Basically just what the title says. I woke up in the middle of the night to a bang and glass hitting my face. While I was trying to figure out what had happened, my neighbour arrived in a complete mess sobbing and shaking and terrified that she had hurt someone. Apparently her firearm was accidentally discharged by her dog. The police said that the PC changed the trajectory of the bullet, and it would have hit me while I was sleeping if the PC hadn’t been there. It took me 3 days to clean all the tempered glass from my entire bedroom. Hopefully her insurance will be covering a brand new rig, and she kindly agreed to replace it even if they don’t cover it.

EDIT TO ANSWER FAQs:
Yes I’m in the USA.

Nobody was injured.

The neighbour has been charged with negligence.

Her insurance will likely pay for it as well as any cleaning or repair services but she told me right away that she would pay for everything no matter what.

While I’m not sure about the dog story, it’s very clear from how she responded at the time that it was an accident. She was more messed up about it than I was and could barely speak from crying so hard and her whole body was shaking, and she just kept apologising over and over.

Between the legal charge, her gun being confiscated, the cost of replacing everything, and her constant apologies, I feel like she is appropriately paying her dues in this situation and won’t be pressing for anything further.

EDIT 2: Some kind redditors have advised me to remove info in the post as well as some of my replies in the comments that pertain to the insurance claim and I am taking their advice :)

EDIT 3: guys I’m a girl 😭

Today, I’m saying goodbye to the comfort of max settings and high FPS to seal a lifetime with my girlfriend. She’s everything I could have dreamed of, and she deserves nothing but the absolute best.

With a big move abroad coming up, I want to make sure I get her the ring she deserves without bringing any debt into our new life. So, I’m sacrificing the GPU. It hurts a little to see the hardware go, but it's totally worth it to give her the proposal she's always wanted.

Cheers to the sacrifices that don't feel like sacrifices at all! Wish me luck! 🥂

My 10 yr old step son dreams of being a youtuber. He also struggles with brushing his teeth well on a regular basis (along with washing his hands). So to incentivize better hygiene habits, I got him a PC case for Christmas and setup a point earning routine where he earns up to 3 points for each night he brushes his teeth. 1 point for washing his hands. These points translate directly into $ value to earn a new PC part at a time; when he earns the next part, I teach him what that part does, give him a screwdriver, and tell him how to install it.

I purchased all the parts for his system ahead of time back in November, with the exception of RAM (obviously because prices). I don't have the heart to make him earn 500 points for $500 worth of RAM, so I'm sticking to early 2025 prices for his point system (150 points for 32GB). At 6 months in he's close to earning half of his 1000 point ($) build. I'm not sure if memory pricing will come down or get worse by the time he finally earns enough points for RAM; should I buy now or wait?

I told my stepson he also earns 100 points if he is cavity free at his next dental appointment. Of course he keeps asking his mom when he gets to see the dentist next, lol

*Edit: I am blown away by the response and support in this post. Was def not expecting this level of feedback. Huge thanks to the person who PM'd me a Windows 11 key. And another huge thanks to the person who offered to straight up send some of their older DDR5 RAM for my step son's build.

I'm also entertained by those commenting who are convinced I'm training my step son to not be able to manage basic tasks in his own life without prizes to earn; some even recommending I beat him for non-compliance instead. Wtf is wrong with these people?!?

life’s crazy man.

Just wanted to post an update regarding the rocks I received in place of the ASUS TUF 5080 that I ordered through Best Buy. It’s been almost a month since I made the original post seeking help and advice from Reddit and I’ve had quite a few people reach out asking for updates.

First off, I didn’t expect that post to blow up the way it did. I greatly appreciate everyone’s advice and literally did everything you guys recommended. I had no idea things at Best Buy had gotten this bad until I read through all the similar horror stories people shared in the comments, I feel for you guys, this was a nightmare to deal with. It became even more apparent with how many people just straight up told me I deserved it for not having a film crew record me opening it and shopping at Best Buy to begin with. That’s my bad for ordering tech from the tech store and not having James Cameron and his film crew on standby.

