trying to uninstall BitDefender from a Laptop and I had the idea to delete some files from AppData and System32 then I had to reinstall Windows and backup all the information

[@zejjnt]

One of the things I absolutely love about you guys is your ability to just straight up go "yeah I did it, it was stupid, sorry not sorry lol" and not just be butthurt about it, great video as always :D

[@hdwill]

The edit was cool. The small play on the guitar too. Wholesome Jay!

[@Bocchi_the_Kok]

I like this channel. No drama and very informational. Keep it up bro

[@dangingerich2559]

My worst was a server incident. In 2013, I was working for Quantum, setting up a prototype for our next backup storage device, which would eventually become the DXi4500, after orders came down to upgrade the processor to the new IvyBridge-EP based E5-2403v2. I had to go through 6 units replacing 2 CPUs each. The first one I started swapping, I took off the heatsink, opened the retaining mechanism, and tried to pick up the CPU, only to drop it right back into the CPU socket, corner first. Boom, $6000 motherboard dies at my hand, for swapping a $200 CPU. I have HATED LGA CPUs ever since.

[@AkornzStash]

the motherboard fried chip return story was great 😂 Hey Jay, for 1080 and maybe 1440 video editing. Would you go with a 4070 ti super? or pay $280 more for a 4080 super? I know the 4070 ti super is basicly a stripped 4080... so is $280 more worth it for video editing? Preparing to order a custom build from Ibuypower. Upgrading from an Amd 1700x i built 8 years ago _(that is now starting to crash a lot etc and just under powered)_ to probably the 9950x.

[@evana4622]

Just a quick addition to the last "unplug the PSU" comment : Please, also, press the power button afterwards. Like he alluded to, there is phantom (small traces of) power still in the system. By pressing the power button, you drain the rest out and consume it.

[@SneakyFoxxxy]

I may have used CPU power cables on my GPU in a moment of complete ignorance when building my first computer without help. That definitely made the cable smoke, melt, and die >,,,> if you really think about it, the best lessons can be learned from mistakes. I have learned a lot from this amazing channel, and other amazing tech youtubers, and a good buddy who builds too. Ive also learned plenty of lessons from stuff Ive done wrong ^-^ Thanks for being here throughout the years to help me improve and refine my builds and build my experience!

[@VetAwareProject]

Just wishing I had over 30 years of experience in dealing with computers, would make life so much easier, but makes me appreciate the videos you make even more!

[@larryt9176]

I bought a 360mm Corsair AIO to replace a single fan corsair AIO for my 5800x3d. Upon removing the hold down bracketry and pulling straight up on the water pump to remove the AIO my 5800x3d glued itself to the pump and I pulled the cpu out with the socket latch still down. Yes, I bent multiple pins and lost one during the tedious task of bending them back with a razor blade. As I type this my 5800x3d is still pumping out the same cinebench score minus realtek audio...the single pin that was lost was responsible for the on board audio. I learned a valuable lesson that day....twist the pump slightly to break up the thermal paste then pull up once the paste is free. Also, thank you JayzTwoCents for posting up the vid on repairing bent cpu pins it saved me from having an unalived PC.

[@whs4754]

Thanks. I have been building computers since the 90's and this really brings back memories.

[@susanrobins4297]

Drill, Baby Drill..... I had a small radio repair shop in the back of my house back in the 80s. I was working on a Uniden President Washington CB radio..... I dropped a pair of Hemostats on the solder side of the main board.... Yah there was smoke and profanity....... And a check to a friend of mine who was a Uniden distributor 3 days later I gave my customer a new radio. And I told him what happened........ Reputation means a lot to me.... Love your channel Jay.

[@novavolex5568]

Something that I still do from back in the day (not sure if it's still relevant) is after I turn of the PSU from the button, unplug the cable I press couple of times the power button to discharge the caps.

[@Starfals]

I legit also did the power supply cables thing... my GPU died that day xD I mean they all looked the same... ugh. On top of that every old PC case was made to cut ur arms and hands. It was a LITERAL PAIN to install anything ;p

[@FixationwithCarnage]

I do that to this day, if i fuck it up and its within the return window, its going back. The company can eat the cost, but i sure cant. I definitely suggest everyone get into the diy scene. Diy goes further than just building youre own pc. You can even make your own custom psu cables and its super easy and really cheap!

[@philippsteiner8346]

Thank you for sharing! I sure have also my fair share of embarrassing stories. I worked as PC support, once my work pc did not show any picture onscreen. Took me nearly two days and the help of a coworker to notice that the coworker unplugged my monitor....

[@ApfelJohannisbeere]

Thanks for the fun episodes and for the live lessons!

