Could bent pins cause instability overclocking?

[theonerm2]

I have a few bent pins on my motherboard. Could that be causing me to need more voltage and instability when I overclock beyond 4.0GHz? It needs 1.29v just for 4.0GHz. I can't seem to unbend these pins. I was having a problem with dual channel but I corrected that by unbending a pin.

 

[USAFRet]

I have a few bent pins on my motherboard. Could that be causing me to need more voltage and instability when I overclock beyond 4.0GHz? It needs 1.29v just for 4.0GHz. I can't seem to unbend these pins. I was having a problem with dual channel but I corrected that by unbending a pin.

This is on an Intel system? Pins on the motherboard?

YES, that can cause "instability". It can even cause the whole thing to not run at all.
You need to physically fix that before any messing around with OC.

 

[theonerm2]

This is on a Z97-A motherboard brand is Asus. I can usually tell almost instantly if a pin is bent. This time I just can't tell for sure. It looks like 2 are bent vey slightly but still are able to make contact correctly. When I look at the pins I look for a tiny square pattern made by the ends of the pins. If a pin is bent the light might shimmer off of it differently. I see this shimmering twice but it still appears that the ends of the pins are making that square shaped pattern they need to make in order to contact the CPU. I'm just not sure if it's bent. One of the pins that appears to be bent is a reserved pin. The other is AW5 which I think controls RAM channel A. I tried my RAM in channel B only by removing the stick in A. Still the same overclocking results. Won't boot at 4.5GHz. 4.3GHz boots but freezes when put under load. 4.0GHz still requires 1.29v. On the upside I did reapply thermal paste and temperatures are lower now. I guess I just have to be happy with 4.0GHz because that's all I'm getting on this 4770K. I keep looking for other problems it might be other than the CPU itself but it's looking like it's the CPU just not wanting to overclock very far.