• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Official: What Have I Killed Benching Thread!

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Deanzo

Benchmarking Senior Member
Joined
Feb 5, 2005
Location
Christchurch, New Zealand
Right then guys, list them up.

The rules to this thread are easy.

1: Listed hardware must have be killed trying to make it go faster.
2: Or, You did something dumb and killed it yourself (but must be part of your benching rig)
3: One post per member that has his or her parts in it. Update that post as you kill other parts.
4: Pictures are Kool, please feel free to add them to your post.
5: A story that goes along with it, is Kool as well.
6: Please tell us the price.
7: If you haven't killed anything yet, please try harder :p
 
Last edited:
Zippy G1 600W PSU $350NZ RIP
I was about to prep my board for a dry ice run, as always I used an anti-static strap, I always attatch it to the back grill on my power supply with the power supply turned off at the wall, but plugged in so I am earthed. This time in my haste to get set up I did two fatal mistakes, first was to have it turned on at the wall and at the power supply itself, second was to clip it on with too much of the clasp inside the power supply. As I was holding the cord about to put it on my arm, the clasp inside the unit touched one of big silver heatsinks. And I suppose you could say it arched, made a loud pop and one hell of a spark!

Gigabyte 9800GX2 Vid Card $1000NZ RIP
Not much of a story to go along with this, as I'm still not 100% sure what went wrong.
Though, I had volt modded the card, flashed the bios, added heatsinks, mounted a LN2 pot, running it at -90 and was pushing the volts untill OVP would kick it.
But I'm sure that had nothing to do with it :D

Gigabyte EP45T Extreme Motherboard $450NZ RIP
Had a really bad bios flash, not even the back up bios chip works now. Dead board.

MSI P45D3 Platinum Motherboard RIP
Running the GPU on LN2, ice at the bottom of the card was melting into the PCI-e slot and filled it with water, soon after that it was a dead board.

Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2 X 1GB Sticks $250NZ RIP
All I can say is 2.7+ volts is fun, but also bad :)

Nivida GTX295 Vid Card $1100NZ RIP
Very little uses, then just wouldn't power up/on right.

i7 975 CPU $2300NZ, it was an ES at the Gigabyte comp, good thing I didn't pay for it! RIP
As it turns out, crazy high vtt can kill a cpu!!

Gigabyte EX-UD5 Motherboard $650NZ, used at the Gigabyte comp, good thing I didn't pay for it! RIP
Not 100% sure what killed it, could have been soo many things we were doing to it at the time.

Evga GTX285 Vid Card RIP
Bad mod, took some SMD's out.

Asus X48 Rampage Extreme Motherboard RIP
First time having LN2 at home since Nov 08, and I kill the board with in 10 mins... 48 ltrs left :bang head

Intel E8600 CPU RIP
See above, looks like the Rampage Extreme took it with her :cry:

Gigabyte P55-UD5 RIP
She was a good board, didn't last as long as I would have liked, but none the less it was fun.

MSI P55-GD80 RIP
2nd P55 board to die in my hands, this time from a bad flash

MSI 5870 Vid Card RIP
Was a great card, but too much VTT seems to be a bad thing.

Intel 980X (Q3FE ES) RIP
High clocking chip that didn't hold up to the vcore and vtt I was giving it!

MSI 5870 Vid Card RIP
Yet another one pushed too far.

GTX480 Video Cards
Cant list how many have died, you'd all cry :p

Asus GTX580 Vid Card
Poor thing couldn't take the vmem.

Intel 2600K 5.7Ghz SB CPU
Too much power...

Evga P67 Motherboard
Mosfet is now toast

All in one go
Asus REIII Black Motherboard.....Asus GTX580 Video Card.....2 X Antec TPQ1200 OC's.....Adata 3X2Gb.....Dell 30" LCD
Made one hell of a bang, and there was fire out the back of the PSU's LOL
 
Last edited:
Ok here goes... I killed my blessed Black Ops just by being dumb....

