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When you look at newegg etc, you see a lot of people complaining about DOA mobos. Reading through some of them, a lot of people seem like they are incompetent and damaged the mobo while installing it, but other seem like they really did get bad mobos. I've bought dozens of dozens of motherboards in the past 20 years or so and I've only gotten a single DOA board that was damaged in shipping... the board was snapped in half by a angry UPS employee, and the box was bent in half.... when I got the board I was like WTF??? Am I just really lucky or do you guys think there are a lot of incompetent people killing the mobo with bad installation practices?

Had a friend of mine came to me after trying to build his own computer, and he bent several of the CPU pins on a LGA1155 socket... I mean how do you even do that? He also installed the ram poorly as it wasn't completely seated, the video card was also only half seated, and the 24 pin mobo power cable wasn't even plugged in, and he was wanting me to talk to tech support to tell them it was a DOA board. Of course, I face planted... I told him that he physically damaged the board when he tried to force the CPU in the socket backwards. Had another person come to me complaining that his newly built computer won't post and was wearing a very staticy sweater. Shook his hand and got a really nasty zap! Asked him if he was wearing that same sweater when building the computer and said yes, it's his favorite sweater apparently. Asked him if he was careful about safely discharging static before and while working on the computer and he was like... "huh" with a dumb look on his face.

Then I wonder... there has to be a lot of people like them out there. What other things have you guys seen? ^_^

Yes, people are stupid.

This thread makes me sad.
Geez, people are so brain dead.
These kind of people must really make companies like Newegg lose a lot of money.
Why was I so afraid of buying an open-box mobo again?

It is a combination of factors, but yeah I am sure user error is the top reason.

Incompatibility of some other component in the build (which gets blamed on the motherboard) is probably second.

I've only had one board that I can recall which was damaged in shipping. The board would not POST, and I finally figured out that one of the fan headers was shorted out due to bent pins; this was drawing enough current from the +12V line to cause the PSU to shut down. This was shortly after Asus stopped putting padding inside the boxes of their lower-cost boards; the fan header in question was close enough to the edge of the mobo that it was banging against the inside of the box during shipping.

And yes, there are occasionally motherboards that are just "lemons". I've seen boards which were picky about the RAM or the PSU you used with them. I also had an MSI board back in the Socket A days which was really flaky (but no visible signs of damage). RMAed it, the replacement was better but still wouldn't run 100% stable at stock settings no matter what CPUs/RAM I put in it.

And no, I don't buy open box product. I won't buy used computer parts on FleaBay either.

Its rare that you log in to Newegg to praise a working mobo that you bought. You bought it, so therefore it SHOULD work.

Most people that get a dead board need to vent, and as such they are much more inclined to post about THAT then are the ones who got a working board and don't need to tell everyone !

I got a DOA Sapphire Toxic 6950 card last month - first DOA I ever had, and I must have posted about it at least 3 times at sites other than Newegg, so thats the nature of it all.

I look at it as a possible tree of problems:

Possible DOA board (rare, higher if you ordered low-tier brands like ECS)
Damage in shipping (usually obvious)

After that, I find people just don't pay enough attention when it's their first or second build. Loose RAM. One power supply cord (probably the AUX 4pin/6pin) not connected, or not connected to a video card. Improperly seated RAM or expansion card. Minor mistake in grounding somehow (I have yet to have this happen, but have seen it with others). In the older days, backwards floppy or HDD cable (man, was that ever common). CPU either socketed incorrectly, or heatsink not making proper contact, causing issues.

When I build a system, even a basic one, I treat it like a work of art. Cables tied up. Everything tested. Drives flush with the front. Every little detail. It probably comes from the fact that the tech that taught me over fifteen years ago would tear an entire system apart and make me build it from scratch if he didn't like the way I did it. I only screwed up once or twice back in the beginning, and I learned --and I don't accept shoddy work from myself on a build.

I'll sometimes buy parts from a seller on Ebay if they have the reputation to back it up, and I'll buy off the For Sale/For Trade forums in a few places I respect. I won't buy open box from NewEgg; I just don't know where it's been.

