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$500! How am I supposed to build a PC on a budget? When the part you plug the actual

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good stuff in, the flipping motherboard costs as much as my entire first computer. Wait,

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I've got one idea. You see, the motherboard is one of the easiest parts to accidentally

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break when you're building a PC, meaning many people have broken them. And eBay is flooded

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with cheap, broken boards that are just begging, like, please fix me. But can they be fixed?

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To find out, we bought one. Then we bought another one. Then we bought six more. Oh my

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goodness! And the best part is, as far as we can tell, fixing most of these motherboards

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should be an easy path to savings. You did not tell me that today was going to be this

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challenging. Let's gooooo! And the top snapped off. Just like this easy segue to our sponsor.

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In the old days, the most delicate part of a computer was the little pins on the bottom

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of the CPU. If you so much as looked at those things sideways, they could end up sideways.

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The good thing about CPU pins, though, was that they were relatively easy to repair and

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in fact, we've done a couple videos in the past on how you can fix everything from broken

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to outright removed ones. Unfortunately, that's not going to help you that much if you have

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a modern system because both AMD and Intel have moved the pins from the CPU, where they're

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their liability, to the motherboard, where they are someone else's liability. And in

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the process, they've made them even more fragile. You so much as get a little bit of hair caught

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on one of these and pull it with the force of a mosquito's wings taking off and your

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motherboard goes from wicked fast gaming to wicked brick. And there's all kinds of ways

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that this can accidentally happen. Leave your motherboard sitting out without the little

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plastic socket cover. You're probably going to end up with a bent pin. See a little bit

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of dust in there and go to pick it out. You guessed it, bent pin. I've personally bent

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pins on a number of occasions. Yep, me too. Do we have that one on camera when you dropped

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the CPU in the socket as you were trying to put it in? No, that one wasn't repairable.

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Anyway, I've also bent them back many times and ended up with a perfectly working motherboard.

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The question then is, can I apply those skills to a socket that was bent by somebody else?

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Starting with this ASRock Z690 Xtreme Wi-Fi 6E. You're actually going to notice there's

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going to be a pattern in the boards we're trying to fix. We mostly tried to target higher

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end ones because those are the ones that are the most worth putting in our time in order

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to fix. The story for this guy is that he's a customer return that was untested and untested

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is actually a good thing in this case. Even though we can't necessarily believe that because

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eBay sellers can lie, if it is truly untested, that means that no one else has taken a crack

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at it, potentially causing further damage. It also means that there's a better chance

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that it can be repaired because if someone already tried and is still dead, well, let's

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see what wasn't worth them bothering to test. Oh, well, there's something. Those two pins

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look bent, but very fixable. But the one I'm actually more worried about is this spot

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right here. That looks like it could be a missing or broken off pin outright. And those

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are a lot harder to deal with without specialty tools. Oh, look at that. You can barely even

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tell now. Dude, Alex, find me the pins that were bent. Oh, we missed it. All right. Well,

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they were there. You saw them in the probe lens. Now they're not there. That's not the

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one that I was most worried about though. The one I'm most worried about is the one

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that looks more like it's missing in this corner. I can't even see it. I might need

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a bit of a different angle here. Oh, there it is. Oh, that's bad news. The way these

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are made up, there's kind of like a spring portion on the bottom. And then there's another

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one that goes the other way. And then there's like a ball, like a little contact pad on

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the bottom that touches the bottom of the CPU. If that breaks off, your only hope is

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to kind of force the spring portion up so that that contacts the pad on the bottom of

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the CPU. With that said, some of these pins are extra ground connections or unused pins

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that might have been for testing purposes or reserved for future functionality and aren't

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needed. Now we could painstakingly look up exactly what that pin does, but now that we've

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fixed the other two, the faster way to deal with this would probably be to just throw

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a CPU in here and see if it works. I don't know if I'm going to do that though. I think

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I'm going to go for gold. It looks like there's just one of them that is lebusted here. I

