Deep Talk About Bent CPU Pins

[JBRONCFAN]

Might recognize my handle since I've been running around here with a RAM allocation problem that was solved by discovering my CPU had two bent pins. Noticed something troubling. Seems to be an awful lot of people with bent CPU pins. I mean, been running around pc forums now for about 15 years and I can't remember ever seeing so many bent CPU pin threads. Made me do some extra thinking and......

I believe that this "bent CPU pin" epidemic may be attributed to the heavy use of aftermarket coolers. CPUs only needed a small heat sink and small fan to handle heat. Last 5 years or so have seen the advent of some pretty powerful CPUs which of course means a lot more heat. Whole new market of CPU coolers is created. Only problem is no one has seen the long term effect of these large coolers strapped to our MOBOs and wrenched onto our CPUs. CPU coolers' screws are spring loaded which are meant to keep a constant pressure. Add to that YEARS of 100+ dF temps and bending pins does not sound so crazy.

After having my CPU out and in my hands I learned how fragile those pins are. Looks like they are made of copper which is a very soft metal.

I had to build a new rig cause after a hard drive seemingly died that system wouldn't power back up. Now I wish I'd had pulled the CPU to inspect it.

I understand since I needed to read posts about bent CPU pins I found a ton of threads about bent CPU pins but still, it still seems like there is WAY too many people out there with bent CPU pin problems.

 

[Barty1884]

Not going to get into a discussion over the english language, but you certainly shouldn't be inferring (or implying, which is what I assume you meant) anything. You're supposed to know the facts of what happened in your build.

From your statement that you rough-housed your first CPU cooler & didn't the second time around, I'm inferrng that you didn't actually do anything different with your CPU the second time, as far as the install process.

You may have babied the CPU, you might've kept it in it's package until you were 100% ready for it, but did you actually install it any differently?

You're focusing on the fact you installed the cooler carefully, yet the first time you didn't. You got the same outcome either way. Doesn't that tell you the problem isn't likely to be with the cooler install? The route cause is most likely a poor method of installing the CPU. If the CPU was installed correctly, you could use as much force as you wanted on the cooler and not damage the CPU. The cooler & motherboard socket, absolutely, but damage to the CPU would be impossible at that point.

Not very sure where you see this topic going at this point......

 

[JBRONCFAN]

"Doesn't that tell you the problem isn't likely to be with the cooler install? The route cause is most likely a poor method of installing the CPU."

Well Barry, if carefully and slowly placing the CPU into the socket is considered a poor method than yes, it was installed poorly.

 

[Barty1884]

Well Barry, if carefully and slowly placing the CPU into the socket is considered a poor method than yes, it was installed poorly.

Coolers don't damage/bend CPU pins, electricity doesn't damage/bend CPU pins. That's pretty straightforward - something you don't appear to want to accept. The cooler can increase the visibility and the problem overall, but it's not the route cause, simple as that.

It doesn't matter how slowly or 'carefully' you insert the CPU into the socket. If you don't have the understanding of how to do it properly, you're doomed to bend pins.

Good luck.

 

[JBRONCFAN]

Then how to you explain the install that lasted 4 years and then crapped out?? 4 years of flawless operation then nothing?? Pulled the CPU and discovered pins bent?? This build was the build that went down that caused me to rebuild a new rig.

If I bent the pins during install it would have been quite clear early on and yet it lasted 4 years. Wish I had the answer....all of this thread is just speculation for lack of a concrete answer.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Then how to you explain the install that lasted 4 years and then crapped out?? 4 years of flawless operation then nothing?? Pulled the CPU and discovered pins bent?? This build was the build that went down that caused me to rebuild a new rig.

If I bent the pins during install it would have been quite clear early on and yet it lasted 4 years. Wish I had the answer....all of this thread is just speculation for lack of a concrete answer.

You said your last build was caused by the hard drive crapping out.

Its not speculation, again the deck of the socket is flat, and when the processor is secured by the lever in there, its literally impossible for 2 or 3 pins to bend due to an external force. They would ALL bend.