One day earlier this week I was sitting at home with my broken leg....trying my best to be a good host for visiting inlaws from Thailand. One of my wife's sister asked me about all the computer stuff she saw in "The Room"...so I started explaining what Oc'ing is...then it dawned on me that I could just do a show and tell and maybe it would be easier for her to understand...So a day o r so later I setup the water cooling on the NB...discovered I needed more tubing to get everything where I could comfortably set all the pieces just right...anyways, I figured for a short period the WC'ing would be fine even if it wasn't ideally located and I had to move my navig bench station around to accomodate. So this morning after the family went out sight seeing I prepped the board for the cpu pot, installed the pot and decided what the heck lets do some test runs before the show (supposed to have been this evening)...I booted into bios and used some settings that I saw Beattle-san using at XS, only I made some minor adjustments as I wasn't trying to go very high...It was great..booted into windows in a snap...tried to get a CPUz screenie while running Superpi...pi stopped so I said hmmm..more volts eh? I decided then that I would see how high I could go with it, so the next logical step was 5500 then 5600 then 5700 and so on.....well I rebooted and set my volts nearly identical to beattle-san (very close to 2.0v using strange BO 1.375 x 1.57 or something like that) ..i think it works out to about 1.96 before droop...Booted into windows and everything is going great ..finished my pi run but didnt get the cpuz validation I wanted..i screwed around abit trying to figure out how I could get a cpuz validation shot at the 5500MHz (a personal best for me) meanwhile the ln2 has cooked off and I don't have anymore in my thermos...so (this is where I got the STUPIDS) I shut down the machine as I am on crutches and it is really hard to pour from the big 25lt dewar into the 1lt coffee thermos and takes me a heck of a long time these days balancing on one leg...I guess that while the machine was off the coldness crepped out and froze some of the components on the board under the big Black Ops heatsink...I didn't really look before turning on the machine...but it went up in smoke fairly quickly once I juiced the board...very sad that I can be so reckless...here are the pics...

th_DSC01396.jpg

th_DSC01397.jpg

th_DSC01398.jpg

EDIT: Forgot to include price... with shipping this was $394.00

Update: Yesterday while I was setting up a harddrive with windows XP I noticed my QX9650 was only showing two cores during the boot screen so once I had winxp up I downloaded CPUz to check on my cpu...sure enough only two cores and 2 threads showed as active. I messed around a bit in the Bios to see if I had screwed up something when I set everything to defaults. I got on the PMs with Gautam for a bit exchanging ideas. I tried the cpu in my Gigabyte board with no luck, the machine would just cycle power on/off. Hard reset the cmos and tried with just one stick of ram, no-go still. Today while chatting with Dean he suggested I try the cpu in my 790i board since in the 790 boards you can see/select the cores. I've just spent about an hour trying to get the cpu to boot into the bios. The 790i machine just freezes while posting....tried hard reset on cmos, one stick of ram. To no avail...I do have the lcd poster plugged in and it shows that the machine is freezing at MP INIT which I assume is multi processor initilization.....so now I'm declaring my QX9650 is Dead, RIP. $1000.
 
Last edited:
Don't know if I wanna re-live the pain :p

OK here goes

9500 NP - A real gem of a card that allowed me to reach 2nd on the ORB behind overklokk, till I pelt fried it.

IMGP0039.jpg

X800 XT PE, again an incredible clocking card, 675MHz memory unmodded. I ripped a couple ram chips off removing ram sinks. Thought I'd killed it's replacement a couple weeks later when I saw this running the card on DI, turns out it was just the cold bug :D

_FS345.jpg

FX-55 - This was 1 week old and over 1K at the time. I did one phase test and decided to pop the top. Went perfect until I decided not to check core contact (hi doc :D) when mounting the SS.

