Damaged/Pulled 1151 RSVD pin - Is it still safe to use?

Adam187a

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Jan 21, 2016
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I bought an Asus B150M Gaming Pro motherboard from a private seller listed as brand new and unused. After receiving it, there were at least 15 bent pins? Most of which were adjusted with my finger gently before being symmetrically aligned with it's siblings using a tweezer. During the process, I managed to pull out a single pin which can no longer make contact with the CPU.

I've checked the pin diagram for this socket via Intel's website and discovered that it was an RSVD pin, from a brief search I quickly learned this was a reserved pin for something? Must be there for a reason however some say it could be safe to use if it still boots up.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/desktop-6th-gen-core-family-datasheet-vol-1.html This is the PDF datasheet. The pin is located at AC38 on the upper-left quadrant.

I would like to ask someone if it is safe to use from here? I did receive a refund for the motherboard and bought one from Ebuyer instead.

Thank you for any replies!
 

Can't say for sure what it is for,seems it has to do with power management so might just not start. Only testing will reveal if the pc would boot and if it is of consequence.
Looked abit further and some disable the SVID function in the bios when overclocking so it might have no consequence,again only testing will show.
 
Hi Vic 40, thanks for the help.
I would test it but I'm worried it may damage other components attached to it, at the moment I only have a single DDR4 stick of 16GB which I really do not want to risk, the processor will be fine as I have a spare G4400. I'm convinced it may start whilst at the same time, something may go kaput. Is there anyway to find out what this RSVD manages? The datasheet doesn't really say.

Regards
 
Got this out of an overclock tutorial by Tweaktown,

Serial Voltage Identification "SVID": A few generations back, Intel introduced serial voltage identification (SVID) which is a protocol the CPU uses to communicate with the voltage regulator. The power control unit inside the CPU uses SVID to communicate with the PWM controller that controls the voltage regulator. This allows the CPU to pick its optimum voltage depending on current conditions (temperature, frequency, load, etc.). You can actually use a combination of SVID and LLC to get an optimal VCore instead of manually setting it. If you start your system without making any changes, your VID (which some refer to as the stock voltage) might be 1.25v, but if you lower your CPU multiplier and restart, you will find your VID has dropped automatically. The reverse happens if you increase your clock and do not set any VCore. Intel's latest CPUs are able to pick their own voltage, and this comes into play if you want to utilize "offset" / "adaptive" voltage. The good news is that if you come from Haswell, you should look forward to a CPU that has the same or better durability.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/guides/7481/tweaktowns-ultimate-intel-skylake-overclocking-guide/index5.html
Seems that if you set a fixed voltage this is not needed.I guess that the pin you talk about is one that is used by the communication between cpu and the "PWM controller that controls the voltage regulator" (quote from above).
 
Oh thanks for the very useful piece of information! Though I don't intend to overclock any system I'm going to use, will I still have to use the BIOS and fix the voltage if for whatever reason it's been set higher? Or would resetting it to stock setting simply tell the motherboard that nothing is requested more power?

Thank you for tanking the time to find that out! :)

Edit: Did you confuse SVID with RSVD? As the pin that is missing is RSVD
 
Solution
Thank you so much for your help and time put towards this Vic 40. :) Although the statement is coming from the words of a random user on the internet, I feel more confident to try it out. At this point, I'm just curious as to what will happen.

My next comment shall be the result of the test, whether or not it works is the true test!

Regards
 
Well what do you know, it worked!
Stressed it out with an i5-6500 and GTX 1060, temperatures maxed around 60 (left motherboard outside) and there wasn't any instability issues. Looks like it really was reserved pin lol