Do you want to completely ruin your computer? Well of course not, which is why I’m going to tell you the best ways to do just that, so you can avoid it. So in this article, I will tell you how to secure computer system or I’ve got 7 dumb mistakes that could potentially destroy your computer hardware-wise permanently, or at the very least your current OS installation.
7 Mistakes That Will Destroy Your Computer
- Overclocking your CPU
- Poor Ventilation and Cooling in your PC
- Not using a UPS or Surge Protector
- Delete System Files
- Interrupting Updates
- Shaking a HDD
- Messing with Components while they're Running
1. Overclocking your CPU
But anyway, let’s get started. So first up, one of the sure-fire ways to damage your computer is improperly overclocking your CPU. Usually, you want to slowly increase the clock speeds and voltages by small amounts, then stress testing the computer for stability. But if you go too far and just bump up the voltage way too high, you could immediately fry your CPU. If you want How can I fix a slow computer?
If you want to overclock your processor unless you really know what you’re doing, the best thing you can probably do is find an overclocking guide for your specific CPU made by someone else who already did most of the testing for you, and then don’t stray too far from their results. For example back when I built my PC I had an Intel 5960X CPU, on a Rampage motherboard from ASUS ROG.
And ROG are the brand from ASUS and they actually released a guide specifically for my CPU on how to overclock it and their guide showed what you could expect from a good result, an average result, a fair the result, so I was literally able to just look on there, and say "ok well I'll try the average result" put it at that clock, and that voltage. And it seemed to work out, so you might not get something as well clear-cut as that, but that's what you can hopefully, look for.
And then you at least have a place to start. Now one the interesting thing to know if you’re worried about overclocking is that Intellectually offers a kind of insurance called the “performance tuning protection plan” in case the CPU fails because of overclocking, which might be worth looking in to see if it's worth it. I don’t think AMD offers anything like this for their CPUs though.
But Intel at least if you do have one of their CPUs, and you're worried about frying it, this could potentially offer some protection against that. And it's really not even that expensive, it's like 20 or 30 dollars I think per CPU, and it covers it for a couple years. Just be sure to read the fine print and know exactly what's covered. I believe bent pins would probably not be covered, it's only things resulting from overclocking. Alright,
2. Poor Ventilation and Cooling in your PC
The next thing that can damage your computer is having poor ventilation and cooling in your PC case. If you bought a pre-built system it’s probably ok from the manufacturer, unless there's a ton of dust buildup over the years or something. But if you have a custom-built computer, obviously you need to make sure your components are properly cooled, even if you’re not overclocking.
Basically, this means if you are overclocking the computer at all, you will want a heatsink better than the stock one, and make sure you have at least one intake and an exhaust fan for air circulation. This is something that won’t cause your computer to burst into flames or fry components the minute you turn it on because one of the fans is running slow. The CPU and graphics cards will throttle themselves, but over time their lifespan will be reduced, including that of other components like hard drives. If you want You Don’t Have To Be A Programmer To Fix Computer Errors.
Of course, this isn't something that needs to be super finely controlled, as long as you have reasonable circulation, it's very unlikely that your computer will die, it's more just increasing the risk over time with increased temperatures.
3. Not using a UPS or Surge Protector
Mistake number 3 is not using an uninterruptable power supply (or UPS) or at the very least, a surge protector. This one is pretty self-explanatory but really important. Power surges can easily destroy a computer, and while they might be rare, why take the chance, surge protectors are really not that expensive.
Even better is getting an uninterruptable power supply, a UPS. This is basically a battery backup unit for a desktop computer that will keep your computer running for a short time if the power goes out or becomes unstable. These aren’t meant to keep the computer running for hours, usually, just a couple minutes depending on how much power your computer draws, it may only do less than a minute, maybe a couple minutes, so you have just enough time to save your work and shut down properly.
They aren’t too expensive either, you can get a decent smaller one from APC is one of the manufacturers, for under $100, or you can really go crazy on bigger ones. It's definitely worth the price and peace of mind I think, it's saved me several times where the power has gone out, and then really all it takes is less than 30 seconds like I said, to just say "ok power's out, time to turn off the computer", shut down, and then nothing's going to get corrupted, or you're not going to lose any data. You can do it really quick.
4. Delete System Files
One thing you obviously should never do is any delete system files. Most of the time the operating system will make it impossible to delete anything critically important unless you really go out of your way to do it on purpose.
But I have experimented in the past to see what happens if you delete some critical files just for fun, and no surprise, it immediately kills Windows and makes it so you will have to reinstall it completely. And by the way, if you want to check out that video of me deleting the infamous system32folder, I’ll have that link pop out at the top and at the end too. If you want How to move columns and rows in excel.
