This is an ASUS Zenith Extreme
A $550 X399 motherboard for AMD's thread Ripper CPU
it was returned to me from one of the writers
And I was informed that it no longer works.
Okay, well this is going to be on it's a pretty anticlimactic here
I fixed it!
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So what you observe just there was one of the many
Peculiarities
When it comes to bent pins in a modern LGA type CPU socket it can manifest in any
number of ways a failure to post altogether an
inability to detect memory inserted it into certain slots that one's actually very common
or the system can appear to be functioning
completely normally all cores detected all
128 gigs of ram
detected
The reason for this is that every CPU pin has a slightly different function some of them are wired
directly through traces on the motherboard
Which you can actually see there's tons of traces around a CPU socket to a contact point on a memory slot
Some of them serve redundant purposes like to act as a a ground pin while others
May have no functionality whatsoever like they might be reserved for a future CPU that might go into that socket with some
feature that might not ever get implemented
So that is why the symptoms of a bent CPU pin can be as obvious as the system
Not lighting up at all or as subtle as
Slightly less stability when you're heavily overclocked
So one way or another
We need to fix this pin
So no big deal Linus send it in to the manufacturer for repairs right? Wrong. First of all
Physical damage to the product is not covered by any motherboard manufacturer that I'm aware of and they all consider
Socket damage to be physical damage and number two is an out of warranty repair to a CPU socket can cost as much as
Three hundred and fifty dollars. That's what I got quoted when I wanted to repair a socket on an X99
EWS motherboard even though it was a $400 board
I'm not gonna run out and spend three hundred and fifty dollars
So that I can have a B stock board when it cost me fifty more dollars to just go buy a brand new one
So then with that in mind, what do you need to repair your own bent socket pins?
Really with a steady hand and a sewing needle you can probably do a pretty good job
But I've used everything from a pocket knife to a sim removal tool
To a thumbtack in order to bend back pins
and I've done it with all of those with success I even used the
pointy tweezers from an iFixit kit once
For today we're gonna be using these picks that I actually just found here in the workshop
Organization's beautiful right?
Offscreen: This is going to save us so much time in the future
Yeah!
It was super exciting and we're gonna be using these helping hands with a magnifying glass
Something that I also recently bought just in case someone bent a socket pin
and they did so one of the trickiest parts of any socket repair operation is
Figuring out where the bent pins are the best way to do that is to get down low
level with the socket so that
You can see whether it's straight across this way straight across that way or at a diagonal you
Can see the gaps between the rows of pins that's gonna make it easier for your eye to pick out any imperfections
For our case. We know exactly where it is, so we're going to get up above it now
We need to assess the damage so we're just gonna prod at it a little bit
And this one seems pretty obvious so you can see
There's an even row of pins here an even row of pins here and then here
There's a missing one now if this pin was broken off
We'd be in much rougher shape right now, but you can actually see that
It's not it's just bent down so we just got to find where it bent down to looks like
Looks like it's done right there wow that is
That is dug in pretty deep there. Now there is always a risk
When you're working on something like this
That you will accidentally bend some other pins in the process
As long as you're careful it shouldn't happen
Hmm this pick might not actually be fine enough for me here. I'm gonna go back to my trusty knife
I actually use the knife more often than
You'd probably think for this sort of thing so you want something that you can use to get under
The pin and pull it up there so you can see I've pulled it up off the bottom now
But it's not quite aligned
With the other pins so the chances of it making perfect contact with the pads on the bottom of the CPU
Is pretty low. Now that we've pried it up from the side the easiest way to attack it now is
to go at it from underneath
Head-on that way you can over bend it up a little bit
So you want to come under it this way now and over bend it up a bit because it's metal so
You can't just bend it to exactly where you want it
and then expect it to stay there okay, cool. That was exactly the desired result
There is we bent it up a little higher than we wanted and it settled right back in
Exactly where it's supposed to be so now we can check the alignment of the pins, and we see a nice little bright dot
Exactly where we expected perfectly aligned. Let's go test it
And we're back the system works
Very good Linus
you fixed a working motherboard ah
I have another trick for you up my sleeve.
This is a sacrificial board from a project we never did because someone
a different member of our writing staff didn't realize that this motherboard
Wasn't gonna fit into any standard cases
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna simulate
What would be a pretty common way to damage a CPU socket, whoops that one was actually accidental.
Dropping the CPU as you go to install
Oh, okay, yeah, we definitely hit one. Let's try again
Okay, I'm having a pretty hard time mangling the socket here. Oh now that?
That is a bent socket
let's try and fix it shall we
Something people might notice about the second round of repair here is that I'm not even necessarily gonna try and get it exactly
Perfect because what you're gonna realize is that the contact pads on the bottom of the CPU are actually
Reasonably big I mean, they're not huge. You still need to get pretty darn close
but if you are pretty close and
You remember too that when you put the CPU in it pushes down
into the
LGA the land grid array, then as long as you're good enough that once it gets pushed down a bit
It'll be in pretty much the right spot
Then you should be good enough
whoops
This guy over here is probably still a little bit too far out of alignment
Now you want to make sure that you don't bend them down and up and down and up too much
Because if you do that they lose their strength and can eventually break off
you can recover from that I have done it by straightening out the shape of the pin
As long as there's enough left to get to the contact point
but it's not a sure thing and I did end up with a board that I snapped off the top of the pad
and uhh
Was not able to resurrect
Another key thing to watch out for when you're looking for bent pins is that there are places where pins are missing intentionally
so it's always good to double check against a socket diagram like see this corner right here. There's no pin there
That's fine, or another perfect socket that you have on hand
Okay
Moment of truth time okay there we go
That beep is a good sign
and
CPU detected two gigs of memory, yeah, that's right
repaired motherboard
So that's pretty much it guys how to bring your motherboard back from the dead
assuming that there aren't other issues on it like blown capacitors or
fizzled out resistors and
Thanks for watching
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