FXtopless1.jpg

Abit AW9D-Max, very similar to what Matt just did :beer:
Only board I've ever killed and changed how I prep for a bench. Came in handy for parts though ;)

cap_theft2.jpg

8800GTX - Bad vmod, I learned how to do mod's correctly after this one.

damage_traces.jpg
 
Not sure if I should be happy or sad about being able to join this thread:rolleyes:

Killed my new MSI P7N Platinum (750i) last night. Nothing too exciting, but my new Coolermaster Cosmos S has a new touch sensetive power button on it, and the mobo has a CMOS reset botton on the back panel. While I was reaching back and pushing the reset button, I accidentally pushed the power button, and looks like it took out the BIOS.

I tried everything, even changing the CPU, and taking the battery out overnight...the thing will no longer post. Luckly I've only had it for 2 weeks, so I'll be sending it back to newegg for an RMA. $150
 
Last edited:
Well, my first death was a 661 Cedar Mill that I killed in less than 3 months!! It's now on my key chain, that was a $450. chip at the time. :bang head
CedarMill.jpg
 
Last edited:
1. Athlon Thunderbird 1000. Killed it by not using a heatsink, since I thought they were just gimmicks. $175 IIRC
2. Radeon 9800 NP by epoxying heatsinks to the memory, and then using the freezer trick to remove them. Most of them came off cleanly, but two of them took an ever so slight amount of the actual chips with them, making the card sorta functional but plenty of artifacting. Also $175 or so if memory serves.
3. Radeon 9800 NP this time by vmodding. I used too much solder and shorted plenty of components. Then I tried to clean it up and burnt traces.
4. AthlonXP 1700+ JIUHB DLT3C. Cause unknown, thought to be a power spike. It was my 24/7 rig. $60
5. Abit NF7-S Rev 2.0, ditto. $95 (Remember when high end mobos were this cheap?)
6. Asus P4C800-E Deluxe by...condensation? This was long before I went to extreme cooling. I had an air conditioner blowing in my case on a hot summer's day, and somehow the board got a little wet when I didn't notice, and died. $115
7. Asus P4C800-E Deluxe, cause unknown. First time I tried to hook my chiller up was a complete nightmarish mess. It might have been condensation, it might have been the board flexing, I really have no idea.
8. AOpen i975X-YDG. Some sort of power supply issue. I tried Crossfire for the first time with too weak of a power supply, and somehow the board died during a Windows installation. It wasn't totally dead, but it was unable to make it into BIOS fully after that. $280? I rmaed it though as it had no chance to even be OCed much less modded.
9. Another AOpen, an X1900XTX and an X1900 CF edition. This was a disaster that made me come very close to quitting overclocking, but at the same time taught me plenty. I was heading out to get split some dry ice with fellow forum member {PMS} Fishy and had the rig prepped with my chiller on the video cards. While I was out I left the chiller on in order for it to pull down to full temps by the time I got back. Instead, I got back to see the rig on with no signal to the monitor. The board was drenched in several places and there was corrosion everywhere. It turned out that I foolishly left the pump on, so the cards were being cooled to -30 with no load on them. It was such a hot day that the frost was melting and drenched the cards and the board. This experience taught me to never run anything subzero that isn't loaded, even though it was an accident. Since then I've always instinctively shut the power off on my bench rig no matter what when I leave the house, even if it's on air, and I never turn the chiller's pump on until immediately after the rig POST's, similar to what I try to do with LN2 and DI. This time it was $280 gone, and the video cards were $700 together. (A complete steal at the time) This scared me out of extreme card cooling and dry ice for a while.
10. A P5WDH Deluxe, not totally dead. Sorta funny story though. I was dry ice cooling an E6700. It was a 975X chipset, and I was stuck on a 10X multiplier, so I was FSB bound. Consequently, I wrapped insulation around the northbridge heatsink and insulated the board area around it, and put chunks of dry ice on the NB. It was very effective. Unfortunately, even though I insulated the front of the board, somehow I neglected to insulate the back. The bottom of the board right under the northbridge was sitting in a puddle. Somehow the board lived, but it lost the first PCI-E slot.
11. P5W DH Deluxe, killed from a botched vcore mod. $225
12. P5W DH Deluxe, killed from a botched vcore mod. $225 I thought I killed a third one as well, but I pulled it out of my drawer the other week, and surprisingly enough, it was alive. The first thing I did with it was vcore mod it to prove to myself I could. It took 10 seconds this time around, nearly two years after the others, and the board is fine. At least I've learned how to solder well since.
13. Asus Commando. Wouldn't say I really killed it per se, it was a defective board whose mosfet blew during its first half hour of operation. I wasn't the only one.
14. Crucial Ballistix PC2-8500 by accidentally not plugging in the fan that was supposed to be cooling it. 2.5v during a 32M, it croaked. $130
15. Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000. Somehow I didn't seem to think twice about running 32M's back to back for two days straight at 2.8v. Probably not the greatest idea in the world if you want your DDR2 to live. $120
16. Asus Commando. Goodness knows how this one went. It had a long life of extreme overclocking (first board I ever did LN2 on) and then spontaneously decided to stop POSTing one day on air. $220
17. Asus P5W64 WS Pro. Wet mosfets due to insufficient insulation, my third LN2 attempt or so. $130
18. Two Radeon 2900XT's. You'd think having overclocking legend k|ngp|n in your living room while you're benching would give you pretty good odds of keeping hardware alive. I did too, which might have been why none of us were really paying enough attention. One card it turns out had its PCI-E fingers smashed together (they look like they're painted on, but trust me, they're not) and ended up getting fried so badly that there's a crater on the core, and it still smells like ash. The second one died due to condensation. When 2900XT's are put in CrossFire, the card in the second slot literally might as well be off until you start a 3D application. It was sitting around -30 or so, and that was enough to make the PCI-E slot wet, making it artifact on POST. One card was his, and one was mine. They were about $400 at the time apiece.
19. Doesn't really count, but I've had something like 3 or 4 eVGA and XFX 790i's plagued by the feared BIOS corruption issue and returned or RMAed all of them.
20. Kingston HyperX PC3-14400. I think I just found the (very strange) cause for this; attempting to push them at speeds they couldn't handle somehow made them degrade. This also affected a kit of
21. Crucial Ballistix PC3-12800 which died in the same fashion in under half an hour. It wasn't voltage that killed it since I've got plenty of other sticks running fine. *touch wood* $192

