Intel i7 975x Porked?

[TheBlob]

I can't afford the cost of a new system or major upgrade so I thought I'd change out my i7 950 for a i7 975X and get a higher overclock. Problem is I managed to get a tiny bit of Artic Silver on the business side of the CPU.
Cleaned it off as best I could but was too scared to try it on my motherboard. It landed on the area with all the tiny gold dots not on the central area of the CPU.

Are all the dots transistors if so I'm scared it will cause a short and fry everything.

Can anyone advise.
Thanks

 

[Tetras]

It certainly won't do any damage when you haven't tried it

 

[Finners]

If you can clean it off with some proper cleaner or ipa alcohol it will be fine

 

[TheBlob]

I cleaned it with Arctic cleaner thermal paste remover then used the Arctic purifier. Can't really see anything on it now but I'm afraid there's still some there undetectable to my eye. That's why I was trying to find out what all the little dots are. Are they transistors?

 

[Dg834man]

No not transistors they are to connect the cpu to the motherboard, why bother with a 975 should have got a 6 core xeon if your motherboard will play nicely with one

 

[Joxeon]

I can't afford the cost of a new system or major upgrade

How much was the 975?

 

[ChrisLX200]

de-coupling caps mostly..

 

[Dave Burton]

As long as you've cleaned it off with Isoproanol alcohol and a toothbrush it should be totally fine. Make sure you rinse/brush/rinse/brush a few times till the alcohol runs clear then let it dry, i do this day in and day out at work

 

[humbug]

As everyone else said as long as its cleaned off it will be fine

 

[TheBlob]

How much was the 975?

A wee bit more than the cost of a 6 core xeon. I'm a noob at O.C.ing so thought the 975X would be my best bet.

 

[Joxeon]

A wee bit more than the cost of a 6 core xeon. I'm a noob at O.C.ing so thought the 975X would be my best bet.

If your just going for 4ghz then its really easy to just dial in settings and you cant really go wrong, when trying to push 4.2+ thats when things start to get a little more tricky and need a bit more fine tuning.