[SOLVED] CPU Pins

[fbMfBlithe]

Hi,

So when I was building my PC, I bent some of the pins of my CPU however I managed to bend them all back into what I consider the right shape and when I launched my pc it worked fine. But as the weeks progressed, my PC starts crashing ever so often, overheating is not the issue as my PC never goes about 65 degrees, I play games like CSGO, League, PUBG, so basically not heavy games and my whole PC crashes, could it be that there are still some bent pins and this is causing issues, or is it something else, please help, it's really annoying when I have to carry my ape teammates and my game randomly crashes.


SPECS:

i9-9900k
16GB 3000mhz cl15 RAM
Aorus Master z390
2tb HDD
1tb ssd nvme
Corsair h115i Platinum AIO 360mm fan
3 Corsair 120mm fans
MSI GTX 960

 

[Darkbreeze]

If you had bent pins, and you are having problems, then yes, it is very likely that they are responsible for the issues. Regardless of exactly WHY the crashes are happening, whether it is some component failing or a memory issue, it is highly probable that it is related. It's always POSSIBLE that it's not though.

That graphics card is pretty old, so that could certainly be relevant.

What is the EXACT model of your power supply? This is a VERY probable potential guilty party in many cases.

Are you overclocking anything, at all?

 

[fbMfBlithe]

If you had bent pins, and you are having problems, then yes, it is very likely that they are responsible for the issues. Regardless of exactly WHY the crashes are happening, whether it is some component failing or a memory issue, it is highly probable that it is related. It's always POSSIBLE that it's not though.

That graphics card is pretty old, so that could certainly be relevant.

What is the EXACT model of your power supply? This is a VERY probable potential guilty party in many cases.

Are you overclocking anything, at all?

It is Corsair RM 750 Fully Modular 80+ Gold Certified. This is brand new, I doubt it is this, I was thinking of upgrading GPU but i doubt its that. Urgh

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, the power supply is decent enough. Not fantastic, not even as good as the RMx or RMi, but still pretty good. Much better than most units out there anyhow. Still, even brand new, the best and greatest of power supplies can fail or have problems.

Does the system crash, at all, ever, when you are not gaming, or is this ONLY happening during gaming?

 

[fbMfBlithe]

Yes, the power supply is decent enough. Not fantastic, not even as good as the RMx or RMi, but still pretty good. Much better than most units out there anyhow. Still, even brand new, the best and greatest of power supplies can fail or have problems.

Does the system crash, at all, ever, when you are not gaming, or is this ONLY happening during gaming?

Only during gaming

 

[fbMfBlithe]

Yes, the power supply is decent enough. Not fantastic, not even as good as the RMx or RMi, but still pretty good. Much better than most units out there anyhow. Still, even brand new, the best and greatest of power supplies can fail or have problems.

Does the system crash, at all, ever, when you are not gaming, or is this ONLY happening during gaming?

Maybe my BIOS isn't configured properly? I didn't edit anything except for my RAM, i set it to 3000mhz since most RAM defaults at 2666 in stock form

 

[theonerm2]

Possibly there could be bent pins still. But the more you mess with it the more likely a pin will bend. Still you need to get this fixed. So try to rule out other issues before ripping out that CPU and looking at the pins.

 

[theonerm2]

Maybe my BIOS isn't configured properly? I didn't edit anything except for my RAM, i set it to 3000mhz since most RAM defaults at 2666 in stock form

Try default Bios settings. Try 1 stick of RAM at a time. Try different RAM slots. All good things to try.

 

[fbMfBlithe]

Try default Bios settings. Try 1 stick of RAM at a time. Try different RAM slots. All good things to try.

What if my GPU is bottle necking my CPU that hard that it crashes? Is this possible? I checked a website that calculates the percentage of “bottleneckage” and GPU bottle necks it 100%. I feel like this is a bit far fetched since I think the only problem the GPU could be contributing is not maximising the potential of the CPU. If the GPU is the issue I’ll be happy since I want to upgrade to one of the ampere gpus when they come out anyway.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Bottlenecks don't cause crashing. Problems cause crashing.

By problems, I mean faulty hardware, driver issues, lack of power, bad configurations or corrupted/borked up/buggy software.

Nobody ever "crashed" because their CPU or graphics card was too weak.

Don't ever go to a "bottleneck calculator" site again. If you do, you might as well just get in the truck and head out for a snipe hunt afterwards.

Try ALL of the following, before you do anything else.

If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.



First,

make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.


Second,

go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates.


IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.