I've only sent back one board in the past several years, my recent Asrock Z68 Extreme 4. I'm sure the hardware was fine, but BIOS bugs that caused me some issues meant it had to go back.

I had a true blue DOA board last year. There was no physical damage, yet it wouldn't do anything to save it's life.

It depends on how many systems/components you buy, and how much money you spend. Can also depend on type of component.

Motherboards... I am going to say my failure/doa rate within the first week or so is less than 5%. Failure rate in 5 years is more than 50%. Probably average buying 20-30/yr. Capacitors are the largest failure piece. Have had great luck with newegg open box/clearance. Only had to send back a couple that were bad... one was broke in shipping, and one was truly nonresponsive. Pretty good for how many I have bought.

Video cards... All of them are junk there is no amount of money you can spend that will guarantee a running video card out of the box. I have had every brand, every manufacturer, fanless, fanned, all of them to be bad from the word go. most of the time they run like a few minutes and then start artifacting and quit probably 20% bad out of the box. Video card failure rate after 5 years.... nearly 100%. Fanless last longer, the fanned versions don't make it but about a year and they are done fan quits and damages stuff. lots of video cards have bad caps too.
I have to buy video cards and keep them on the shelf, because I have to get back up and running, and I have quit buying them from Newegg, because the return time is normally up six months later when I need it and it won't work. If you buy a video card, open it, run it for 24 hours at least on a demanding game/3d application to make sure it will run.

Power supplies. Spending money here is mandatory if you want a running system. When I was buying cheap power supplies by the case 10-20% were bad right out of the box. They would either not start, or start and burn up motherboards, or just start and cut off. Power supplies die from fan death mostly... once in a while one lives long enough for a capacitor to go bad. Better name brand psu's are not as bad.... I have only had one "better" psu to die early (like in the first 18 months). I don't mind spending $80 or more on a psu anymore.... at one time I wouldn't consider anything more than $50, but that got expensive with psu's quitting every week.

cpu's ... I have never had a bad cpu out of the box.... well other than a pentium 90 with the bad math table and phenom with tlb bug. I have never had a cpu go bad. All through the 8088, 80286's, 386's 486's cyrix, amd, intel, motorola, never ever a bad one. ordered them by the tray, oem, oem box, ebay, back door auctions,... never a bad one. Never burnt one up with a fan failure either. had lots of fans to quit/fall off of running processors, but always get it shutdown and fixed. My employee broke a pin off an amd x2 while replacing the MB is the only one I have ever broke.

Memory... never had a bad piece of memory. I have bought it by the pound, off ebay, out of junk stuff, govt surplus, never had a piece that wouldn't run rated speed and voltage. Had a mouse piss on some and ruin it, and stepped on some and broke it. From my experience, testing memory is a complete waste of time when troubleshooting. Eventually I have to come across a bad piece, but not so far.

Hdd's not had one bad from box, and have not had many fail under warranty. Have dropped a few that didn't survive.

cass wrote:

Memory... never had a bad piece of memory. I have bought it by the pound, off ebay, out of junk stuff, govt surplus, never had a piece that wouldn't run rated speed and voltage. Had a mouse piss on some and ruin it, and stepped on some and broke it. From my experience, testing memory is a complete waste of time when troubleshooting. Eventually I have to come across a bad piece, but not so far.

I've had 2 DIMMs that I can remember which were DOA, and a couple more than failed in use.

Testing RAM isn't *just* to test the RAM; it checks stability of the entire memory subsystem, which includes the memory bus on the motherboard and (back in the day) the DRAM controller on the northbridge. I've probably found more flaky *motherboards* from running Memtest86 than bad RAM.

apertur3 wrote:

This thread makes me sad.
Geez, people are so brain dead.
These kind of people must really make companies like Newegg lose a lot of money.
Why was I so afraid of buying an open-box mobo again?

Oh yeah I wonder that too... like how much cheaper components would it be if people weren't "breaking" things, claiming DoA, and getting replacements.