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found a diagram of what does what on LGA 1700. Oh, brilliant. We're five in from the very

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bottom. It's a ground pin. Maybe. Maybe. That's what we think. There might be one more here

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at the edge. Ah. Oh, wow. Yeah, this guy got mangulated. Have you tried to fix any of these

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yet, Alex? No, it's an adventure day. We have so many and they were all so cheap that even

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if we only get like two, we win. Like, did you tell them how much this motherboard cost

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us? I don't think I did. Do you know how much this motherboard cost us? I don't think I

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do. $30. $30 bucks. All I have to do is this. Yeah. And then you have $170 savings. Dude,

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I'm totally going to get this one. And the top snapped off. I think I might have that in

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position enough. So what we're looking at right here is this little nubbin at the end of this.

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It just needs to touch where this pad does on the in between these two. See that? So as long as

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we can bring it up high enough, we should have contact. Is it ideal? No, but it wasn't ideal

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when Dufus McNumpty here did whatever he did to his socket. That's not my fault. I think the

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bigger question we should be asking is why is this motherboard bent? Oh, wow. Which CPU did you

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choose? It's a 12700K. That way we don't need to worry about if it needs a new BIOS or anything

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like that. We're just going to throw some goop on approximately where the die is. Because it's

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not like we're going to be gaming on them. We're just testing for basic functionality. Then AMD

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coolers are great for this because they just kind of go on there. And then we're good to go. I think

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I figured out why the motherboard's bent. Whoever it is dropped it. That does not necessarily

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preclude it working though. Let's give it a shot. I think NZXT asked us to use this power supply.

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This is their new C1500. It's 80 plus platinum. Obviously can do up to 1500 watts. And given what

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NVIDIA's 50 series cards are rumored to be sucking back, that may be more necessary than you'd think.

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Anyway, let's flip her on. This is by no means a guarantee yet though. CPU, DRAM are both

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illuminated. We can try another memory slot. It's possible that one of the pins that is bent

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is a pin that's needed for the operation of that memory slot. So let's go ahead and give this

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another shot here, shall we? I don't think this is doing anything right now. It sure doesn't seem

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like it. It doesn't mean we're cooked, but it does mean that our time might be better spent making

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some notes and moving on to another board for now. Now for our next victim. This is an MSI Pro

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Z690A Wi-Fi. We paid 35 bucks for it and it's worth over 200 new if we can get it working. The

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seller claims this is an Amazon return and that it is untested. This has clearly been installed.

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And it looks like it's been installed more than once to me. The other thing that stands out to me

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is there is thermal paste on this thing everywhere. Fingerprints. Oh, you do not even know the half

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of it. Oh, it's in the socket. It's all over the ILM, buddy. I don't have any genius ideas for how to

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remove that. I mean, theoretically, if it's non-conductive and non-capacitive, it shouldn't

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really matter. This was my idea. Just give her a rinse down.

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Why would you not do this over the sink? It's fine. No, it's good. It's good. Did that work at all?

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Honestly, I don't think so. Remember, we only need the top to be clean. That'll do.

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While we wait for that to dry, let's take a look at victim number three. This one we did not get

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from eBay. Oh, where'd we get this one? We got this from We Broke It.

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Next up, we've got a ProArt Z690 creator Wi-Fi. Very expensive board, which makes this one's

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origin all the more troubling to me. Oh, Alex. Yeah? Who did this? I was told who made this system.

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I don't need to be a narc right now. Now, something I am wondering is if anyone has actually tried

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to just fire this thing up, see if it works. That was my question as well, because a lot of the

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times people will be like, oh, it doesn't work. But if we just put the RAM in the other slots,

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maybe it's fine. There's a little tooth here. So if I could bend that back into shape, maybe I could

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put it back in. And that would at least hold the pins in place. Alex, you did not tell me that today

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was going to be this challenging. In fairness, that first one I did not look at close enough and

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not realize it would be that challenging. You can see these pins right here are kind of in the

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right spot. So as long as they have enough spring in them, there you go. See those are in the right

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spot. These guys have popped out. So the top of the pin should be sticking through this little hole.

