WEBVTT

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this is an ASUS zenith extreme

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a 550 dollar

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x399 motherboard for AMD's threadripper

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CPU it was returned to me from one of the writers

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and i was informed that it no longer

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works uh okay well this is going to be and it's pretty anticlimactic here

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i fixed it

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hp's new omen x lineup comes equipped with Intel's seventh generation core i7

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processors check them out at the link below

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so what you observed just there was one of the many

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peculiarities when it comes to bent pins

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in a modern lga type CPU socket it can

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manifest in any number of ways a failure

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to post altogether an inability to detect memory inserted into certain

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slots that one's actually very common or

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the system can appear to be functioning completely normally all cores detected

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all 128 gigs of RAM detected

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the reason for this is that every CPU pin

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has a slightly different function some of them are wired directly through

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traces on the motherboard which you can actually see there's tons of traces

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around a CPU socket to a contact point on a memory slot some of

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them serve redundant purposes like to

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act as a ground pin while others

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may have no functionality whatsoever like they might be reserved for a future

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CPU that might go into that socket with some

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feature that might not ever get implemented so that

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is why the symptoms of a bent CPU pin

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can be as obvious as the system

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not lighting up at all or as subtle as

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slightly less stability when you're heavily overclocked

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so one way or another

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we need to fix this pin so no big deal Linus send it into the

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manufacturer for repairs right wrong

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first of all physical damage to the product is not

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covered by any motherboard manufacturer that i'm aware of and they all consider

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socket damage to be physical damage and number two

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is an out of warranty repair to a CPU socket can cost as much as

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350 dollars that's what i got quoted

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when i wanted to repair a socket on an x99 ews motherboard even though it was a

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400 board i'm not going to run out and spend 350 dollars so that i can have a b

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stock board when it cost me 50 more dollars to just go buy a brand new one

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so then with that in mind what do you

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need to repair your own bent socket pins

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really with a steady hand and a sewing needle you can probably do a pretty good

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job but i've used everything from a pocket knife

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to a sim removal tool to a thumb tack in

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order to bend back pins and i've done it with all of those with success i even

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used the pointy tweezers from an ifixit kit once

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for today we're going to be using these picks that i actually just found here in

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the workshop organization's beautiful right you're gonna save us so much time

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in the future yeah it was super exciting and we're gonna be using these helping

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hands with a magnifying glass something that i also recently bought just in case

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someone bent a socket pin and they did so one of the trickiest parts of any

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socket repair operation is figuring out where the bent pins are the best way to

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do that is to get down low level with the socket

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so that you can see whether it's straight across this way straight across

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that way or at a diagonal you can see the gaps between the rows of pins that's

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going to make it easier for your eye to pick out any imperfections for our case

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we know exactly where it is so we're going to get up above it now we need to

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assess the damage so we're just going to prod at it a little bit and this one

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seems pretty obvious so you can see there's an even row of pins here and

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even row pins here and then here there's a missing one now if this pin was broken

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off we'd be in much rougher shape right now but you can actually see that it's

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not it's just bent down so we just got to find

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where it bent down to looks like uh

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looks like it's down right there wow that is

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that is dug in pretty deep there now there is always a risk

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when you're working on something like this

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that you will accidentally bend some other pins in the process

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as long as you're careful it shouldn't happen

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this pick might not actually be fine enough for me here i'm gonna go back to

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my trusty knife i actually use the knife more often than

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you'd probably think for this sort of thing so you want something that you can use

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to get under the pin to pull it up there so you can

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see i've pulled it up off the bottom now but

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it's not quite aligned with the other pins so the chances of it

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making perfect contact with the pads on the bottom of the CPU is pretty low now

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that we've pried it up from the side the easiest way to attack it now is to go at

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it from underneath head on that way you

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can over bend it up a little bit so you want to come under it this way now

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and over bend it up a bit because it's metal so

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you can't just bend it to exactly where you want it

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and then expect it to stay there okay cool that was exactly the desired result

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there is we bent it up a little higher than we wanted and it settled right back

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in exactly where it's supposed to be so now we can check the alignment of the

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pins and we see a nice little bright dot

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exactly where we expected perfectly aligned

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let's go test it and we're back the system works

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very good Linus you fixed a working motherboard ah

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i have another trick for you up my sleeve this

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is a sacrificial board from a project we never did because someone

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a different member of our writing staff didn't realize that this motherboard

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wasn't going to fit into any standard cases

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so what we're going to do is we're going to simulate what would be a pretty common way to

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damage a CPU socket oops that one was

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actually accidental dropping the CPU as you go to install

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oh okay yeah we definitely hit one let's try again

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okay i'm having a pretty hard time uh mangling the socket here

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now that that is a bent socket

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let's try and fix it shall we something people might notice about this

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second round of repair here is that i'm not even necessarily going

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to try and get it exactly perfect because what you're going to realize

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is that the contact pads on the bottom of the CPU are actually reasonably big i

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mean they're not huge you still need to get pretty darn close

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but if you are pretty close

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and you remember too that when you put the CPU in it pushes down

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into the lga the land grid array then as long as

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you're good enough that once it gets pushed down a bit it'll be in pretty much the

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right spot then you should be good enough

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whoops this guy over here is probably still a

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little bit too far out of alignment

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now you want to make sure that you don't bend them down and up and down and up

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too much because if you do that they lose their

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strength and can eventually break off you can recover from that i have done it

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by straightening out the shape of the pin

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as long as there's enough left to get to the contact point

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but it's not a sure thing and i did end up with a board that

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i snapped off the top of the pad and uh

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was not able to resurrect another key thing to watch out for when you're

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looking for bent pins is that there are places where pins are missing

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intentionally so it's always good to double check against a socket diagram

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like see this corner right here there's no pin there that's fine

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or another perfect socket that you have on hand

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okay moment of truth time

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okay there we go that beep is a good sign

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and CPU detected two gigs of memory

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yeah that's right repaired motherboard

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so that's pretty much it guys how to bring your motherboard back from the

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dead assuming that there aren't other issues on it like blown capacitors or

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fizzled out resistors and

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thanks for watching now let's say for a minute you make your

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money doing like small-time computer repair like this for

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tech tips and entering Linus tech tips in the how you heard about us section

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so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit the like

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button get subscribed maybe consider checking out where to buy that motherboards at the link in the video

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also down there we have a link to our merch store which has cool shirts like this one as well as our community forum

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