[SOLVED] How durable is a mobo?

[Ford2020]

Hey
I recently got a prebuilt. Normally i build myself but for obvious reasons that was not a possibility in these times. The mobo is an asus z590f with a kraken z73 aio and 32 gb (4 dimms) of hyperx fury rgb ram. I noticed the closest ram stick was being pressured slightly by the aios usb cables so i went ahead and fixed that. I also noticed some of the ram stick seems loose somehow (they were working fine though), so i gave them all firm push on each end of the stick to make sure they were all seated fully. Afterwards, i got worried that i may have pushed too hard or something or in the process of removing the pressure on the first ram stick by the aio cables, i fiddled too much with the mobo ram slots...

Everything boots and works as far as i can tell, im probably just overthinking...

My question is how much flex when pushing on ram and bending of dimm slots can a mobo take? The ram stick that was bending a bit was not an extreme case or anything.

 

[Ralston18]

For the most part if everything is working the motherboard is likely okay. However some small crack or other issue may show up in the future due to heat related expansion/contraction.

There should be a bit of tolerance for flexing but how much tolerance is always a question.

I have seen heavy handed folks just jam things together (goes beyond computers), yank connectors apart, and nothing bad happens.

Then someone else who takes their time and is careful - something breaks, bends, cracks.

In practice, I have accidentally applied more force than intended and the cards, RAM, etc. survived. However, so many products are being made thinner/weaker, using laxer tolerances for holes, alignment(s) and with little or no quality assurance the odds of breaking something are going up.

My rule is that if things need to be forced then something is probably wrong. That is the time to stop.

Look over everything, re-evaluate. And sometimes "read the instructions" . That can be an adventure of sorts: text says one thing, diagram shows something else, and the part/piece is different from the first two.... Fine print may add a "forth"....

Learn to rock things into place so not as much force is needed. Whenever possible test fit things before committing to a final assembly. Leave all screws loose until all are in place before finally snugging them down. Look at how to take something apart beforehand - just in case a "do-over" is needed.