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So what I want to do is I want to take my pin, bend them down and push them over so that they

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go into the right spot here. Did that go in? Yes. Sick. Hey, there you go. All right. What are my odds?

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I think it's solid 50-50. The good news is, so far the MSRP of these three wards is $870,

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and we have only spent $155. This light is green. I need to see more than a green light though.

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Delights say it's booted. I know. It's not a KF, is it? I don't think so. I didn't think so either.

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That would mean it doesn't have onboard video. Do we want to just put a GPU in it?

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By all accounts, it's working other than that it isn't working. Get on there, buddy.

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This one needs to work because it makes our math workouts so well. If we can get this $470

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motherboard going, we can claim some nonsense in the title for sure. It does! Haha!

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Is this a 24 gig memory stick? I really hope it is. Yes. Oh, good. Let's go for bonus points.

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I want to try this memory slot. So I lifted up this little piece of metal here, lifted it up,

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squeezed it back together, then slid it back down. So that's what's holding the slot together now.

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That was what was broken out before. So in theory, I will be able to just put a memory

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stick into it and it'll just work. That was god-messaging. Says he's on my side today.

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Let's go! No way! Will it run at full speed? If we want to try running at full speed,

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we should put in crappier RAM. That's fair. Okay, let's save that as a bonus objective.

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Either way, we are 1 for 3 now. Now that we know that this works, do you want to

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play it to one of our internal workstations? Also that. Who made it? Elijah.

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I'm going to go get that one that was drying off. Odds on this one?

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Oh, the power switch pins are bent. I think 47% odds. Really? Yeah.

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Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, how you doing?

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Oh, this is great. Dude! Dude! I can't believe that just spraying a bunch of isopropyl on it

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worked. Even though that was my only plan. Clean it. Huck it to dry. Motherboard boots up. Easy.

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Hold on, hold on, hold on. I want to see dual channel operation. I want to see dual channel

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operation here. Oh, I'm stoked right now. I got to say, I would always read eBay listings, assuming

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untested meant I tested it and it doesn't work and I don't want to be on the hook for it.

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That's what I always assumed. So I've never really gotten into this stuff. Oh, like in that GPU one,

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I flicked a bio switch on one of them and it started working. Like people actually don't test

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them. That's crazy. Like we are one for three. No, one for two of the eBay ones and we're two

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for three overall. And so far we've only spent like an hour and a half on this. And we only

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have a bunch of way worse ones coming. Show me that dual channel operation.

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As far as we can tell, fixed motherboard actually working. Now to be clear, there can be issues

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that can crop up. Random instability just because it posts doesn't mean that this is a fully

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functioning motherboard and we'd want to give it a fuller suite of testing before we say 100%

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if it works. Also, it is worth noting that this board, even though it was $210 new,

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you can get a refurbished one for 90 bucks, which makes our $35 that we spent on it not as good,

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but still still good. 35 bucks still good. Yeah, still very good. Next up, we've got a prime Z690M

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plus D4, which we got for 60 bucks, but retails for 260. Why is it so much? I don't know. Also,

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the listing said no turbo bent pins. Bent pins affect the CPU's ability to turbo boost? Maybe.

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Can confirm definitely bent pins. I made it worse. Oh, I accidentally bent it too much the opposite

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way. Now I got to go back. Yeah, you want to avoid doing that as much as possible because the more

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that you bend the pins, the more likely it is that they're going to break. These are made out of

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copper, which is really good for cold working, which means that it actually gets stronger the

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more that you bend it, which is kind of not what you would expect. But here we've got the pin,

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and I've drawn roughly what the grain structure would look like inside of it. Basically, when your

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metal cools down, it just kind of randomly decides where it's going to grow crystals and it looks

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something like that. As you bend it, little cracks are going to form, something like that,

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and some of these crystals are going to move against each other. But as you do that more and

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more and more, the chances that one of these cracks terminates in one of the other cracks that you've

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already made is better. So it gets stronger. But you do to many of them all over the place and

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it's gone. The good news is I think I got that one back in position. Nice. The bad news is that I

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think there's more. It's hard to hold steady enough. That might be good enough. Oh man,

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this one too. Geez, buddy. I think this one's going to work. Oh, hey, Dash. I don't know what's

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going to happen here, but what I do know is that we're going for bonus marks on this one.