This list actually seems too short to me, I probably forgot some things.
 
X6800 - $500, purchased from Gautam. First time I tried subzero benching. Probably condensation.

P5WDH Deluxe - Trade for a bunch of DDR 400. Didn't completely die, but went south the same night as the X6800.

Pentium D 945 - I think I paid like $40. I gave her around 2v on air to see what would happen. Enough said.

Lots of Ballistix RAMs. I've killed a set during the first two Forum Wars.

Gigabyte X48T-DQ6 at the Gigabyte overclocking contest.

Gigabyte HD 4850. Didn't see the 'K' and used a 100 ohm instead of a 100K ohm VR for volt mod.

Another Gigabyte X48T-DQ6. The one they gave me to replace the one I killed at Gigabyte event. Dropped a ramsink on it and saw some smoke.

A pile of X58-UD5 boards (Miah and I both) in GOOC 2009 at Taipei.
 
Last edited:
mainly all ive killed is my motherboards and its took out a couple other components along the way when it died
3x evga 680i's
1x 320 gb hd
2x 2gb g.skill
silverstone zues 750
 
P5b deluxe that I was measureing vcore and slipped, Woops,

7600gs - put tons of volts through it as I wasn't paying attention with a dmm till too late(I believe close to 1.9+) :p while connected to a vapochill

2900 pro- flashed to a 3870 by accident as both bios files were on my flash drive, :banghead:

2900 pro that I didn't mount the tube on fully, lol, up in smoke it went

2 x48t-dq6 - mosfets that exploded, first one condensation, 2nd I insulated over a row of em on the bottom and it got a little toasty for it :D, 3rd board's still alive, knock on wood
 
Well let me see what I can remember

DFI Ultra Infinity NF2 $90: I killed this becuase I never looked up whether or not you could use a DDR booster with it.