I remembered another person on his first gaming build that was trying to install his CPU upside down... I mean, wouldn't common sense dictate that the pins have to touch the connectors on the mobo???

cass wrote:

Power supplies. Spending money here is mandatory if you want a running system. When I was buying cheap power supplies by the case 10-20% were bad right out of the box. They would either not start, or start and burn up motherboards, or just start and cut off. Power supplies die from fan death mostly... once in a while one lives long enough for a capacitor to go bad. Better name brand psu's are not as bad.... I have only had one "better" psu to die early (like in the first 18 months). I don't mind spending $80 or more on a psu anymore.... at one time I wouldn't consider anything more than $50, but that got expensive with psu's quitting every week..

I've had a couple of PSUs die from fairly spectacular capacitor failure before. One of the large caps will blow, and smoke comes out of the back of the PSU like a jet.... and smells horrible. Probably toxic too. Actually I have to say that almost all of my component failures came from capacitors bulging, leaking, exploding, smoking etc etc. Which is why if I buy anything anymore, I try to look for components featuring solid polymer capacitors or capacitors rated to 105C and made in japan.

Memory... never had a bad piece of memory. I have bought it by the pound, off ebay, out of junk stuff, govt surplus, never had a piece that wouldn't run rated speed and voltage. Had a mouse piss on some and ruin it, and stepped on some and broke it. From my experience, testing memory is a complete waste of time when troubleshooting. Eventually I have to come across a bad piece, but not so far.

I agreed with pretty much everything but this. In my experience, memory was the second most common cause of failure besides bad motherboards (mainly working on HP and Dell Optiplex systems). I've also gotten bad memory a handful of times when purchasing from shady dealers at computer shows. Typically they weren't DOA, it just caused stability problems which manifested themselves in the medium/long term (after a few weeks or months, for instance). Now granted, most of my IT experience was with SDRAM and DDR1, but still.

Also, regarding hard drives - external hard drives in my experience have a 3 year failure rate of near 100%. The drives take a lot of extra abuse being externals. And it doesn't matter whether they are purpose designed externals (Lacie, WD passports) or internal drives in kits. They all die just the same. Laptop drives in 2.5 inch kits do worse, though, overall.

Well I have to agree that DOA is rare.

However, products that just don't work...well I RMA them also.

For example, I'm not going to wait years for a working firmware update on an SSD.

There has to be some level of competency and feed back. Sure it is not Neweggs fault, but if the SSD just doesn't work, and enough people RMA, then it finally gets pulled from shipping, which I see as a good thing.

Finally, I'm not keen on buying other people's problems. The open box discount just isn't very significant (I might be tempted if it were 60-70% off) I usually find what I want on sale sooner or later for less than the open box discount.

I can't say I've had a bad mobo since the bad capacitor plague, but I haven't built many systems lately (just about to build another one, though). But man, when the bad caps were going around I had several mobos go bad with annoyingly mysterious and escalating symptoms.

And yeah, the old IDE ribbon cables were a continual source of problems -- even when they were connected correctly, they had a tendency to work themselves loose, and then there was the problem of them heat-hardening in whatever shape they were in and then silently failing internally when you went in and moved them while installing something else. Nothing like the headscratching when you've added one new component and a different one that had been functioning perfectly suddenly stops working.

LoneWolf15 wrote:

When I build a system, even a basic one, I treat it like a work of art. Cables tied up. Everything tested. Drives flush with the front. Every little detail. It probably comes from the fact that the tech that taught me over fifteen years ago would tear an entire system apart and make me build it from scratch if he didn't like the way I did it. I only screwed up once or twice back in the beginning, and I learned --and I don't accept shoddy work from myself on a build.

Yeah, but that's all hard-won experience talking. The rare OCD-ish person aside, most people aren't that systematic and organized until forced to be -- usually by having to go back and troubleshoot a failure. Folks are so eager to get the new machine up and running that they can't force themselves to leave a memtest running overnight or take the time to do a lot of these other little things that don't matter when everything works perfectly but are incredibly valuable if something goes wrong (the irony, of course, is that the people who've learned to cover every little detail generally don't have things go wrong).