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Oh, oh, we are right into Windows, folks. I'm feeling really good. There we go. Okay,

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what's the CPU supposed to turbo to? 1200K? Up to 5 GHz. Okay. I want to see one of my cores

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turboing up to 5 GHz then. I don't think it's going to go up high, but I mean, they're at 4.5.

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That's not base clock, is it? No, that's way higher than base clock, but also just

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not really a clock speed that makes sense. How's our package power? 32 watts. That seems really

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low. It's only for one core though. You know what? Before we do anything more, this is a two-year-old

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BIOS. I think an update is probably in order. Yeah, let's get you the other Asrock Z690 extreme

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and see if that one works. Cool. Can confirm. Bent pins. Lots of bent pins. I can't even see

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this one in the microscope. There's some junk in there, so that's not actually a bent pin. That's

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just some junk. I think I'm getting better at this, just doing a few boards today. What's a

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microscope like this worth? Like $100? $70. Not bad. Oh, that's a bad one. That's bad. This one right here.

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Oh yeah. Oh, nailed that one. Oh, what was that? Like five minutes? It's way less than the time it

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takes to update a BIOS. That's for sure. Nice. Hey, this BIOS is flashed though. Let's find out

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if this one turbos before we try that one then. What was it last time? It was 4.5, right? Yeah.

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4.9. Heck yeah. Let's go. All right. Turbo works. Let's do a multi-core bench to see what happens.

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There you go. Bunch of them at 4.7. 4.8. Yeah. Oh dude, this is a this is a working great.

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Turbling working motherboard. Sweet. What do we pay for it? $60? $60. If I'm calling this one fixed.

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Yeah. Dude, our stats at the end of this are going to look sick if we can keep this up. Dude,

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it just worked. Just worked. Oh my god. This is sick. I don't even know what to tell you other than

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this didn't post before, right? It was completely not working like you saw those pins.

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Oh yeah. I guess that's true. Sick. Okay. One thing that I would like to check though,

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just because two of the memory slots work doesn't necessarily mean they all work.

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Those two working pretty good indicator. That's true. And those are the main ones that matter

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because as soon as you populate all four slots, you're going to be giving up some speed. But I'd

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be curious to see if all of them work on this board. Okay. So Alex will work on that while I crack

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open this supposedly nothing wrong with it. Z790 UDAC. Do you happen to remember what we paid for

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this bad boy? We paid $66 and I looked at it and apparently the listing says that two RAM slots

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don't work. Okay. Which would normally indicate either a problem with the pins in the socket that

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connect to the RAM slots or a problem with the RAM slots, both of which are things we've tackled

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today. And also, if two of the RAM slots just plain work, are you willing to give up two RAM

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slots to just like save 170 bucks or whatever? I would. It would be saving $133. Still. Yeah.

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That CPU went to 5.3 gigahertz almost immediately. Oh, and it's really hot now. I'm actually going

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to stop. Yeah, I don't have a proper cooler on this one, Alex, but she works. Yeah, it works great.

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That moment when you repair five motherboards and cook a CPU,

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that'll wipe out your savings pretty quick. Dude, I got to back you up on this one.

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I do not see a problem. I feel like we need to get this on the bench. Oh, no way. Dude.

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It's in the Windows. Dude. It just skipped the BIOS. Dude. Did they have a bad CPU and just

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thought it was the motherboard and sold it? Or maybe they had like a 14th gen and it has

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an older BIOS. This was supposed to be the curveball where it was like, it looks fine.