The somewhat good news is that even if you somehow, for whatever reason, delete system files on your computer and ruin the OS installation, it’s not like the computer is physically ruined. Your files are still on the hard drive, and you can always reinstall Windows, it would just be a real pain, and should obviously be avoided at all costs.
5. Interrupting Updates
Number 5, this is something that actually sometimes happens and it’s not even our fault, which is restarting or cutting power to the computer, or any other device really, while it’s updating. You’ve surely seen during literally any update ever, the computer will say something like “do not restart while updating”, and maybe wondered what would actually happen if you actually did that.
Well it turns out, in most cases it’s probably not the end of the world, and Windows at least will be able to roll things back and just tell you something like “Windows could not finish installing updates. ”Microsoft and other companies surely know there are occasional situations where the power might go out during an update, or an update might encounter an error, and likely has put a lot of time into making sure stuff like that doesn’t brick your computer.
Of course, you still need to always avoid doing it, because it is still very possible to corrupt certain files in a way that isn’t recoverable, and again you'd have to reinstall. But also, there are some situations, like when updating the motherboard BIOS, where it is absolutely imperative that you don’t interrupt it, because then you could literally brick the motherboard, and then you really are screwed. Alright moving on,
6. Shaking a HDD
One thing to definitely avoid is shaking your hard drive while it's running. This really just applies to laptops and is also something you don’t need to worry about with SSDs. But it should be obvious why shaking a delicate piece of hardware spinning at 7200 RPM might be a BIT RISKY.
Now, most modern drives do have the ability to detect vibrations and will actually lock themselves down to try and prevent damage, so they probably aren’t as sensitive as you might think, but it’s still important to avoid it because you don’t know what kind of long-term issues it might cause. If you want Recover files from formatted Compact Flash card.
And if it is extreme enough in the right direction, it might cause a platter to scrape against the case of the hard drive for example. This is another experiment I did myself in a video where I literally put a hard drive on a laboratory vortexer to shake it violently while it was running, and actually, it didn’t kill it, but it did freeze up every time it was shaking, probably because of the drive’s protection features. Still, doing this regularly would definitely damage it, and I wouldn’t dare use this particular drive I used for the experiment after putting it through that.
7. Messing with Components while they're Running
Alright, we’re on to the final mistake you should seriously avoid, but afterward, we can mention some other ridiculous ways to ruin your computer just for fun. So number 7 is something I am actually guilty of, which is messing around with the components inside of your computer while it’s running.
You can risk things like accidentally shorting things out, hitting fan blades, and god knows what else. And my personal story with this is really embarrassing but funny. So one day I was adding a new fan controller inside my computer, and for some reason, the fans attached to the water cooler unit weren’t running.
It was one of those all-in-one units with the radiator and some plugs to power the fans. Now me thinking I was so smart, decided to get out my multimeter and use it to test if there was actually any voltage being applied to the fan pins, to tell whether the fan itself was dead, or if they just weren’t being powered.
So I go and touch the multimeter probes to the pins on the water cooler unit while the computer is running, and I immediately hear a POP and the computer just shuts down instantly. And I clearly shorted something out. My initial reaction was basically to just stare at it, and I literally thought I just fried the whole thing and would need to build a new PC, it was a mess.
So I press the power button and everything actually turns on… except the water cooler was clearly dead, its light wasn’t on and the pump wasn’t running. So I ended up having to replace the water cooling unit, which was like $150 not cheap, but fortunately, nothing else was shorted out, but it could have been a lot worse.
So learn from my mistake and don’t go messing around with the inside of your computer while it's running, it's not worth it. Alright, so those are some things you really need to avoid so your computer stays un-destroyed. But what fun is that? In fact, there are plenty of ways people have actually come up with to actually try and destroy their computers for pure entertainment value.
One example is the infamous “ether-killer” device, where someone literally took an AC power cable and spliced it directly to an ethernet cable. I’m not sure if this has actually ever been tested beyond being a meme, but it would at the very least destroy the network card or motherboard it was plugged into.
Now I mentioned you need to keep your computer free of dust for adequate cooling, but one way to NOT do that is to wash your motherboard with soap and water. This has also been a meme for a while and even I made a video of my own about this, but needless to say, liquid and computer components do not mix. If you want How to protect your computer from hackers and viruses.
In fact, one thing I could have added to the main list was to avoid spilling liquid on your laptop keyboard, because even if you dry it out, it might cause long-term corrosion damage that might not be immediately apparent. And definitely don’t do what I did and pour an entire quart of motor oil into your PC, unless you really want to I guess, I’m not your parents, you can do what you want.
But regardless, now after this article, you should be statistically less likely to ruin your computer, congratulations! Again be sure to subscribe because I make multiple videos a week, and if you want to watch that video of me deleting System32 in Windows, I’ll put that link right here. So thanks so much for that reading.
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