 

[JBRONCFAN]

That's correct, the hd "seemed" to have died. I continued to use pc for a while longer until it would never post again. Which is when I yanked CPU and found bent pins.

Maybe the bent pins made using the hd impossible, the same way a few bent pins made the RAM mis-allocate memory.

 

[Rogue Leader]

That's correct, the hd "seemed" to have died. I continued to use pc for a while longer until it would never post again. Which is when I yanked CPU and found bent pins.

Maybe the bent pins made using the hd impossible, the same way a few bent pins made the RAM mis-allocate memory.

Or the pins bent on removal, or while you were trying to pull the heatsink off, who knows for sure.

I've built probably 200 computers in my lifetime (a lot of them far back in the day but its the same thing) and I've never bent a cpu pin. Oh wait I forgot, the processors we used to toss in the drawer would get them, but we would just bend em back and use them. So I should change that to never bent a pin installing or removing them.

Just like the Corsair CX PSU that is maligned here people are coming here when they have problems, its a microcosm of problems. Theres tons of Corsair CX's out there happily running, they only have like a 6% failure rate, and theres tons of processors with big ass heatsinks not bending pins. I don't know what it is you're doing but you're doing something, because again, coolers aren't causing this problem.

 

[JBRONCFAN]

I just never saw so many bent CPU pin problems as I do today. Years ago you would never read about a problem like that.

I just hope people remain cognizant about the possibility at least of a bent pin before they waste a lot of money they don't need to.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I just never saw so many bent CPU pin problems as I do today. Years ago you would never read about a problem like that.

I just hope people remain cognizant about the possibility at least of a bent pin before they waste a lot of money they don't need to.

Today theres quite a bit more pins than before, and they are closer together so easier for problems to arise from it.

Generally bent pin problems manifest themselves into unexplainable memory or stability issues. We didn't catch it earlier in your thread because you swore that it was not that (based on your last CPU), and lets be honest whats the possibility that it would happen twice?

 

[JBRONCFAN]

Yeah, really.

 

[undouble]

It could be a mixture of newer cpu's having more pins (whether the pins are on the processor like amd or the socket for intel). That along with people who aren't the most careful with things. Not everyone is mechanically inclined and some folks who have a hard time getting a cd/dvd centered in a drive tray decide they can slap their own system together.

I won't say everything is user error but after seeing many of the posts all over the internet that I have, not much surprises me anymore. You ask anyone and the first words out of their mouth is 'of course I was careful, it couldn't have been me'.

Then look at all the multiple stories of people with thermal paste oozing out all over the motherboard, spilling into the socket, thermal paste all over the pins UNDER the cpu. Or people who scratch their pcb's with tools they either dropped or a screwdriver that slips off of a screw, gouging their boards. Breaking things off (and of course capacitors and things mysteriously 'fall off' on their own). People who talk about cracking the substrate of their new cpu after putting it in a vise and chiseling at it with a hammer.

Evidence would suggest there's a lot of user error going on here. There are way too many problems period and I'd venture to say while some may be manufacturing issues, consider all the thousands of successful builds as well. It's just as likely some folks shouldn't even be allowed to peel the security sticker off their cpu box.

Your answer doesn't go far enough!!! There are "some" people who shouldn't even be allowed to HANDLE a cpu (or MOBO) box!! The world is full of "technodiots", many of whom shouldn't be allowed out of bed!!

 

[tom42]

You don't think heat generated by all that extra electricity plus the constant pressure of a large cooler onto very soft....very thin copper pins would make a difference????

Not at all.

 

[tom42]

It could be a mixture of newer cpu's having more pins (whether the pins are on the processor like amd or the socket for intel). That along with people who aren't the most careful with things. Not everyone is mechanically inclined and some folks who have a hard time getting a cd/dvd centered in a drive tray decide they can slap their own system together.

I won't say everything is user error but after seeing many of the posts all over the internet that I have, not much surprises me anymore. You ask anyone and the first words out of their mouth is 'of course I was careful, it couldn't have been me'.