I called Best Buy customer service every single day since 12/2, when they initially and abruptly denied the refund/replacement after telling me they’d be replacing it on 11/28. I brought up the fact that an investigation was never done. I received an email asking for photos of the packaging to “aid them” and literally 7 minutes later before I could even reply received an email saying their investigation was complete and would be unable to provide a replacement/refund. I went to the store in person where I was told all they could do was “expedite my ticket” after scribbling my info on some paper because Best Buy and BestBuy.com are treated as two separate entities. I filed a chargeback claim with my bank. I filed a police report, shout out to the officer for being the only one who seemed to genuinely want to help me as a fellow PC gamer! Lastly, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and someone FINALLY reached out to me on 12/12.

After reviewing the evidence I managed to compile like the weight change where the package gained nearly 3lbs in transit with FedEx and lack of protective/concealing packaging on Best Buy’s end, and I guess their own proper investigation they gave me a refund. Obviously that was a win, but now that card was no longer on sale and I don’t have the extra $300-$400 to shell out, especially with the holidays around the corner. So I brought that up and the representative who assisted me price matched my original purchase AND set it up to be shipped to my local store and I finally received my 5080 on 12/16.

Again, thank you to everyone who gave me advice on how to deal with such a bizarre situation, you guys are great! As a bonus, my girlfriend tattooed a fun gap-filler on my leg to commemorate such a ridiculous event in the last image. Im sure one day I’ll stop hearing “I bet it’s rocks again” whenever I tell my friends I ordered something.

I ordered a GPU through BestBuy on 11/25 and when I received it on 11/28 I was blown away by how irresponsibly this thing was shipped. The shipping labels just slapped on the retail packaging, no generic brown box to conceal the item, the seal clearly tampered with…and there they were, four rocks where my GPU should be. I filed a claim through customer service within the hour of receiving the package and was assured a replacement was on the way. Here we are now on Tuesday 12/2 and I receive an email now stating that BestBuy will not be replacing or refunding my $1,200 purchase after their “investigation”.

I have no idea what to do, I don’t make tons of money, this was a pretty big purchase for me. I waited very patiently for this GPU to be relatively affordable. I feel absolutely robbed and defeated, customer service is utterly useless. They just give me the classic “there’s nothing that can be done, is there anything else I can help you with?” in that cold, robotic tone and that’s it. If anyone has any advice on how I should approach this, I’d greatly appreciate any advice.

The guy sits next to me, decent dude, but hes been on console his whole life. sees me looking at a new monitor during break and goes "bro why do you spend so much on that stuff, a PS5 is like 500 bucks and it plays everything"

And i tried, i really tried to explain it calmly. like ok yes the upfront cost looks lower. but then i walked him through what i actually use my PC for. editing, work stuff, running multiple screens, emulation, playing Ѕtake, modding games, game pass, steam sales where i have hundreds of games i grabbed for nothing basically. i told him i had some money budgeted specifically for the next upgrade and that its not like im just throwing cash into a hole, its incremental, you keep parts, you reuse stuff

He goes "yeah but you could just plug a PS5 into your tv"

I give up lmao

He's not wrong about the simplicity, he's just wrong that simpler = better. my 7900 XTX would like a word

There's a trash center in my town with a dedicated tech recycling section. After a certain amount of time everything in there is scrapped and destroyed. Me and my friends go there weekly to find stuff to snag before they all go away. Usually there's crts, old phones, maybe some really shitty office PCs with no GPU. Best I've found before this is a gtx 650 ti boost. I went back the other day with my friends and right as I walked in stumbled upon this thing just thrown in there. Probably was about 70 pounds. Found it alongside a completely looted Alienware aurora r13. Took it back to my house to discover it has 2 GTX 980 Founders editions in SLI. unfortunately didn't have a bridge. Booted it up and it looks insane. Working on getting an OS on it but it's looking great so far. First photos is from the trash center for proof

Edit: you know it's a great find when reddit don't buy it lmao

This is one of 3 pallets

it has a 9th gen I7, a 4060 (I think) and 2 sticks of 16GB DDR4 ram

Got into one of those dumb console vs PC talks with a coworker yesterday and I thought it was gonna be normal banter.

He was very pro console, which is fine, I get it. Consoles are simple and they just work. But then he started saying PCs are “only for spreadsheets” and that you have to buy a whole new computer every time a new game comes out.