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Why is it broken? It's just not broken. I've heard of this. I mean, you said when we bought all

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the video cards, one of them just, you hit a bioswitch and it just worked. Yeah. User error.

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I mean, if user error can break the pins and you bend the RAM slot, then user error can just

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to have no idea how to put a computer together. Clearly. Yeah. The BIOS is from July of 2023.

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So I wonder if they just bought a 14th gen popped it in here. It didn't work and they just didn't

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know how to troubleshoot it and then nobody checked it when it was returned. 1,900K launch.

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October 17th. Yep. That's probably what happened. $200 MSRP. Got it for 66 bucks. Not bad. I think

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repairing motherboards from eBay is my new career. Like seriously, I'm making some of the best money

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I've made in a while doing this. This is great. Dude. Okay. If I didn't have to film any of this,

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I've only spent like a couple hours fixing boards today and I've made hundreds of dollars.

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The only one that didn't work was 15 bucks. Speaking of which, let's look at some other

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ones that might not work. All right, let's do it. I can't believe how much fun I'm having today.

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Do you want to see one that's not so fun? I would love to. This one is $210 normally,

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we paid 56. I think I found the problem. So listing for this one says the board looks perfect,

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seems just untested. This one might be super easy.

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This socket is mangled, dude. It is possible that it was fine when they sent it. It was shipped

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without a socket cover. So it might have just got completely mangled in shipping.

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I blame the seller at that point. You can't ship a motherboard without a socket cover. Also,

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it's covered in thermal goop. Right there. There's supposed to be a thing and that one.

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Oh my goodness. They're bent backward. There's no way that happened in shipping.

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Sellers a liar. Sellers a liar, dude. There's also this. Dude, the only way they could be more

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of a lying seller is if they were a dishonest, below floor, below ground house basement.

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What? A lying seller.

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Dude, I think I just got one of them. See, the pins are really small,

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but the pads on the bottom of the CPU are not that small.

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So as long as you can nail that pad space and not hit the one next to it, then you're good.

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My success rate today is cray-cray. Dude, I think I just nailed this one.

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I don't want to give you guys unrealistic expectations. Our rate of success today is

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very high and I wouldn't expect to have the same, but we also have shown with a sample size of far

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more than one that this is a thing that you can do and potentially succeed at. As much fun as I'm

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having, it also makes me sad that people just discard stuff. Like, did anyone even try to fix

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these boards? If they had, they'd still have them and they'd still be working. It just seems

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wasteful. Okay, what do we pay for this one and what's it worth again? This is a Z790PG lightning.

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We paid $56 and it is worth 210. Oh, keyboard. Keyboard did something. Wait for it. Dude.

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Holy crap. Let's go. No way. Dude. I genuinely did not think that one was coming back. That was

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supposed to be our example of sometimes bend pins can be too much, but it turns out it getting

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dropped can be too much besides that. You never know. And professional shops can do full socket

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replacements. Just because we don't have those capabilities in our makeshift table tennis table

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lab here doesn't mean that anything is necessarily too far gone when it goes to socket repairs.

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It's generally only worth it to do those kinds of repairs on a very premium board though,

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because otherwise you're going to spend more than the value of the board in order to fix it.

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She's running pretty hot. I didn't even put fresh thermal compound on it, but it's very clear

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that this system is working. All 32 gigs of RAM are showing up. It works, brother. Damn.

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How far ahead are we today? In total, we paid $352. So far we have fixed $1550 worth of motherboards.

