I Have No PC Karma

The plexiglass rig arrived at the post office yesterday. The whole thing started a bit odd because the office mailroom said they couldn't pick it up. So I went to get it over lunch and then opened it up when I got home.

The first thing I noticed was that parts of the plexiglass were cracked, and a couple pieces had actually broken off. OK, so, not pretty. But not that bad. But then I noticed this:



Anyone who has popped open their toaster to see what's inside may have just cringed. See, there's something missing there. And that would be:



The heat sink. That would be the same thing that I was trying to replace on my old box and ending up breaking it. Apparently I wronged some gypsy woman and now have a heat sink curse. See, heat sinks are supposed to be very tight against the cpu to transfer heat directly. When this heat sink was unceremoniously removed (probably when the package was dropped or thrown), it took most of the bracketing along with it.

Making it very difficult to put back on. In fact, this particular motherboard seems to use white plastic screws for the mounting that don't appear to have any desire to be removed. I rejiggled every connection on the board, swapped out the video card with my old one and even tried setting the box on it's side to keep the sink as tight as possible ... finally getting the box to boot, but it eventually just overheated and crashed.

Thankfully, the seller was wise enough to insure it. So now the post office can pay for what they broke.

Maybe I'm just meant to be a Mac person.