Broken Pin

[ChrisR34000]

Hi!

I bought a Phenom X4 9600 off Ebay and it was so badly packaged, that alot of pins were bent when I got it. I managed to straighten the pins, but during the process, I sadly broke a pin.

However, even with the broken pin, the system booted up fine and I did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

The position of the pin is A19. I tried to find a pinout for the Socket AM2+, but I didn't manage to find anything. I found however a document on the pinout of the socket 940:

http://support.amd.com/us/Processor_TechDocs/31412.pdf

In this document, the pin A19 would be (page 42, Chapter 6):

L1_CADIN_H/L[4] I-HT Link 1 Command/Address/Data Input

with the footnote:

"2. Link 1 and Link 2 are available only on Server products."

The Phenom X4 is not a server product to my knowledge ( http://www.amd.com/us/products/server/Pages/server.aspx ).

Therefore I conclude that the pin that broke, had actually no function in the Phenom X4 9600.

Am I right? Is there anything I should be aware of or check from time to time, when running the CPU with this missing pin?

 

[MU_Engineer]

You looked at the socket pinout for Socket 940, which is an older socket used for the first two Athlon 64 FXes and the first-generation Opterons. Your Phenom X4 uses Socket AM2, which has a completely different pinout than Socket 940, although it does have 940 pins. AMD has not yet posted the pinout for Socket AM2. My guess is that if your CPU boots and runs okay, you probably broke off one of the power, ground, or no-connect pins. There are plenty of power and ground pins, so missing one won't matter too much. Breaking off a no-connect pin is no problem at all since it does not connect to anything. Just to be safe, I'd run Memtest86+ and a program to stress the CPU like Prime95 or Folding@Home to make sure you didn't break off a pin that connects to the memory controller or an HT link or something.