Bent CPU socket pins

[davidfett]

Greetings.

My 4 year old compy would run for 10 seconds, nothing on screen, turn off, and restart (cycle). Did some research, popped out the RAM and disconnected everything except PSU and CPU from mobo. Same thing happened.

So I popped off my CPU and it looked like there was maybe 1 or 2 pins that were a little wonky. I've been trying to straighten them out for a while, but each time I pop the fan back on the same cycle keeps happening. Should I just keep trying? None of the tricks on here (credit card, tweezers) have worked so far. Am I just better off getting a new mobo?

Mobo: H55USB3
CPU: i5-660
PSU: Corsair HX750

 

[1LiquidPC]

Do you have any pics of the bent pins in their current state? They're pretty fragile.

 

[davidfett]

Do you have any pics of the bent pins in their current state? They're pretty fragile.

http://imgur.com/0TahcV6

There's a somewhat crappy picture of it. There's no pins that are SUPER bent or anything, just 1 or two in the lower right quadrant that seemed a bit off. The thing is I'm not 100% its that. I don't think its the PSU cause its fairly new and I haven't had any problems with it.

The only other thing I think it might be is the fan. I had to reapply thermal paste maybe a year and a half ago. Would it do that cycle thing if it just needed more thermal paste?

 

[jossrik]

Could be a short in the motherboard not necessarily the pins, also, the PSU might be wonky.

 

[Barty1884]

There are potential other causes, as jossrik has alluded to.

As for bent pins - if they're not perfectly straight & aligned, the pressure from your HSF will push them back out of place.
I find a mechanical pencil works the best (no lead inside, obviously). Place the pencil over the pin in question & carefully straighten it out.

You may just have a defective RAM module (entirely possible) or a failing PSU (less likely from an HX PSU).

 

[davidfett]

Could be a short in the motherboard not necessarily the pins, also, the PSU might be wonky.

I did check for anything that might cause a short, but I was unable to see any kind of contact. Admittedly I'm not an expert, but is it possible for there to be something causing a short that I wouldn't be able to see?

 

[davidfett]

There are potential other causes, as jossrik has alluded to.

As for bent pins - if they're not perfectly straight & aligned, the pressure from your HSF will push them back out of place.
I find a mechanical pencil works the best (no lead inside, obviously). Place the pencil over the pin in question & carefully straighten it out.

You may just have a defective RAM module (entirely possible) or a failing PSU (less likely from an HX PSU).

So I've read about the pencil thing, but I'm not entirely sure I understand that. The pins are angled and diagonal, and I'm not really certain how the pencil would help. I get the idea theoretically but I'm just not sure it works on these pins?

As for the defective RAM module, is that something I can replace or is that just a get a new mobo kind of thing?

 

[jossrik]

Could be a short in the motherboard not necessarily the pins, also, the PSU might be wonky.

I did check for anything that might cause a short, but I was unable to see any kind of contact. Admittedly I'm not an expert, but is it possible for there to be something causing a short that I wouldn't be able to see?

That is a possibility. motherboards are layered and each layer can have traces to and from components on top. When you start to look into just how perfect electronics have to be nowadays to even run properly it's amazing we're not powering them with potatoes. Not joking. When computers go bad, they can go real bad, and you'd never know it from looking at it, but there can be lots of damage. Not saying that's the case, just that if you've tried bending the pins back, maybe there's a better solution. If you bend them back and forth more than a couple times, they'll break off, they're malleable, but break fairly easily. Also, when you bend them, you introduce micro-fractures into the metals structure which grow every time it's bent in any direction, those can cause voltage fluctuation and cause failure in and of itself.