Third,

Make sure your memory is running at the correct advertised speed in the BIOS. This may require that you set the memory to run at the XMP profile settings. Also, make sure you have the memory installed in the correct slots and that they are running in dual channel which you can check by installing CPU-Z and checking the Memory and SPD tabs. For all modern motherboards that are dual channel memory architectures, from the last ten years at least, if you have two sticks installed they should be in the A2 (Called DDR4_1 on some boards) or B2 (Called DDR4_2 on some boards) which are ALWAYS the SECOND and FOURTH slots over from the CPU socket, counting TOWARDS the edge of the motherboard EXCEPT on boards that only have two memory slots total. In that case, if you have two modules it's not rocket science, but if you have only one, then install it in the A1 or DDR4_1 slot.



The last thing we want to look at,

for now anyhow, is the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.


If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

Clean install guide using the DDU​

Also, if this is a "no signal detected" or other lack of visual display problem, it is probably a good idea to make sure the problem is not just a bad cable or the wrong cable IF this is a display issue. If it is NOT related to a lack of display signal, then obviously this part is not relevant to your issue.

This happens a lot. Try a different cable or a different TYPE of cable. Sometimes there can be issues with the monitor or card not supporting a specific specification such as HDMI 1.4 vs HDMI 2.0, or even an HDMI output stops working but the Displayport or DVI output still works fine on the graphics card. Always worth checking the cable and trying other cables because cables get run over, bent, bent pins or simply were cheap quality to begin with and something as simple as trying a different cable or different monitor might be all that is required to solve your issue.

 

[theonerm2]

What if my GPU is bottle necking my CPU that hard that it crashes? Is this possible? I checked a website that calculates the percentage of “bottleneckage” and GPU bottle necks it 100%. I feel like this is a bit far fetched since I think the only problem the GPU could be contributing is not maximising the potential of the CPU. If the GPU is the issue I’ll be happy since I want to upgrade to one of the ampere gpus when they come out anyway.

This is hilarious. But anyway. GPU's don't bottleneck CPU's. The CPU only works as hard as it needs to to process everything. It's not really bottlenecked it just doesn't need to do anymore work so it doesn't. It's still possible that the old graphics card is causing issues. But like you said... You bent pins on the motherboard. It's a tough repair. It requires good eyes and a steady hand. If you make a mistake more pins will bend. Since you made a mistake to begin with I'd say you might not be the right person to do that repair. That being said it's very easy to do damage to the socket without even knowing what you have done. You have to be VERY delicate. I recommend using a magnifying glass even if you have good eyesight. I would not trust anybody else to fix this either unless you know they can do it. Jewelers for example are great at fixing bent pins. Most likely you'll need a new motherboard. I can't tell you how any times I've saw motherboards selling for cheap on ebay because there are bent or broken pins and at least for that person nobody could fix it.

But first check to see if there is another issue at play here. You will have to do some troubleshooting. If you can't troubleshoot/don't want to do it you should buy a prebuilt. Yes. You can skip the headache of having to deal with these kinds of issues by buying a prebuilt PC. If any problem should arise while under the (probably 1 year) warranty you can send the PC in for repair. Just sell all your parts individually and you can probably get one.

And another option is to switch to AMD. Sell the 9900K for $500. Buy a Ryzen 7 3700x. You can even get a decent motherboard. And by the way. The pins are on the CPU on AMD and they are much tougher to bend. But if you do bend the pins you'll end up with a much higher loss. Usually CPU's are more expensive than motherboards.

So either way. If you do have bent pins you most likely need to replace that hardware because even if you do correct the pins there still is a possibility that the motherboard will never work correctly again. The pins may not correctly bend back. You have to look at these pins very closely. Look at the square shape that every 4 pins make. Look for that square shape everywhere. If anything looks off it's most likely not right. It has to be that perfect square shape. Look at it with a light and a magnifying glass. While correcting the pins don't use tweezers use something with a small tip that you can hold easily in the hand. You'll never want to grab the pins with anything or use a knife. You'll want to push on the pin in the direction that it needs to go. Shine the light over the pins for another way to check for bent ones. If the light reflects differently than expected then there is a bent pin. You have to again look for the square shape through a magnifying glass but also look for differences in reflection. Get someone to help you hold things if possible.

 

[fbMfBlithe]

This is hilarious. But anyway. GPU's don't bottleneck CPU's. The CPU only works as hard as it needs to to process everything. It's not really bottlenecked it just doesn't need to do anymore work so it doesn't. It's still possible that the old graphics card is causing issues. But like you said... You bent pins on the motherboard. It's a tough repair. It requires good eyes and a steady hand. If you make a mistake more pins will bend. Since you made a mistake to begin with I'd say you might not be the right person to do that repair. That being said it's very easy to do damage to the socket without even knowing what you have done. You have to be VERY delicate. I recommend using a magnifying glass even if you have good eyesight. I would not trust anybody else to fix this either unless you know they can do it. Jewelers for example are great at fixing bent pins. Most likely you'll need a new motherboard. I can't tell you how any times I've saw motherboards selling for cheap on ebay because there are bent or broken pins and at least for that person nobody could fix it.

