• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Scary Stuff!!!

I read about this a few days back, I still haven't checked my MSI 65 to see what socket I've got. The big concern over this for me is actually I don't believe this will only effect big overclocked CPU's, I think that it's going to effect all CPU's clocked or not. I think it will just take a much longer to start seeing failures of standard clocked CPU's. The failure mechanism we are seeing in the articles at the moment are mainly due to high currents across poor (resistive) contacts causing localised heating of the copper. However, I think long term the failures will be a result of an effect between electrical contacts called fretting. Any dry contact can suffer fretting but the effects are greatly accelerated under insufficient contact load (force between the CPU pad and the socket pin). The relatively high currents on the supply pins of the CPU even under normal clocks also will play a part, but my (educated??) guess is all these sockets will damage your CPU, but it may take a year or more before you see it.
 
I'll have to find out what fretting is before I can comment on that part. However localised heating is only a significant issue if the heat cant get away from the pins, some heating at the contacts it normal and expected. The issue here is that at very high currents the heating is destructive, at low currents it may very well never cause any harm, since the heat moves away fast enough that oxidation never gets a chance. I wouldn't like to guess at lifespan vs voltage though.

Fretting is a mechanical issue, what source of motion are you concerned about? I can't see vibration being an issue as the chip is rather firmly clamped down, so presumably expansion/contraction with temperature as it cycles on/off idle/load? I think I agree with you here, dodgy contact combined with the pads scraping across each other as the surfaces get hot/cold is not a desirable thing. Again, I wouldn't want to estimate the lifespan decrease.

I think, were I to own one of these boards, I'd be really annoyed at foxconn but not justifiably so. It's unlikely to kill anything within warranty period, and there are enough modes of failure for electronics anyway that adding another isn't that big a deal. Just don't run them under phase 24/7. I wonder how many similar faults have been present over the years that we just haven't found out about.
 
Last edited:
Foxconn socket here too on my gigabyte P55M-UD4.

Haven't took the cpu out since installation to check for pin contact but will be annoyed if anything goes wrong down the road.

Have overclockers commented on this issue?
 
To be honest that looks like damage caused by bad handling or incorrect installation.

The pins in the socket are bent over and that one damaged pad looks like more than just burnt out.

Be careful with your chip and you will be fine.
 
it only affects the socket if your overclocking to the max of the chip, and under sub zero temps (only why to get it so high)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom