Thought I ruined my cpu but it must be something else.

[junawuna]

I tried to reapply new thermal paste a few days ago and bent a few pins on my Ryzen 5. I got regular bsods after that and couldn't play any steam games for errors in the 5-10 min spans before the crashes.

I replaced the cpu today and it's still crashing, but less often. either it's a defective cpu or the problem is memory (Memory_management comes up a lot as a blue screen error) or the mobo.. Cuz I dropped a metal screwdriver on it twice. But it's playing decent games and crashing much less often now. Thoughts? Suggestions? Should I clear cmos again or try to reinstall windows or...

 

[Supahos]

My guess is you messed your board up putting in the cpu with bent pins. The memory controller is on the CPU, meaning if the socket is messed up in your motherboard it'll cause memory issues too

 

[junawuna]

What are the chances my current cpu is damaged for going in there? There was very, very slight resistance going in.