But first check to see if there is another issue at play here. You will have to do some troubleshooting. If you can't troubleshoot/don't want to do it you should buy a prebuilt. Yes. You can skip the headache of having to deal with these kinds of issues by buying a prebuilt PC. If any problem should arise while under the (probably 1 year) warranty you can send the PC in for repair. Just sell all your parts individually and you can probably get one.

And another option is to switch to AMD. Sell the 9900K for $500. Buy a Ryzen 7 3700x. You can even get a decent motherboard. And by the way. The pins are on the CPU on AMD and they are much tougher to bend. But if you do bend the pins you'll end up with a much higher loss. Usually CPU's are more expensive than motherboards.

So either way. If you do have bent pins you most likely need to replace that hardware because even if you do correct the pins there still is a possibility that the motherboard will never work correctly again. The pins may not correctly bend back. You have to look at these pins very closely. Look at the square shape that every 4 pins make. Look for that square shape everywhere. If anything looks off it's most likely not right. It has to be that perfect square shape. Look at it with a light and a magnifying glass. While correcting the pins don't use tweezers use something with a small tip that you can hold easily in the hand. You'll never want to grab the pins with anything or use a knife. You'll want to push on the pin in the direction that it needs to go. Shine the light over the pins for another way to check for bent ones. If the light reflects differently than expected then there is a bent pin. You have to again look for the square shape through a magnifying glass but also look for differences in reflection. Get someone to help you hold things if possible.

I will never go to the crap that is AMD again, in addition to that, I will never buy a prebuilt as it's not worth it and I like to have my PC with the specific PC's that I want plus I love building it. No clue why you even suggested that as if that was the case I wouldn't even have been here in the first place. Furthermore, the last time I built a PC was in 2013, I upgraded this year January, when I opened the autistic packaging that comes with the i9-9900k, I had forgotten how delicate CPUs are and bent a few pins by accident, I will look to removing my CPU and trying to adjust the pins even more as a last resort and will try the stuff Darkbreeze mentioned.

 

[fbMfBlithe]

Bottlenecks don't cause crashing. Problems cause crashing.

By problems, I mean faulty hardware, driver issues, lack of power, bad configurations or corrupted/borked up/buggy software.

Nobody ever "crashed" because their CPU or graphics card was too weak.

Don't ever go to a "bottleneck calculator" site again. If you do, you might as well just get in the truck and head out for a snipe hunt afterwards.

Try ALL of the following, before you do anything else.

If there are any steps listed here that you have not already done, it would be advisable to do so if for no other reason than to be able to say you've already done it and eliminate that possibility.



First,

make sure your motherboard has the MOST recent BIOS version installed. If it does not, then update. This solves a high number of issues even in cases where the release that is newer than yours makes no mention of improving graphics card or other hardware compatibility. They do not list every change they have made when they post a new BIOS release.


Second,

go to the product page for your motherboard on the manufacturer website. Download and install the latest driver versions for the chipset, storage controllers, audio and network adapters. Do not skip installing a newer driver just because you think it is not relevant to the problem you are having. The drivers for one device can often affect ALL other devices and a questionable driver release can cause instability in the OS itself. They don't release new drivers just for fun. If there is a new driver release for a component, there is a good reason for it. The same goes for BIOS updates.


IF you have other hardware installed or attached to the system that are not a part of the systems covered by the motherboard drivers, then go to the support page for THAT component and check to see if there are newer drivers available for that as well. If there are, install them.


Third,

Make sure your memory is running at the correct advertised speed in the BIOS. This may require that you set the memory to run at the XMP profile settings. Also, make sure you have the memory installed in the correct slots and that they are running in dual channel which you can check by installing CPU-Z and checking the Memory and SPD tabs. For all modern motherboards that are dual channel memory architectures, from the last ten years at least, if you have two sticks installed they should be in the A2 (Called DDR4_1 on some boards) or B2 (Called DDR4_2 on some boards) which are ALWAYS the SECOND and FOURTH slots over from the CPU socket, counting TOWARDS the edge of the motherboard EXCEPT on boards that only have two memory slots total. In that case, if you have two modules it's not rocket science, but if you have only one, then install it in the A1 or DDR4_1 slot.



The last thing we want to look at,

for now anyhow, is the graphics card drivers. Regardless of whether you "already installed the newest drivers" for your graphics card or not, it is OFTEN a good idea to do a CLEAN install of the graphics card drivers. Just installing over the old drivers OR trying to use what Nvidia and AMD consider a clean install is not good enough and does not usually give the same result as using the Display Driver Uninstaller utility. This has a very high success rate and is always worth a shot.


