When motherboard cleanups go bad

[AlfBaz]

I've finally scored a room to set up my crusty old gear in. Most of it has been in storage and needed dismantling and cleaning. Thought Id give my PC a good clean to since the internals were very dusty.

The CPU fan and heat sink were fairly dirty so I removed them only to find more dust on the cpu and its clamp, so I unclipped it, removed the cpu, cleaned every thing and put it back together.

It wasn't until the next day that I powered it up only to find the thing rebooting a number of times before finally starting windows.
The reboots were actually power down cycles occurring just after the post screen. No series of warning beeps no problems detected in windows and the bios didn't seem to indicated anything either.

A closer look revealed only half of the installed memory showing up. I've only got 2 mem modules with six slots. When I originally built the thing I remembered there were only certain slots you could use. I had removed them during the clean up but was sure I had placed them back as I found them.

After consulting the manual I found they were in the correct slots. It also said that if you only had one mem module either one of these slots could be used. After trying various combinations I found that both modules were OK but slot 2 was U/S.

Pulled the motherboard out and stripped it, began a visual under magnification, checking contacts on the slot in question, flipping it over and closely examining solder joints... nothing.

Turning my attention the cpu socket I noticed one of the fingers slightly out of line with the rest of them. It looked as though it would short with its neighbour with the cpu installed. With the finest tweezers I had I gently bent it back into place, reassembled it all and it worked! 

It was at that stage I remembered the cpu slipping from my hands and onto the pins edge first from a height of no more than 10mm. I looked closely at the pins and they looked ok with the naked eye but clearly not

Attached are some pics. The socket, a close up and the pad side of the cpu

[jaycee]

LGA is such an awful idea for non-test sockets.

[Corporate666]

Ok, it's driving me nuts.... which one was bent?  I can't find it in the picture and I am going cross-eyed looking for it! 

Put us out of our misery 


Agree about LGA... I just built a new computer and I was pretty shocked that a socket that was seemingly so delicate would be used for the average person who has littler experience with such delicacy.

Who makes these decisions?  Does Intel develop the socket types and dictate to the motherboard manufacturers what they will be?  Or are all these different sockets part of some type of international standards organization?  It seems like just about every new type of chip has a whole new socket mechanism.  Why so many?  Why do they keep changing them?

[andersm]

LGA does make a kind of sense as the CPU often costs a lot more than the motherboard. Maybe there were some technical reasons behind the switch as well, Wikipedia suggests it allows for much higher pin densities than PGA.

[c4757p]

Ok, it's driving me nuts.... which one was bent?  I can't find it in the picture and I am going cross-eyed looking for it! 

Put us out of our misery 

Fifth column left, third row down, from the upper left corner of the center hole of the socket, if I'm not mistaken.

It's actually pretty obvious in the thumbnail - the perfectly aligned pins create a consistent distribution of lightness that's disrupted by the bent pin, giving a dark spot. Verified by zooming in an holding a straight edge to the screen.

[Alana]

I had this situation once - many bent pins by friend's little sister. Motherboard works but i had to had some "fun" with it.

And my funniest motherboard cleanup? Once i spilled some coca cola so that it went into my PC. I ended up with mechanically blocked PCI-e.
Motherboard went to my bathtub with lots of hot water and some detergent and soaked there for a while. Then few hours drying it with hot air. Worked for year after that for me and from what i heard it still works in that bloke PC.

[AlfBaz]

Sorry people, photo's were taken after the fix, although I have to say C4757p has pointed out nearly, if not, the exact pin

[c4757p]

It's only out by half a bee's dick (thanks for another colorful phrase, Dave!), so I'm not surprised. I was a bit shocked that it didn't work like that. But it's definitely bent - if you put a straight-edge under the row, it obscures that pin. I'm pretty certain that's the only bent one there.

[Corporate666]

It's only out by half a bee's dick (thanks for another colorful phrase, Dave!), so I'm not surprised. I was a bit shocked that it didn't work like that. But it's definitely bent - if you put a straight-edge under the row, it obscures that pin. I'm pretty certain that's the only bent one there.

You win the "go the extra mile" award for the day, for putting a straight edge on your monitor to find out which it was 

And you're right, when you look at the thumbnail, it does become clearer!  Good catch.

As an aside, when I was comparison shopping on Newegg for my new mobo w/LGA1154 (or whatever it is) socket, I noticed most of the manufacturers had numerous complaints about bent pins... probably 1 in 10 problems was bent pins on the socket.  I'm amazed Intel went that route for a consumer product.

[c4757p]

You win the "go the extra mile" award for the day, for putting a straight edge on your monitor to find out which it was 

You have an image in your head of some nerd with a pocket protector putting a ruler up to his monitor and looking at it closely with the right tongue angle, most likely. I know I do. Reality was closer to a dude who was messing around with a random clothes-pin out of boredom, putting that up against his monitor in between farting, herp derping around on the Internet and squinting at a picture of bent pins for shits and giggles.