[alan2273]

I have been building computers for myself, friends and relations for about 8 years and have never trashed a motherboard, even when I have had to flash a BIOS.
But there is a first time for everything.
My test machine is in a Silverstone case and it is a really quiet computer, so when i upgraded my main computer I used the 7600GT card to upgrade my test computer.
As the Silverstone case is a very tight fit, I did not notice that the lugs of the Zalman fan I had fitted caught on the heatsink cooling the chipset and lifted it of.
The machine ran for 3 months like that then died.
Still it has given me a valid excuse to upgrade it now.

If anyone is using a Gigabyte 939 motherboard with the chipset heatsink next to the PCi-E slot, do not modify the fan on the graphics card.

[Jesse_hz]

Oh I've messed up an OEM board really bad a long time ago. I'd rather not talk more about it.

[alan2273]

Its running again now thanks to a quick response from Novatech, who posted me a motherboard bundle the following day.
I did not realize how much I missed my test machine.
The funny part was that the Linux distro just ran perfectly after the upgrade but Windows made me reactivate and I had to uninstall the old drivers and reinstall the new ones which took about an hour.
Windows would not let me activate over the internet, I had to phone, but as I had changed the processor, RAM & motherboard and the XP CD is OEM, I am suprised they reactivated.