On top of that, the inexperienced builder also tends to cheap out in areas like the PSU that don't seem to matter to performance -- but can matter incredibly for stability.

Turkina wrote:

Laptop drives in 2.5 inch kits do worse, though, overall.

I find that mildly surprising. I suppose being smaller overall they might get abused / shocked to a greater degree, but the 2.5" drives are designed for mobile applications and you would think wouldn't be worse.

CB5000 wrote:

I remembered another person on his first gaming build that was trying to install his CPU upside down... I mean, wouldn't common sense dictate that the pins have to touch the connectors on the mobo???

What, you mean the cooling pins?

CB5000 wrote:

Actually I have to say that almost all of my component failures came from capacitors bulging, leaking, exploding, smoking etc etc. Which is why if I buy anything anymore, I try to look for components featuring solid polymer capacitors or capacitors rated to 105C and made in japan.

I've had solid polymer ones on video cards go bad too; so while they do tend to be more reliable than the generic "wet" electrolytics, it is still no guarantee that they won't fail. When I recap boards I try to use Panasonic FC series or United Chemi-Con caps. I like the Panasonics, but they can be somewhat larger (taller or wider) than the caps they're replacing, which is a problem when they're packed together tightly on the board or there are clearance issues (e.g. caps located underneath the video card).

I've had an awful lot of fans fail (this is the reason I favor passively cooled video cards), but fortunately the fan failures generally have not killed the component the fan was supposed to be cooling!

just brew it! wrote:

I've had an awful lot of fans fail (this is the reason I favor passively cooled video cards), but fortunately the fan failures generally have not killed the component the fan was supposed to be cooling!

The only fans I've ever had fail were those mosquito-pitched 40mm jobs so common on Socket A Athlon mobos. Zalman must have made a mint on their passive heatsink for those boards.

Captain Ned wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

I've had an awful lot of fans fail (this is the reason I favor passively cooled video cards), but fortunately the fan failures generally have not killed the component the fan was supposed to be cooling!

The only fans I've ever had fail were those mosquito-pitched 40mm jobs so common on Socket A Athlon mobos. Zalman must have made a mint on their passive heatsink for those boards.

Yeah, I had enough trouble with those that I even got into the habit of ripping them off and replacing them with a passive cooler as soon as I determined that the motherboard was stable and didn't need to be RMAed. This lasted into the Socket 754/939 era, when mobo makers finally got the hint and began moving to passive coolers for the chipsets.

Back in the day (GeForce 2/3 era) I even used those Zalman coolers to replace failed GPU fans. As long as you had a full-size motherboard with enough slots to allow you to move any PCI cards (NIC and/or soundcard) out of the way, this was a great way to get rid of the whiny little (failed) GPU fan.

LoneWolf15 wrote:

When I build a system, even a basic one, I treat it like a work of art. Cables tied up. Everything tested. Drives flush with the front. Every little detail. It probably comes from the fact that the tech that taught me over fifteen years ago would tear an entire system apart and make me build it from scratch if he didn't like the way I did it. I only screwed up once or twice back in the beginning, and I learned --and I don't accept shoddy work from myself on a build.

Yeah I'm the same way. I check and re-check both ends of every cable and make sure they are plugged in fully, and also take great care to make sure they don't block any airflow/fans (really quite easy with modern cases). I've always used midtower cases though, so perhaps I am more conscious of these things because of the space constraints.

I've seen way too many people who seem to buy full tower cases thinking "big case = better cooling" but then they leave cables dangling all over the place, and completely ignore airflow/pressure physics.

When I see "DOA boards", I can only think of one word: ASRock.

UberGerbil wrote:

CB5000 wrote:

I remembered another person on his first gaming build that was trying to install his CPU upside down... I mean, wouldn't common sense dictate that the pins have to touch the connectors on the mobo???

What, you mean the cooling pins?