ATI 9500n/p 64meg $50: Killed this V-modding

Ati X850xt pe $250: again killed V-modding

DFI Lanparty NF3 $can't remember: Killed this somehow I don't know how though

MSI K9n Platinum $75: Only time I haven't caught a leak in a WCing system before running it.

Crucial Ballistix 2x512mb DDR2 $90: killed trying to remove the heatspreaders.

Probably more stuff that I don't want to remember
 
Well......

2 Gigabyte GA6vXE +'s
1 KX7
1 IC7
1 Ultra D
1 Mobil P4
Some slot 1 CPU's
Some GeForce 4's
A GeForce 2 Ultra This one ****ed me off, it was a Creative 3DBlaster, and clocked like mad.....

Price's I am not sure of, it isn't as much as some but dam it, it was enough.

Most all was trying to get max clocks to run some benchies, all of the video cards was ram issues, they come without ram sinks, you'd think they could handle some extra clocks, but nooooo.

The CPU's and mobo nothing spectacular, like the Black Ops.

The Ultra D was kinda cool, a little chip, I think it was for ram voltage??!?!?!! let the magic smoke out, it poppled a bit, hissed a bit, then stank very much bad.....
 
Just came across this thread hehehehe.

Wow Gautam!!! I dont feel as bad anymore! :(

Here is my quick and dirty list. Ill add pics and details later but the lappy is on 5% battery and Im heading out to work.

1. P5K Premium - Bad Vmod. Ill link the thread where SuperNade attempted to fix my fried board. Lots of pics. $220

2. 2 X 1 GB Crucial Ballistix Tracers PC2-8500. $120 at the time. I personally dont think we should be listing CBs since anyone who has ever owned a set prob had them die on them :)

3. 8800 GTX - Vmods. In retrospect, I think I used a ground that wasnt really a ground and *pooof*. $650 when I bought it but more like $400 new when I killed it.

4. 8800 GTX - 1st water cooled setup. After putting together my 1st water cooled rig I was filling the loop with water for the first time. I accidentally plugged in the 6pin PCIe power connectors and there was no water in the loop yet. OOPS! Fried card.

5. 8800 GTS G92. I think Ive killed like 4 or5 5 of these by now.... All bad Vmods Im thinking but not 100% sure. At least 1 of them was a core contact issue as per Marks reference in his post :D. About $200 a pop. 1 of them I have pics on that I did some "alterations" as per MISUNDERSTOOD instructions by me from k|ngp|n and Its soooooo retarded I think I will take those pics to the grave with me :p

6. P4C800E Dlx - Replaced the northbridge heatsink with an aftermarket one and after a few months one of the retaining clips popped off of the PCB while running - Dead mobo :( I loved that boad too :(

7. E8400 - My Forum Wars 2008 CPU. I beat it to death. At some points I was running 2.05 Vcore :) It still works, but its on its way out. It wont overclock past 3.7 Ghz no matter what I do so its crunching for me at the moment and I expect it could die for good any day now.

8. Foxconn Mars X 2 - Not sure if I killed these one or they were both bad. They have been RMAd allready so Im not out anything. I put a BSEL modded E4500 on 1 of them and then it wouldnt POST after that. I think I killed it by shorting it out but Im not sure. #2 was never fully tested and I replaced the TIM on the heatipe and it wouldnt post after that.I assume it was DOA but Im not sure. $200 a pop but they were both RMAd.

Hmmm Im sure there is more. Ill add some pics later and update with more info.
 
Back