I work for a very big Scottish company and recently my 6 year old HP Mini Tower Core i3 desktop died. The machine has worked well for the last 18 months.
I have three screens attached to it, and over the proceeding couple of days I had random moments where both screens would go off for a few seconds, especially during processor intensive tasks and come back on and the ATI drivers would crash I put it down to the fact there's only 6GB ram in the machine and a crap graphics card to the point where I have to rum two displays off the graphics card and one off the on-board.
However last Tuesday instead of going blank, both monitors went to sleep and didn't wake up. I reset the PC which powered up one of the screens and immediately blue screened. After that the machine doesn't boot, it just boots for a second and switches off, then back on, then back off round and around. It was notable the machine was very warm.
The graphics card was taken out by IT and that didn't help and everything apart from the power cord was took out and that didn't help either. IT took the components out and still couldn't get it to boot. Fault diagnosis has shown that the socket on the chipset on the motherboard had a physical dent below it and the pins were bent or not fully in. The motherboard is a write off.
Now work say there is no way in hell that that wasn't caused by some physical damage, but I haven't even opened the thing up. I assume it was probably physically damaged for a while and moving desk last week has knocked something out that was fragile but that doesn't help me, who they want to bill the cost of the machine for.
I would find a new place to work if they are treating you like that. A computer with an ATI GPU is very old and isn't worth anything. As for what happened to the computer? It would be a number of things. But again, it could of been ATI Drivers.. They were horrible back then.
Exactly what fusi0n said, find a better job! An i3 is a old cpu, so that computer was old to start with, how they feel that they can charge you for it... your best defense would be to go to the IT or HR department and tell them that "I never opened the computer, how can you blame me for it?" Point out that the computer is over 6 years old, in technology years you might say it is close to 10 to 12 years old (based on how fast tech changes), and if they are hell bent on charging you for it, give them 1 pound!
It is likely that it is quite illegal for your employer to garnish your wages, especially if a computer was accidentally damaged during a routine move. Contact Scotland's Fair Work Convention and they should be able to advise you further.
Fault diagnosis has shown that the socket on the chipset on the motherboard had a physical dent below it and the pins were bent or not fully in. The motherboard is a write off.
Assuming your description of events is accurate, there is no possible scenario where moving the computer would cause such damage at a PCB level.
"socket on the chipset on the motherboard had a physical dent below it and the pins were bent or not fully in"
A hammer, screwdriver or other heavy item has been used to bash the motherboard.
B) Somebody in I.T. made a serious error and they want to cover it up and re-direct the blame.
The only people who have been inside the case are IT.
They have "diagnosed" that the fault was on the motherboard (inside the case).
They are claiming that you did the damage inside the case.
You have not been inside the case.
Personally, I'd shrug that one off with "well, it doesn't matter what you believe, I know I've not been in there" and carry on with my job while finding a new one.
They have absolutely no legal grounds to take any reimbursement from your salary.
Wouldn't be too worried anyway. Even if they did somehow think they have grounds to deduct money from your salary for it, they can't bill you for a new system. They could only look to charge what the system was worth and what's a 6 year old i3 machine likely to be worth these days? Probably about £50 max. I find it surprising that a company could even be bothered to go to these lengths for such old and low value hardware.
With that said, I have received laptops from Dell where the thin metal mounting bracket was bent and the SSD not connected fully. Laptop worked fine for a while and all of a sudden had issues. I popped open the back case and saw the factory damage. Worked for a little until the laptop jared enough to unseat the SSD.