If you have had both Nvidia and AMD cards installed at any point on that operating system then you will want to run the DDU twice. Once for the old card drivers (ie, Nvidia or AMD) and again for the currently installed graphics card drivers (ie, AMD or Nvidia). So if you had an Nvidia card at some point in the past, run it first for Nvidia and then after that is complete, run it again for AMD if you currently have an AMD card installed.

Clean install guide using the DDU​

Also, if this is a "no signal detected" or other lack of visual display problem, it is probably a good idea to make sure the problem is not just a bad cable or the wrong cable IF this is a display issue. If it is NOT related to a lack of display signal, then obviously this part is not relevant to your issue.

This happens a lot. Try a different cable or a different TYPE of cable. Sometimes there can be issues with the monitor or card not supporting a specific specification such as HDMI 1.4 vs HDMI 2.0, or even an HDMI output stops working but the Displayport or DVI output still works fine on the graphics card. Always worth checking the cable and trying other cables because cables get run over, bent, bent pins or simply were cheap quality to begin with and something as simple as trying a different cable or different monitor might be all that is required to solve your issue.

I am going to try all of this as soon as I can. Thank you sir.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I fixed your post, but let's watch the language in the future. Please keep it at least reasonably family friendly.

Let me know how it goes.

 

[ttower2020]

I will never go to the crap that is AMD again

If you last built in 2013, that was in the midst of a struggle for AMD. Those CPUs were trash, pretty much. since 2017, AMD has been on top of their game. Since 2019, they have matched or beat Intel in almost every way, including performance and value. Do not throw them away as a possibility because of what you experienced years ago. I currently use an AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, and it is an amazing CPU. I paid a decent price for it, and it does everything I need flawlessly.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Right now, there is no way I'd buy anything Intel has to offer from this or the last Gen, or from what I know so far of the next Gen, unless I got a fantastic deal on it, and I've been strictly Intel for quite a while on both personal and client systems until I just recently built three 3rd Gen Zen2 Ryzen systems.

Intel has nothing competitive in terms of a desktop CPU that offers both good performance and value like AMD does, and for the most part AMD is neck and neck with Intel when it comes to IPC and single core performance BUT you get a lot more cores with AMD for the same price or the same amount of cores and threads for significantly less money. They are just the obvious choice, for now at least.

But if you already have a high end Intel system there is literally no reason to consider changing to something else, so recommendations to do so are stupid, at best, until and unless you can determine that something is beyond repair and even then replacement might be a less expensive option if you only need a replacement motherboard.

My biggest question would be, how could you possibly have bent the pins on your CPU when there are NO pins ON your CPU. The pins for the LGA 115x platforms are on the motherboard, not the CPU, unlike AMD. So that means the motherboard would be to blame, not the CPU.

If that's the case, then it's a relatively cheap fix, as motherboards are generally a lot cheaper than high end CPUs.

 

[Nemesia]

Like Darkbreeze said. I agree with everything he said. I was too strictly Intel but that changed quick when I started building Ryzen systems for clients.

I'm curious too to know how you bent some pins on a CPU that doesn't have any.

 

[norcalsc]

Like Darkbreeze said. I agree with everything he said. I was too strictly Intel but that changed quick when I started building Ryzen systems for clients.

I'm curious too to know how you bent some pins on a CPU that doesn't have any.

i thought i was reading that correctly

 

[fbMfBlithe]

Right now, there is no way I'd buy anything Intel has to offer from this or the last Gen, or from what I know so far of the next Gen, unless I got a fantastic deal on it, and I've been strictly Intel for quite a while on both personal and client systems until I just recently built three 3rd Gen Zen2 Ryzen systems.

Intel has nothing competitive in terms of a desktop CPU that offers both good performance and value like AMD does, and for the most part AMD is neck and neck with Intel when it comes to IPC and single core performance BUT you get a lot more cores with AMD for the same price or the same amount of cores and threads for significantly less money. They are just the obvious choice, for now at least.

But if you already have a high end Intel system there is literally no reason to consider changing to something else, so recommendations to do so are stupid, at best, until and unless you can determine that something is beyond repair and even then replacement might be a less expensive option if you only need a replacement motherboard.

My biggest question would be, how could you possibly have bent the pins on your CPU when there are NO pins ON your CPU. The pins for the LGA 115x platforms are on the motherboard, not the CPU, unlike AMD. So that means the motherboard would be to blame, not the CPU.

If that's the case, then it's a relatively cheap fix, as motherboards are generally a lot cheaper than high end CPUs.

Guess you are right, now I think about it, it was the motherboard, this whole time I was so fixated on the CPU and its value that I assumed it was the pins on that. Thats promising then.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, motherboard is much cheaper to replace if necessary. Might even be able to get away with an RMA but that's doubtful if it's obvious there has been an issue with bent pins.