[@densetsu4286]

Will add after you unplugged your psu power cable press the power button on the case. This will drain the caps. There will be no power left inside other than the cmos battery. After that make sure you have no static left in you. Touch any metal part of the pc case and do so periodically if you are taking a bit of time.

[@HVDynamo]

I saw this video and had to watch it. I always like hearing Jay tell his drilling story haha

[@MikeU128]

My shining moment was knocking a full glass of beer over onto a motherboard that was powered up and running at the time. This happened around 20 years ago. Adding insult to injury, I could've probably saved it - I immediately hit the power switch on the PSU, disconnected everything, and took the motherboard over to the sink to rinse the beer off. But when I set it down on the edge of the sink to turn on the water I didn't take into account how heavy the HSF was, and the mobo overbalanced and crashed to the floor. The PCB partially de-laminated at the point of impact. I went ahead and cleaned it up and dried it anyway; the board would actually boot, but the PCI slots were flaky.

[@nicoernst5971]

After unplugging your power supply you should also press the power-on-button of the board (or shorten the pin ; ) . That empties the caps of the psu, you might even see fans moving and leds turning on for a second.

[@presance77]

Also, don't just switch your PSU off and unplug it. Give it a good minute or 2 before doing anything. The caps in the PSU still hold a charge for a little while and can be discharged too. Mine system takes a good 30-45 seconds to drain the power down, and I can verify this by my mob RGB finally going dark. So, be careful on that end too. (Still using an older Asus Z270E Gaming mobo.)

[@spyder622]

Perfect timing! I’m abt to build my first pc within the next few weeks once all my parts come. Kinda stressing bc I wanna overclock/undervolt and make sure everything’s running as it should. And then I gotta re-setup stuff like voicemeeter, my voice filters, etc. it’s probably gonna take me a couple days to get everything the way I want it to be 😅

[@mikeh5493]

Ty! Jay

[@MikeU128]

I've done the "accidentally plug GPU power cable into the CPU power connector" thing too. Fortunately in my case, the PSU's OCP kicked in before any of the magic smoke was released.

[@benjamintan2733]

Here are some tips I learnt and hope it will help others As for the Power Supply, I always keep the unused cables into the box that came with it and store in a safe place. And of course, if you don't know what you're doing, DON'T! It's okay to pay the shop to help you build your system. While it may not be fun for you since slowly assemble your system can be a relaxing hobby to many, it saves you a face palm when you accidentally broke your system. KEEP YOUR MOTHERBOARD MANUAL! You can always check your motherboard manual on the specification (like which socket it has and which RAM speed it can support). You might not be able to search for your manual 10 years after. Also, this may be a new one: GPU is extremely heavy. Don't drop it. I dropped mine and my toe hurts a lot, like someone use a sledge hammer to smash your toe. Wear safety shoe or generally anything that can protect your toe. Also get a GPU support if you're installing hrizontally in a standard tower case to prevent sagging.

[@skyblue11685]

Also when changing out a power supply, make sure that you press the power button on after unplugging the power cord to flush out the pc of any residual electricity that might be stored up in the motherboard or other pc components.

[@erikjohnson5770]

Unplug the Power Cable AND hit the power button a couple of times to try to discharge any capacitors that are holding charge. Even with no power to the PSU, the capacitors can can still bridge and discharge if they have any residual charge.

[@LumagrowlWolfang]

Literally I didn't know about Jay and the drill until now, lol, in my case, I've never wrecked a pc, yet, but I wrecked a CPU Cooler, the Wraith Prism, I broke the piece of plastic by accident when I was putting it back

[@kontradictions]

To add to the phantom power from the PSU bit. after unplugging the PSU from the wall, hit the power button a couple times before you start working on anything. Sometimes you'll see the fans or lights kick on for a split second.

[@mrhouse3796]

A bit different than your normal talking head video. I liked it. It kept my attention a bit better. Also, good to see Nick is still alive. Was wondering where tf he been. 😆

[@Lokiawa]

I loved this format and topic. I laughed when the scenes were different locations in the building. lol

[@owanobi]

Don't Feel bad Jay. When the 12th gen Intel CPUs came out I got one and upgraded my mobo and RAM. I realized after putting the CPU in that the mobo I got was the DDR5 version and not the DDR 4 version and all I had was DDR4 RAM. When DDR5 RAM first came out it was extremely expensive and so I opted to just return the mobo and get the DDR4 version instead. Well while taking everything apart, I ended up bending some of the CPU pins and thus could not return it. and had to eat the cost of a new mobo. I did get the right one this time and I am still using that mobo and CPU today. Thanks for sharing Jay.