Week 3

Thankfully out of all the computers I’ve built, I’ve only had an issue with one of the CPU sockets causing an issue that didn’t allow it to boot. This was on the i7-4790k system I mentioned in last week’s blog post. I don’t recall exactly what prompted me to remove the CPU from the motherboard socket since I didn’t have a replacement CPU on hand, or even one in mind, but once the CPU was out of the socket, something (likely me being an idiot and dropping something) caused 1-3 of the motherboard pins to bend.

My heart sank and I immediately began researching if it would be safe to boot and what I may be able to do to fix it. I eventually determined that the PC was already FUBAR, so I decided to put the CPU in the socket and try booting it since I could have gotten lucky and had those pins be ground pins. I don’t recall the specifics of what happened, but I can tell you it was not a successful boot, but at least there was no magic smoke released.

Queue me taking the CPU out again and grabbing a magnifying glass (before the days of incredible Zoom lenses on cell phone cameras) and a utility knife, needle, and anything else small enough to ‘perform surgery’ on the motherboard’s CPU socket. After about 4 attempts of every so gently prying the bent pins back in place and attempting to boot the PC again to no effect, I finally got the pins bent enough and in the proper places that the operation was a success. Since I sold that computer to a buddy of mine in High School, I can’t speak to its status today, but to my knowledge it’s still working just fine.

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