Lol yeah... I think a lot of people who are on their 1st or even 2nd custom built rig are just way in over their head. Computer building now a days is way way easier with the advent of SATA, "nearly" fool-proof CPU socket design, the lack of need to set master and slave on drives, cables can only be inserted one way, and automatic device conflict resolution by the OS. I still remember manually setting IRQ's and manually resolving device conflicts, and some devices not liking certain IRQ's so you have to move other devices to other IRQ's.... And those ribbon connectors that could be inserted in any direction even if it's the bad way.... and I've had so many of those ribbon IDE or floppy cables go bad just from just existing! haha...

Just amazing that people can still find ways to royally screw things up despite the fact that component manufacturers have worked so hard to make things easy for the computer builder. Heck most decent PSU's have their cables labeled as to where they should go now a days.

morphine wrote:

When I see "DOA boards", I can only think of one word: ASRock.

I've gotten about 6 of those so far and amazingly enough none of them were DoA, and none have failed on me so far. The oldest one is getting close to 2 years old. But yea.. they really have a bad rep so I stayed away from buying those recently.

After 15 years of building computers I still found myself baffled when people would bring their computer to me and wonder why it wasn't working. My two personal favorites were people putting 6-pin pci-e connectors into the 8-pin cpu power connector (jamming it in there) and arguing with me that you didn't need to use that same power connector and that it was just there for overclocking.

I dealt with a lot of people on a face to face basis who built a computer then brought it to me because it didn't work. My experience: people think they are more competent then they really are and thus feel like it can't possibly be their fault if the stuff they just bought doesn't work. The pins I just had to straighten out on your phenom processor indicates it WASN'T the motherboard on so many levels.

Some of it is definitely related to hardware incompatibility. Some of it is also related to other pieces of bad hardware. Most of it is user error.

Ironically, I just had a WD Caviar Blue 500GB fail within 24 hours of install, new Sandy Bridge build for my SO.

I installed Win7 just fine from USB stick, and it was working great. Next afternoon, I checked on it and when it woke from sleep, it just froze hard. Couldn't find the drive when booting from USB stick into Repair mode, and when I put it in the SATA dock in my Corsair case, the primary partition shows up as RAW. It ended up locking up my system after a bit too, while I was trying to use DISKPART to see if I just had something random go wrong. It's going back RMA shortly --I also recently had an RMA return Scorpio Blue IDE notebook drive fail within a week.

I think of them as flukes, but I do find that if a drive is going to go bad, it's going to go within the first couple days of install, or it will probably be awhile. Either way, I've still had an easier time with WD's RMA process than with anyone else in the past few years.

Walkintarget wrote:

Its rare that you log in to Newegg to praise a working mobo that you bought. You bought it, so therefore it SHOULD work.

Most people that get a dead board need to vent, and as such they are much more inclined to post about THAT then are the ones who got a working board and don't need to tell everyone !

I got a DOA Sapphire Toxic 6950 card last month - first DOA I ever had, and I must have posted about it at least 3 times at sites other than Newegg, so thats the nature of it all.

Bingo. The reason there are so many 'DOA' reports on Newegg etc is selection bias. I have had no DOA parts, ever, and only 2 that warranted an immediate return - one a video card for which the cooling was insufficient (fan wouldn't spin up I think) and a HDD that acted 'flaky' (wouldn't always be detected, was very slow to finish error scans). The latter is the closest to anything 'DOA' I've ever had.

Yes, true DOAs that are not shipping damage do happen, they just aren't nearly as common as you'd think from user reviews.

I have always thought those DOA's seemed more numerous than what My Experience has been as well.

I have purchased well over 400 motherboards, over a period of 30 years.

The vast Majority have been Asus, quite a few Tyan, and a much smaller amount of what I will call 'others'...

I HAVE NEVER had a DOA Motherboard.

I have found 3 different Motherboads that were replaced because of 'Engineering issues', but they were not DOA. They just didn't work as 'advertised'.

Out of all of the RAM sticks I have purchased I have only had 8 that were DOA. After that I had to replace another 16 that failed under 'warranty'.

I have had a couple DOA Hard Drives.

2 CPU's had to be replaced because their 'pins were toasted'. Those were being 'shipped to Alaska though. I bit of a 'different place there'. Just of 'bit' of excessive shock during shipment, and the heatsinks of 2 CPU's bounced around with the CPU's after their packing material 'failed'.

