there's something in my CPU socket, but it can only been seen on an angle, is it okay?

jamesisninja · July 23, 2014

So, I recently went from a Z87 to Z97 Mobo in preb for Broadwell, and I want to give my old Z87 Mobo to a friend, but while I was looking the board over, I noticed there seemed to be flakes of (maybe?) thermal paste that got into the socket, maybe flaked off when taking the CPU out, or removing the cooler, or something, but I've tried compressed air, and 99% Isopropyl alcohol to try and remove it, but it is still there. There are some pictures, I'm not sure if it will cause contact issues or not, the tops of the pins seem fine, and they aren't bent. AS you can see from the first picture, from the top down it looks totally fine. It's just once your see pictures on an angle it looks like there's gunk in there. What do you guys think? Will it work maybe? Is there a risk on trying it? I've circled the problem area in all the pictures.

TOP DOWN (SEEMS FINE TO ME)

PROBLEM

AMICLG · July 23, 2014

It just looks like a bit of thermal paste, try using a needle and carefully remove it from the socket.

Syntaxvgm · July 23, 2014

It's not conductive if it's thermal paste, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. As long as the pins tops themselves are clean enough to make contact, I wouldn't risk bending pins to clean it.

jamesisninja · July 23, 2014

It's not conductive if it's thermal paste, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. As long as the pins tops themselves are clean enough to make contact, I wouldn't risk bending pins to clean it.

I was kinda thinking the same thing, if isopropyl didnt disolve it away, I figured we'd just try it when we do my friends build, and worse comes to worse, he has to buy his own motherboard.