Bent pins on Ryzen CPU

TsarMaxim · November 5, 2019

I was replacing the stock paste on my Ryzen 5 3600X with something better. I unscrewed the Wraith Spire and pulled it out, but the CPU was completely glued to the cooler by thermal paste, and when I removed the cooler, the CPU came out of the socket with it, without me raising the retention arm. I had to use a hair dryer to liquify the thermal paste so I could remove the CPU from the cooler. I cleaned off the old paste and applied the new paste. I then installed the CPU back into the socket, but the corner with the triangle would not go in. I noticed some of the pins were bent. I bent the pins back with tweezers from my iFixit kit. The CPU went in normally. But when I powered the system on, the speaker beeped quietly three times, and the debug LEDs for RAM and CPU lit up on my MSI B450M Bazooka V2. I tried turning it on multiple times, but the result was the same. I unplugged the CPU power cable, then tried again to see if the CPU was even making a difference. This time, only the CPU LED lit up, meaning the CPU was making a difference because the RAM LED did not light up. I removed the CPU from the socket and tried bending the pins back into position again. I noticed the CPU was permanently damaged this time because installation into the socket required a little bit of force. But now, it's working just as it was before, and I'm typing this right now using that CPU. None of the LEDs lit up, and all of the memory is detected and working at the proper speed, 3000 MHz with XMP enabled. The only thing that changed is the CPU now requires force to install. (I removed it from the socket and installed it multiple times, and the pins did not appear to be bent, but I had to push down a little while installing it again.) I am not sure if the CPU is damaged, or the socket on the motherboard. Is there anything I should do to make sure everything is fine? Everything is working right now.

dizmo · November 5, 2019

Just leave it. If you pull it back out there's a chance the pin will break, or get stuck in the socket. You basically now have a PC I wouldn't attempt to upgrade.

TsarMaxim · November 5, 2019

10 hours ago, dizmo said:

Just leave it. If you pull it back out there's a chance the pin will break, or get stuck in the socket. You basically now have a PC I wouldn't attempt to upgrade.

Thank you for your reply. I guess I will use a hair dryer if I have to uninstall this CPU. My question is are there any troubleshooting steps I can take to make sure everything is working properly? I remember Linus saying in a video that if a pin is damaged, a certain PCIe lane or memory channel might not work, etc. Or, if the pin is unused, it will not do anything, but it could be used for something in a future BIOS update. Is there any way I can check?

dizmo · November 5, 2019

1 hour ago, TsarMaxim said:

Thank you for your reply. I guess I will use a hair dryer if I have to uninstall this CPU. My question is are there any troubleshooting steps I can take to make sure everything is working properly? I remember Linus saying in a video that if a pin is damaged, a certain PCIe lane or memory channel might not work, etc. Or, if the pin is unused, it will not do anything, but it could be used for something in a future BIOS update. Is there any way I can check?

If it's working fine now why would you remove it?