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That's like 250 bucks an hour. It's actually crazy. Yeah. Mind you, that's brand new pricing

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that he's comparing against. And these realistically are reworked boards now. But even if we had to

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give a significant discount on them, you know, for our small computer repair shop or Facebook

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marketplace builder business, we're doing pretty good. Or if you're just a normal person, you can

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just get a $250 motherboard for 30, especially if you're a hobbyist and you already have,

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you know, some fine tools and a microscope or something like that, or you could borrow one

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from school or whatever. Yeah. Next up, we've got a throwback X299 back when Intel had a high-end

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desktop platform. I don't see anything wrong with it though, which is tripping me out a little bit

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here. Yeah, this one's very strange. The listing says that it is broken and the CPU slot has bent

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pins. I do not see any bent pins. Just going to look for any, like, scratched traces on the back

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or anything like that. I'm surprised we didn't get more of that. Like, people accidentally

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installing an extra standoff and scratching traces, stuff like that. It's pretty common,

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or at least it used to be, and can be a royal pain in the butt to repair if you can do it at all,

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because you basically have to put these little tiny traces back together with a little bit of

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wire. It's beyond my capabilities. Do we just throw a CPU in and see what happens? Yes, we do.

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What are the odds this one just works? I think it's low. I think it's low. I've seen a lot of

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these boards die in the field. This is not how statistical probability works, but I feel like

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we're due for a failure, you know? What the hell? Unreal. Why does this work? Unreal. What did we

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pay for this? We paid $50 for it. We paid $50 for this board? It's a $500 mother board. What just

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happened? We have fixed $2046 worth of mother boards. We paid $352. And what's crazy about this

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is Alex and I were talking about this before, these older Intel platforms, the CPUs,

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are dirt cheap because the mother boards tend to fail before the CPUs do. How ironic. You could

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build a system around this thing for like nothing these days. This one was supposed to be a cautionary

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tale. Okay, how many more boards are left? No, that's it. That's it? We have repaired seven of eight.

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Okay, I want to go back to that first one for bonus. I want that one now. There's no way.

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I want it. I could not have scripted this better. Like if I was scripting this,

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I would have had us fail more. Yeah, exactly. Because this doesn't seem believable. Guys,

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we bought these boards on eBay, except the one. This makes no sense. Okay, so this is that first

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board and the only one that I have not been able to successfully boot today. I'm straightening it

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because it's not long enough. It's missing some of the material, straightening it out, and then

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I'm trying to get it to reach over. I'm ready to try this one again. This one doesn't make it. I think

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I will forgive myself. CPU and DRAM lights are on, but as I recall, that was the same behavior we

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got last time. I think this one might be hooped. I have seen just Bio's Flash. It starts working

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before. He is not wrong. Bio's Flash worked. I'm just going to power cycler. I don't think this

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is going to work. I don't think so either. However, I have seen situations where the Bio's has become

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unstable for some reason and like a really long CMOS clear, like letting it sit for a week with the

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battery out or a Bio's, oh my god, I think it's going to work. No way. No way. I was sitting here

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giving a lecture on how there is absolutely no way this is going to happen, but I have seen it.

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Bio's Flashback for the win. Eight of eight. That's great. Mate. What the hell? We didn't even

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break out the real camera because we didn't think this would work. Yeah, this is shot on Colin's

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iPhone. Dude. Why is it working? We're going all the way to Windows, boys. Holy crap. There you go.

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We're back to the real camera and we're back to our conclusion. This is a perfectly working

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motherboard with all four sticks of RAM XMP enabled on a Bode motherboard. Other than the

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little mangled corner that doesn't seem to affect anything, this just works. What's our total,

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Alex? How'd we do? We bought $352 worth of motherboards and we have made, if you go by MSRP,

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$2,246 worth of motherboards work. Eight of eight. I cannot believe it. Now,

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on the second hand market, these are obviously going to qualify as refirmed or

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recertified or whatever you want to call it. So we're probably going to end up somewhere behind

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that number, but it is still clear that with a little over $300 US out of our pocket,

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having eight working LGA 1700 motherboards is an unbelievable bargain. Yep. Just like this

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bargain segue. Yeah, it was a pretty bad one. Yeah. To our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this

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video, maybe you liked the one where we repaired CPU pins and tried to see if it was a viable

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side hustle. Not as profitable as motherboards. I'll say that much though. I can't believe it still.