Then look at all the multiple stories of people with thermal paste oozing out all over the motherboard, spilling into the socket, thermal paste all over the pins UNDER the cpu. Or people who scratch their pcb's with tools they either dropped or a screwdriver that slips off of a screw, gouging their boards. Breaking things off (and of course capacitors and things mysteriously 'fall off' on their own). People who talk about cracking the substrate of their new cpu after putting it in a vise and chiseling at it with a hammer.

Evidence would suggest there's a lot of user error going on here. There are way too many problems period and I'd venture to say while some may be manufacturing issues, consider all the thousands of successful builds as well. It's just as likely some folks shouldn't even be allowed to peel the security sticker off their cpu box.

Your answer doesn't go far enough!!! There are "some" people who shouldn't even be allowed to HANDLE a cpu (or MOBO) box!! The world is full of "technodiots", many of whom shouldn't be allowed out of bed!!

Your answer doesn't go far enough!!! There are "some" people who shouldn't even be allowed to HANDLE a cpu (or MOBO) box!! The world is full of "technodiots", many of whom shouldn't be allowed out of bed!!
I agree absolutely.
I'm sure you know lots of people you wouldn't ask to help you remove a splinter from your finger.
These are the same people you wouldn't want inserting your CPU.

 

[Jeff Mongillo]

Keep in mind, since the advent of proper sockets (called ZIF or Zero Insertion Force) that you don't PUSH a CPU into the socket...you set it onto the socket in a correct orientation and let it drop in of it's own weight. Once done, you use the lockbar to "hold" the CPU in place. When ANY type of cooler is mounted onto it, most of the weight of the cooler unit is held by the socket housing itself, and the heat sink surface is brought into contact with the CPU heat shield surface, with some type of thermal interface material between to better transfer the heat from the CPU shield, or for those who run delidded, the actual CPU chip surface. The actual amount of pressure applied to the CPU itself is somewhere along the lines of about 17 lbs/mm, which is about equal to you holding a 12 oz can of soft drink in an aluminum can with your hand. The difference...the aluminum can is a rounded surface that tends to bend easily...the heat shield is a flat surface that meets an equally flat surface to "bond", thus transferring heat from one surface to the next, conducting that heat up into the body of the heat sink so that the fan (or liquid) and shed the heat and return cooler air back in the other direction. There is NO actual weight being borne by ANY of the pins. The ONLY way a pin could be bent inside the socket is if the CPU was torn from the socket by force far greater than the minimal weight of a cooler's heatsink. Therefore, the ONLY possibility at all is that the pin(s) were bent PRIOR to insertion into the socket.

 

[Maxor1]

Keep in mind, since the advent of proper sockets (called ZIF or Zero Insertion Force) that you don't PUSH a CPU into the socket...you set it onto the socket in a correct orientation and let it drop in of it's own weight. Once done, you use the lockbar to "hold" the CPU in place. When ANY type of cooler is mounted onto it, most of the weight of the cooler unit is held by the socket housing itself, and the heat sink surface is brought into contact with the CPU heat shield surface, with some type of thermal interface material between to better transfer the heat from the CPU shield, or for those who run delidded, the actual CPU chip surface. The actual amount of pressure applied to the CPU itself is somewhere along the lines of about 17 lbs/mm, which is about equal to you holding a 12 oz can of soft drink in an aluminum can with your hand. The difference...the aluminum can is a rounded surface that tends to bend easily...the heat shield is a flat surface that meets an equally flat surface to "bond", thus transferring heat from one surface to the next, conducting that heat up into the body of the heat sink so that the fan (or liquid) and shed the heat and return cooler air back in the other direction. There is NO actual weight being borne by ANY of the pins. The ONLY way a pin could be bent inside the socket is if the CPU was torn from the socket by force far greater than the minimal weight of a cooler's heatsink. Therefore, the ONLY possibility at all is that the pin(s) were bent PRIOR to insertion into the socket.

Since many cases orient the motherboard so it is a vertical plane the pins may bear part of the weight of the CPU itself...(part is also borne by the edge casing against the socket housing). This is ounces and divided over 100s of pins so actual force is negligible.