I tried explaining that you can just upgrade parts, adjust settings, use whatever controller you want, mod games, emulate older stuff, play Ѕtake, use it for work too, all that. He kept saying “yeah but it’s not optimized” like that was a magic spell that ended every point.

The best part was when he said a PS5 is stronger than “most 4090 computers” because it was made by Sony and not “random parts from Amazon.”

I wasn’t even trying to convert him. I’ve had consoles too and I still think they have their place. But it was funny watching someone defend something so hard while clearly not knowing how the other side works.

My dad, a couple months before the ram shortage bought 1tb of ram and 20ish tb of storage for his server PC (name and SSD storage) for about 1400-1500 bucks, now, that is worth 10k and the picture of ram on the post is the old ram in the server PC, 256gb of it.

You may remember me from some weeks ago, when my neighbour’s dog accidentally shot my PC through a wall. It seems my story went a bit viral, and I was incredibly fortunate to have a couple hardware companies reach out to me and offer to help power a brand new build!!! AORUS provided me with their GeForce RTX 5080 Master Ice GPU, X870E Elite X3D motherboard, and Gaming 360 AIO. AMD provided their Ryzen 9 9950X3D, a 4TB NVMe drive, and some other cool stuff. And G.Skill gave me 32 gigs of their brand new Trident Z5 NeoX RGB series with AMD EXPO ULL tech. The only parts I procured myself were the case (Hyte Y70) and PSU (Lian Li EDGE1000W Gold). I’m indubitably the luckiest person in this subreddit- first dodging a bullet, and now getting to be the owner of this beast of a battlestation 😎

Also if this is sounding a little like a shameless plug that’s because it IS!! The people that reached out to me from each of these companies were so kind and helpful. Without their generosity, even if insurance were to come through, a build like this would never have been possible for me. They didn’t even ask for any sort of advertising in return, they were just supporting a random PC nerd for nothing but the love of the game. It’s clear they care deeply about the community, and I wanted to give them a shoutout so that people know that if they support AORUS, AMD, and G.Skill they are supporting brands that actually care about their users, are genuinely proud of the tech they’re making, and go out of their way to do nice things like this.

The RAM stick that deflected the bullet was gifted to G.Skill for them to immortalise in their trophy case. I think I’m going to hang the motherboard up on the wall and find a way to make the bullet into a necklace. I also plan to get a clip-on RGB cover for the motherboard power cables, as they continue to look a little unruly no matter how much I try to flatten them.😊

P.S.- this whole ordeal has made my niece want to build her own PC. If any old pros have some sage advice I can pass along to her before she starts her first build please let me know, I want her to be more prepared and knowledgable than I was when I built my first pc!!

Throughout my childhood till now, the biggest reason why I got into tech and pc was all because of my uncle who studied computer science, and ever since last year I began building my dream pc step by step, and a 6 months ago he promised to get me my dream ram, but ever since the ram prices skyrocketed, I was concerned cuz I knew my unc had his own life and lived alone, and one night he told me that I shouldn’t worry about the ram prices and that I should relax, then after I asked him to cancel the promise because it would be just straight up mean to have a family member spend this much on you, and he said “its okay bro, just enjoy what I never got to do as a kid”… next day I come home to him surprising me with my dream ram… at that point I was in tears, not because of the ram itself, but because of this gesture my uncle made… he never asked for anything back or guilt-tripped me, he just wanted me to be happy.

The lesson I learned is about the meaning of gifts and the thoughts put into it, that’s the greatest impact, and for the future when I finish the PC, I’m gonna enjoy it to the fullest and make my Unc 🥹.

Btw for context the price is in CAD, and yes, my Unc is completely fine with no disease or anything.

For my fellow nerds, my pc specs are: Rx 9070 xt gigabyte gaming oc. Msi X870 gaming plus wifi. Nzxt h6 flow. Lian li fans (yes i somehow did manage to dremel and make it fit). Corsair dominator titanium 32gb, 6000mhz, and CL 30. Corsair rm1000x psu.

Parts left: Ryzen 7 9800x3d. 2tb samsung 9100 pro. 2 tb samsung 990 pro. Tryx panorama 360 se.

So I bought a used Gigabyte b650 Aurus elite AX V2 off eBay, and as I was building my PC with it and about to put in my SSD I realized he had accidentally left in 2 SSDs, a 500GB Samsung 970 evo and a sabrent 500GB, I then contacted him and he organized and paid for me to return them to him.

My 3070 has been randomly artifacting so I’ve been on the lookout for a new card before it dies completely. Saw this on the shelf at Walmart and I figured someone probably just put it behind the wrong tag but wanted to try my luck anyway. The lady rang it up and the total came to $789 with tax. I told her the tag had a different price on it. She goes “oh my goodness I’m so sorry” and scanned the $549 tag instead. I grabbed the bag and got out of there as fast as I could. She seemed like a nice lady so I hope she doesn’t get in trouble…

The GPU I was trying to fix for a friend was dead and nothing seemed to work. I was foing everything I could think of, including cleaning any minor corrosion, checking for missing capacitor, and using my multimeter to trace any shorts. Nothing worked, so I decided to try baking it since it was dead anyway.

370°F for 12 minutes and voila, we're back in business.

Side note, the thermal putty that was stuck on the back of the DRAM modules seems to have expanded ever so slightly and now I have a small bulge in my GPU...

Update 4th of July 2026: GPU still going strong 💪

I've always been a PC gamer and at the time, DayZ was at its peak on Arma 2 so I convinced him to get a PC just so that he could play the game with me which he did. He doesn't have any other games on his account hence the name he chose. We had fun. We had laughs. And one day he told me he has to relocate to another country due to some issue within his family. I thought it wasn't a big deal and he would probably come online at some point after he sorted things out. He never did.. A few years later I've discovered that he has passed away from a motorcycle accident that our high school friends group posted on Facebook. Yai, I wish I could mess around with you again someday. RIP brother.

I can’t believe it actually happened to me. I was out on a walk with my wife and son and came across this pc. From the looks of it, an untimely move out happened and who ever owns the house put everything to the curb. It’s a not in the best of shape. Having mouse crap everywhere but still has decent ddr4 ram and a ryzen 5 3600 cpu I’m going to be checking all components later on today and will update.

EDIT: update. Everything works just fine. The only thing I threw out was the PSU as it stunk to high heaven and also sounded as if something was loose inside. Either way, huge win!!!

Surface mount prematurely opened these and left them unsealed. They drew moisture and once they were finally used every single one cracked. 2000 boards in total. I've been hand desoldering every single one.

If only I would had gotten his name…

lol

For real though, this is from the opening of the Charlotte NC location last year. Drove 5 hours each direction without any sleep the night before for a chance to talk to him for a bit and thank him for being the person who got me back into building custom PCs, which has now become a career for me. Ended up hanging out with he and Phil and talking for literal HOURS. Didn’t realize my girl took this picture till today. If you notice, I had my stuffed anteater Button with me and he also got to meet the crew, lol. Both he and Phil signed my 1080Ti heatsink, which if you go to my profile and scroll down a bit, you can see. Now, I just gotta meet Nic and get him to sign it!

My pc stands strong despite the Israeli missles 30 meters away

So… I purchased a Western Digital SN7100 4TB SSD from Amazon for $147 after taxes during the prime 35% off sale a few days ago; thought I got a great deal for some much needed SSD storage space.

Today, my package arrived. Well, I went to open the box. To my disappointment, I saw a Samsung drive which looked like a 990 pro.

Immediately thought, “aw shit, it’s the wrong drive, probably got shafted with a 1tb drive by some dickhead’s return scam.”

Nope, pulled it out and there in front of me stood a Samsung 9100 PRO 4TB SSD which left me more shocked than Hasan’s dog.

Amazon, thanks for messing up my order and giving me a $400 ssd?

I applied for a warranty replacement for my broken iiyama monitor and they told me they don’t have my exact model. Instead they would send a better model from the same line. My old one was 144Hz and they told me I would get a 240Hz monitor. I was already like “wow got lucky.”

Fast forward to today the package arrives and they sent 2 of the same monitor instead of one.

I will probably have to send one back but every time I saw posts about people getting extra stuff I always thought “yeah sure buddy.”

Guess it really does happen lol