I have had several DOA power supplies.

All-in-all not single category has had more than 1% DOA's for me, and over all categories it is just a 'fraction of a percent' of DOA's.

As far a 'brain-dead-owners' go...

A long time ago a friend of mine was walking through a friend of his in installed additional/replacement RAM.

(the abbreviated story...)

A friend calls another friend for help...

"I've received my new memory sticks, and I have the computer open. I am not sure what do after that? Can talk me through it?"

"you will see 2 memory sticks in your computer that look pretty much the same as the ones you received in the mail. Take note how the chips are oriented. On each side of those there are plastic levers holding them in place. Open the levers and pull out the 2 memory sticks."

"Okay, done."

"Orient your new memory sticks the same was as the ones you removed, make sure the levers are open, line each one up in the memory socket and press them into place. When you press them in the levers should close and lock in place. They will go in snuggly, but if they seem to stick or are rocking back and forth then take them out and look at the orientation. The memory sticks have a slot in the bottom that lines up with a small tab in the socket. Let me know when you are done."

A little time goes by...
"Okay, complete."

"Now make sure nothing has dropped into the case, make sure no wires are touching the fans, check to make sure the memory in the sockets properly. When you have done that, then turn the computer on, and let's see if it goes through the self check."

Silence.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes, but I am confused."

"About what?"

"You said turn the computer on... It's already on, so I am not sure what to do?"

...

That was the last time he helped ANYONE he didn't know well before hand with Hardware over the phone.

I think I've only ever had one DOA part (Radeon 850XT), and luckily that was from my local Microcenter, so I was able to get an exchange the very same day. I've had plenty of hardware go bad, but DOA is extremely rare in my experience. Most of the hardware problems are with cheap motherboards and video cards it seems, which isn't surprising considering how complex they are.

c1arity wrote:

My two personal favorites were people putting 6-pin pci-e connectors into the 8-pin cpu power connector (jamming it in there) and arguing with me that you didn't need to use that same power connector and that it was just there for overclocking.

You'd think people would be able to match up a an 8-pin connector to an 8-pin plug, but I guess not. Orangutans can figure out which hole to put strange shapes in. This is really only slightly more complicated...

c1arity wrote:

My experience: people think they are more competent then they really are and thus feel like it can't possibly be their fault

Yep, especially when combined with the "new PC" excitement factor where they are tempted to rush and get it up and running quickly. There are plenty of guides/pictures and even specific youtube videos for a given motherboard/cpu/etc, it's amazing more people don't watch those.

For example, the CPU retention lever for my ASUS-P8Z68 board seemed to be taking A LOT of force, so I quick googled for a video of it to make sure it was supposed to be that way. Luckily it was, but this is the type of thing some people seem too confident/excited to do.

travbrad wrote:

You'd think people would be able to match up a an 8-pin connector to an 8-pin plug, but I guess not. Orangutans can figure out which hole to put strange shapes in. This is really only slightly more complicated...

FWIW a 6-pin PCIe power connector *will* mate with a 4-pin CPU power socket without being forced at all. You'll just have 2 of the contacts from the PCIe plug sitting outside the mobo power socket. If you're trying to replace a PSU while laying on your side underneath a desk in the semi-dark with only an LED keychain flashlight for illumination, and plugging in connectors mostly by feel, you might miss it!

Yes, I've been there, done that... fortunately the PSU responded in a sensible way to having its +12V rail shorted out -- it refused to turn on until the mistake was corrected!

morphine wrote:

When I see "DOA boards", I can only think of one word: ASRock.

I don't discount your experience, but my recent experience with a pair of their Extreme4 boards in P67 and Z68 variety has been nothing but excellent.
And I've also never experienced a DOA motherboard, though I have made mistakes installing them before (getting the orientation of AT power cables wrong anyone?).

I only got one ASRock board in the house, but it's been working fine for nearly two and a half years. *shrug*

The DoA board I got was a gigabyte. Despite this, I have two other Gigabyte boards in my house. Sometimes a part just flat out doesn't work.

