Damaged Pins

marcus2704 · 29 Jul 2016 at 09:16

I appear to have bent about 5-6 pins on the CPU socket of my motherboard. I have tried to correct them, but being so microscopic and also at a 45 degree angle, its difficult to say the least. I have however been able to boot the PC back into windows, and initially all would appear to be OK. Are the chances of the mobo being stable in my favour given that it all boots etc, or is it likely to cause issues that I should just replace the motherboard?

darket · 29 Jul 2016 at 10:48

Start testing , run some benchmarks, test cpu , gpu storage and memory, if everything checks out ok then its unlikely to ever cause you problems.

Can i ask , how did you bend the pins ?

marcus2704 · 29 Jul 2016 at 14:36

I must have knocked it when I was removing the cooler, just not careful enough I guess :/

kaku · 29 Jul 2016 at 15:47

Check that the amount of installed RAM is shown correctly; that's something that can get messed up with bent pins even when it appears to be running correctly.

darket · 29 Jul 2016 at 16:08

marcus2704 said:
I must have knocked it when I was removing the cooler, just not careful enough I guess :/

Surly the cpu was still in the socket, dont get me wrong , im not implying you were careless its just you hear many instances of damaged sockets yet no one explains why and how.

Efour · 31 Jul 2016 at 23:53

kaku said:
Check that the amount of installed RAM is shown correctly; that's something that can get messed up with bent pins even when it appears to be running correctly.

This for truth. I wrecked a row of pins and it took out the memory controller only showing 8gb instead of 16gb.

After some tense bending from the gf's smaller and steadier hands all was restored.

Gerard · 1 Aug 2016 at 21:06

Surprised they still need pins, iirc hbm modules are connected to the silicon by a series of bumps that fit into grooves. You'd think cpu's could do something similar so damaging the connection point is less likely.

PiKe · 1 Aug 2016 at 21:12

I dropped a cpu on a socket when installing it and bent a few pins, straightened them up best I could and as far as I know, it's been fine ever since.