Mistake During Sale of Motherboard

[Dajinn]

if the buyer is bored in the mean time, depending on if he is waiting to hear from supermicro or something, fishing line carefully placed under each pin could be the safest method for re-positioning them. done it plenty of times when i had to clean up other people's messes -_-

 

[cheezehead]

if the buyer is bored in the mean time, depending on if he is waiting to hear from supermicro or something, fishing line carefully placed under each pin could be the safest method for re-positioning them. done it plenty of times when i had to clean up other people's messes -_-

never tried fishing line for it before, should be non-marking unlike my usual extra small set of forceps.

 

[Dajinn]

also try dental floss too if the fishing line is too thin to reliably hold onto.

 

[sergeant72]

There are ~2000 pins on the CPU. Each pin has a specific purpose. Some are for the PCIe slots, some are for RAM slots, etc... Given what pin(s) are bent, it's related component will not function.

I'd also speculate that there is a possibility of inflicting electrical damage (depending on what pins are shortened).

 

[sergeant72]

As promised, the update on repair attempt.
Used a needle and a pair of "glasses":

Here is how it looked before (the most problematic areas are outlined with red - zoom in to see more):

and here is how it looks now:

The board boots, everything seems to be recognized in BIOS.
Any advise on more thorough/proper testing approach would be appreciated.

 

[neo]

I'd also speculate that there is a possibility of inflicting electrical damage (depending on what pins are shortened).

Yep, you are right. Lots of different scenarios can occur. I've had a consumer Asus Z77 board with a bent pin(s) that simply restarted every 10-15 mins.

What tools did you use to repair those pins?

 

[acmcool]

I would say run it for few hours non stop...

 

[sergeant72]

What tools did you use to repair those pins?

Just a sharp sewing needle, looking through those magnifying glasses - applying the force to un-bend.

 

[Aestr]

As mentioned each pin has a purpose so ideally you want to test all those functions. Populate all the DIMM slots and run memtest on it, make sure all PCI slots work, etc.

 

[sergeant72]

As mentioned each pin has a purpose so ideally you want to test all those functions. Populate all the DIMM slots and run memtest on it, make sure all PCI slots work, etc.

It will take a lot of DIMMs/cards to populate all the slots on that motherboard

 

[neo]

A majority of the pins on the CPU are for RAM slots. Try switching out which banks you have your DIMMs plugged into.

 

[coolrunnings82]

A majority of the pins on the CPU are for RAM slots. Try switching out which banks you have your DIMMs plugged into.

With it off of course... LOL! Had a guy while taking a support call try hotswapping ram while on the phone with me. I could not stop him. The magic smoke was released.

 

[Jake1978]

OK, so if the pin is actually damaged, there will be loss of functionality. That's what I didn't' understand, how it could be functioning correctly with that kind of damage.

 

[snclawson]

Quite a few pins are power or ground pins, so it's entirely possible to have missing pins and have everything work fine. Obviously it would be best to have all the pins, but missing a ground or two isn't going to hurt you like missing a signal pin. =)

If you really want to find out what the pins do and what you should be checking, look for the Intel docs with the pinouts.

www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/design-guides/core-i7-lga-2011-guide.pdf
www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/core-i7-lga-2011-datasheet-vol-1.pdf

 

[neo]

It's not always easy to see the pattern with the naked eye, I found this useful

 

[Fritz]

Wow, I recently bought 2 used 1366 SM boards and never even thought to look at the pins. Both have fully populated memory slots and both run flawlessly so I guess they're both OK. But I will look next time.

 

[acmcool]

It's not always easy to see the pattern with the naked eye, I found this useful

This is really useful...