Jim552 wrote:

As far a 'brain-dead-owners' go...

A long time ago a friend of mine was walking through a friend of his in installed additional/replacement RAM.

(the abbreviated story...)

A friend calls another friend for help...

"I've received my new memory sticks, and I have the computer open. I am not sure what do after that? Can talk me through it?"

"you will see 2 memory sticks in your computer that look pretty much the same as the ones you received in the mail. Take note how the chips are oriented. On each side of those there are plastic levers holding them in place. Open the levers and pull out the 2 memory sticks."

"Okay, done."

"Orient your new memory sticks the same was as the ones you removed, make sure the levers are open, line each one up in the memory socket and press them into place. When you press them in the levers should close and lock in place. They will go in snuggly, but if they seem to stick or are rocking back and forth then take them out and look at the orientation. The memory sticks have a slot in the bottom that lines up with a small tab in the socket. Let me know when you are done."

A little time goes by...
"Okay, complete."

"Now make sure nothing has dropped into the case, make sure no wires are touching the fans, check to make sure the memory in the sockets properly. When you have done that, then turn the computer on, and let's see if it goes through the self check."

Silence.

"Did you hear me?"

"Yes, but I am confused."

"About what?"

"You said turn the computer on... It's already on, so I am not sure what to do?"

...

That was the last time he helped ANYONE he didn't know well before hand with Hardware over the phone.

Sadly, I had someone do that at my last job. He bought memory for his laptop and decided to install it himself. I walked away to get a drink only to come back to him installing his first stick with it still on. Luckily for him it still worked when he fired it back up.

me: "noo!"
him: "what? what just happened?"
me: "you may have just killed your laptop."

just brew it! wrote:

travbrad wrote:

You'd think people would be able to match up a an 8-pin connector to an 8-pin plug, but I guess not. Orangutans can figure out which hole to put strange shapes in. This is really only slightly more complicated...

FWIW a 6-pin PCIe power connector *will* mate with a 4-pin CPU power socket without being forced at all. You'll just have 2 of the contacts from the PCIe plug sitting outside the mobo power socket. If you're trying to replace a PSU while laying on your side underneath a desk in the semi-dark with only an LED keychain flashlight for illumination, and plugging in connectors mostly by feel, you might miss it!

Yes, I've been there, done that... fortunately the PSU responded in a sensible way to having its +12V rail shorted out -- it refused to turn on until the mistake was corrected!

Yep! Now imagine it jammed in...and the degree of skill that took.

travbrad wrote:

c1arity wrote:

My experience: people think they are more competent then they really are and thus feel like it can't possibly be their fault

Yep, especially when combined with the "new PC" excitement factor where they are tempted to rush and get it up and running quickly. There are plenty of guides/pictures and even specific youtube videos for a given motherboard/cpu/etc, it's amazing more people don't watch those.

For example, the CPU retention lever for my ASUS-P8Z68 board seemed to be taking A LOT of force, so I quick googled for a video of it to make sure it was supposed to be that way. Luckily it was, but this is the type of thing some people seem too confident/excited to do.

I think it's a bit more than that. I think it's something called the Dunning-Kruger effect where in North American culture, the less competent estimate themselves are more competent than they actually are, while the more competent estimate themselves as less competent than they actually are. It's kind of a reason why the idiots tend to think they are actually a genius, while smart people underestimate their intelligence. Which is why the smart people tend to second guess themselves and double check everything a lot, while the idiots just jam everything together and think they are doing everything right.

Some of the MSI boards for the LGA 1155 socket had some pretty tough retention levers. Did scare me a bit, but I also noticed that the pins that contact the CPU were much stiffer than what I was used to.

travbrad wrote:

You'd think people would be able to match up a an 8-pin connector to an 8-pin plug, but I guess not. Orangutans can figure out which hole to put strange shapes in. This is really only slightly more complicated...

Yep! Now imagine it jammed in...and the degree of skill that took.

I'm sure it took a lot more effort than skill lol... and that reminds me of this