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Got my new PC yesterday, of course in parts. I was applying thermal paste on the CPU while in the socket, but it didn't work quite well so I took the CPU out of the socket and continued... ready to put the CPU back on I noticed that some thermal paste (thankfully in very small quantity) got on the socket. A few Q-tips and several minutes later the socket was clean, but I managed to bend several pins. A magnifier and a full hour later trying to bend the pins back to position with a needle the socket looked "okay" from a distance. When looking closely one can see some pins which are not in exact position as the other ones, but still look good. No shorts, I triple checked that. Put the CPU back on and installed the heat sink, after putting everything together I tested the setup and the PC didn't boot. The attempt failed so I just continued bending the pins till they looked good. Second attempt and the PC booted up fine. The motherboard recognized the CPU properly and there were no problems overclocking, et cetera. CPU temperature is fairly good, didn't notice anything unusual. Is the motherboard good now?

A few questions, hoping for answers from experts:
1) Will the PC boot if even one pin on the socket is shorted?
2) What if one pin is bent so that the CPU doesn't make contact, can the CPU still boot and seem to work?
3) If either 1 or 2 is possible, what risk is there that my hardware (motherboard or CPU) will get damaged?
4) If 3 is possible, can it happen that my hardware does a silent dead without showing any symptoms?
5) Is there a utility with that I can test whether the CPU has 100% correct contact with the pins on the socket?
6) Has this happened to anyone else on the forum? If yes, what did you do and how did it turn out?
7) Should I calm down and believe all is good? Do OEM system builders make the same mistake? What do they do?
Should the motherboard or CPU make a silent death, am I eligible for doing an RMA? I have an ASUS motherboard.

Thank you VERY much!

talisman wrote: 7) Should I calm down and believe all is good? Do OEM system builders make the same mistake? What do they do?

If it works then don't worry, I don't think the CPU will kill the computer even if it has problems.

I wouldn't worry about it, I mean motherboards have so many safety protocols to adhere to, that if there was a problem you'd most likely know about it already. If any of the pins are no good, then it should be stopping the PC from working or in the very least telling you there's an issue. If your not getting any warnings, beepings, or burning smells then I'd say your in the clear.


This sort of thing used to happen all the time, with older heatsink clips - it used to be fairly easy to break stuff when fitting it, especially on smaller motherboards. The worst issue like this I've had recently was an external USB drive, with a PS2 style power lead, skinny little pins on them. I took a day off and someone plugged it in the wrong way, bending 2 of the pins and snapping 1 of them! - it's fiddly but you can get them straight again, not much that can be done when they snap though . Luckily we had a spare PSU for it, as it was actually a replacement for a drive that my old boss dropped on his head one day (no joke, just a heavy steel cased USB drive straight to the top of the head!).

Hi
It means that you have been lucky. Only if the pins are slightly bended you can bend them straight again, otherwise they will break because of the alloy they are made off. You can check your uP in the bios. Boot your pc and look for something that says pc health or similar. Besides the temperature of the uP that should be around 60 - 65 dgr Celsius, you will also see the working voltages of the uP, check the values against the defaults e.g. in the motherboard manual.
Intel also sells the LGA 775 which has no pins at all avoiding such problems.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ins-master

Here is good tool to diagnose the uP and motherboard when windows is running,

http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Greetings
cw

vanbeck wrote:I wouldn't worry about it, I mean motherboards have so many safety protocols to adhere to, that if there was a problem you'd most likely know about it already.

Thank you much for pointing this out. It really made me feel comfortable again. It is true in complicated electronics there are many security measurements done that I simply must be one lucky bastard, there can be no way the PC would be working if a pin is shorted or not connected. Phew!

Being an "overclocking artist" I triple checked both temperatures and voltages. Everything is fine. I hope it stays so, because this new PC is just too damn smoking to put it aside for yet another week... and now back to folding!

Happened to me once, except i had one pin that broke after using the thing for about six weeks, just gave up I guess as a result of too much much stress when i bent them back. Took me forever to realize what the problem was because it was intermittant. One day I pulled the whole thing apart again, being fed up with trying to pin it down, and lo and behold this little piece of shiny something fell to the board, upon examination I found it to be half of the pin.

How can I find out what motherboard I have and how many watts of power it can handle? Got a new graphics card, went to install it, realized that my power supply wasn't enough, ordered a new power supply. Going from 350 to 450. Then my buddy told me it would be possible to blow my motherboard if I put too much power to it. So how can I find what the limits of my motherboard are?
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How can I find out what motherboard I have

Open your case, the name and model number should be silk screen printed on it somewhere. (You might need a good torch)

and how many watts of power it can handle?

Try the motherboard manual. if you don't have a printed one, go to the manufacturer's website and download it.

Got a new graphics card, went to install it, realized that my power supply wasn't enough, ordered a new power supply.

Happens a lot with the newer cards, they really love to draw a lot of power.

Then my buddy told me it would be possible to blow my motherboard if I put too much power to it.

A 450 watt power supply has 450 watts available to draw from, the motherboard will draw only what it needs at the time. 450 watts won't suddenly go coursing through it at once unless the motherboards actually needs that much (and I seriously doubt it!!!!!) or a disastrous short circuit has occurred.

Another thing to consider is that a nice, fat power supply is usually a good idea as there are other components all drawing their own power. Hard drives, floppy drives, tape drives, power hungry graphic cards with their own power inputs, USB devices and lots of other devices.

Try this site below to help you calculate how much power you may need. After you have found out what components you have of course.

http://www.pcpower.com/technology/power_usage/
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

This post is very old. Strange that it
came back on top of the list.

Politicians... moviestars... it happens all the time...

I once set a motherboard on fire from a ram chip that wasn't inserted properly. I failed to see any of these "safety protocols" you speak of.