I accidentally inserted RAM while PC was booting up! Worst case scenario?

Question

I'm afraid I have made a grave mistake. I was just finishing up my new PC build with some pretty pricey components when I had made a simple, yet gut-wrenching mistake. I was under the presumption that the PC was off, but alas; it was doing a reboot. I know I should've unplugged everything but I learned a great lesson that patience goes a very long way when dealing with hardware...

Anyway, while the PC was booting (no OS, just BIOS) I had reseated the RAM and inserted right as everything turned on (lights, fans etc.). I panicked and quickly unplugged the power a second after I had realized my mistake.

I'm a bit paranoid in nature so I took out the RAM, replugged it to see if it worked (as in, I had booted into the BIOS again to see if both of my ram sticks were detected in the same slots); it did indeed.

I then proceeded to sniff the entire computer to see if I had fried anything; it doesn't seem to appear so visually at a glance and I didn't see or smell any smoke. It just smells like electronics.

I thought the worst and thought I fried my new CPU that I didn't even get to use, I took out the cooler, rubbed off the thermal paste and inspected the top and the pins. I didn't smell or see anything out of the ordinary.

I inspected the GPU next, but that seemed fine too. Booting the PC seems normal, but my pessimistic mind keeps thinking I did irreversible invisible damage and the only reason I'm not seeing it now is because the hardware is new (except for the GPU).

My (relevant) specs are:

• Ryzen 9 5900X (new)
• MSI GTX 1070 Ti (5 years old, but only used for a little bit after 5 years)
• 600W EVGA PSU (5 years old but completely unused and practically new usage wise but it is technically old)
• (8x2)GB SP RAM (new)
• MSI B550 Tomahawk Motherboard (new)

How do I know if something messed up? Would I have to wait until I do a real OS install before I can really know?

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UPDATE: 10/6/2022

Ran (memtest86) on my system (twice just for reassurance), it came out with a pass on all the tests and my system is working as expected :). Again many thanks. I figured I would put this note here to let others know in the future what was the outcome and figure how it can apply to their situation(s).

Also ran the PassMark PerformanceTest that showed the CPU running on par with the average score, actually scoring higher; but that's probably because I went overkill with my cooling setup and I live in New England so it's nice and chilly.

UPDATE: 10/11/2022

Again, future paranoid viewers: The only real issue I saw before and after was that one of my HDDs starting throwing errors that it hadn't even done before. It was already old but after this entire hassle S.M.A.R.T had noted it was writing more read and write errors. Most likely bad timing but it may be possible that could've taken some sort of damaged. This is a heavily used HDD from 2014 however. And it was plugged into the SATA port when this had occured of course. All 3 other HDDs are completely fine.

Answer 1

I'd have just taken a deep breath… and booted it again to see if it worked. You kind of skipped the simplest test & ran for the full paranoia.

If something's fried you find out right away. If it's weakened… you find out eventually. No test will indicate a shortened life that wasn't immediately terminal.

Answer 2

You're fine. And lucky.

If something had gotten damaged, it would not get past the BIOS. If things would've broken, it would either be the RAM chip itself or the motherboard.

Both will cause error beeps or no proper booting past the BIOS screen, so the fact that you already got there means nothing serious happened.

Answer 3

There isn't any guarantee that your RAM is fine at this point simply because it's booting.

Burn a CD or USB of memtest, boot your computer off of it and run it overnight. If there aren't any errors, you're probably fine (for the moment). Long-term damage that isn't visible in the first instance can sometimes occur with this scenario. If you check it again in six months and it's still fine, you're good to go.

Besides that, I hope you grounded yourself by keeping one hand on the metal part of the case while touching the RAM, or that you used an anti-static wristband attached to the metal part of the case.

Answer 4

Stop worrying.

If you'd fried something, you'd know about it. The damage from plugging something in whilst the system is powered generally comes from a short when the wrong pins make contact, this isn't something that is going to "weaken" components. It'll totally fry them if it happens.

If your components are good quality, it's unlikely they'd be damaged from being plugged in while the system was powered anyway. This is especially true for RAM because it's pretty hard to short something as it's going into a keyed slot, so everything physically has to align.

Answer 5

The worst case scenario for you isn't that the RAM fails completely, but that it has become unreliable. Failed RAM is easy to see and fix. Unreliable RAM will seem to work, possibly for months, and then give you random inexplicable errors. This has sometimes been known to happen if you don't properly ground yourself before touching chips.

Also, there is the possibility that the other side of the RAM connector (i.e., the motherboard) could have been damaged.

I'm not saying anything about how likely either scenario is.

I second the recommendation from others: run a burn-in test using memtest86+. Given the scenario, I would run this test for longer than normal, possibly as much as a week or longer. I had one system that had obvious, but rare, symptoms of memory failure, and memtest86+ basically never saw the error even if run for a week. I might have needed it to run even longer.

Another aspect to consider, although that is unlikely in your scenario because you never accessed the hard disk. I had one system with memory failure. Even after replacing the memory, the system would crash during operating system install; the faulty memory had caused the SSD to get corrupted. Wiping the SSD from the BIOS solved that problem.

Finally, one more thing I noticed. You said that your PSU has been sitting on the shelf, unused, for five years. Five years is not all that old, but do keep in mind that some components, capacitors in particular, do age with or without usage.

Answer 6

You would have needed to SERIOUSLY fry something, for you to actually be able to smell it. Trust me, I fried many boards in my younger days, and never did they actually smell any different. But I stopped building boards; I just had no good need that was worth the risk, and unlike some people, I got no particular joy out of it. If it still boots fine, and everything else seems good, including the new RAM, you're probably ok. You can still run some tests as others have mentioned; that's probably a good idea on any new build. Once the basics checkout, you can find a stress/bench test to really see how well you did.