Xeon CPU damaged in transit - can it be saved?

[e97]

Received a Xeon E5 for a low price - unfortunately the seller and delivery services have conspired against my good deal.

Here's how it arrived:



CPU itself;




Ton of toner dust? / gunk on the CPU and most worrying bent substrate corner.

Seller offered a refund which I'll probably take.

I'm curious if its possible to save? Used reliably? or am I wasting my time?

 

[Rand__]

where is the bent corner? can't see it
Don't think the toner would be a killer issue - not sure its conductive, but even if then you just need to clean properly

 

[marcoi]

wow that sucks, looks like it was ran over by usps truck. I wouldnt take a risk, in the off chance it kills your MB. (bending pins, shorts,etc.)

 

[e97]

where is the bent corner? can't see it
Don't think the toner would be a killer issue - not sure its conductive, but even if then you just need to clean properly

If it is toner, its conductive

Here's an attempt at a better pic:

wow that sucks, looks like it was ran over by usps truck. I wouldnt take a risk, in the off chance it kills your MB. (bending pins, shorts,etc.)

My thoughts exactly! I don't want to risk frying other components.

The packaged was delayed so... it either fell off the truck and got ran over or fell off the conveyor belt and got caught in the gears or something.

 

[Patrick]

@e97 one of the packaging pictures still has your address. Yikes! I would see if you could open a claim.

 

[gregsachs]

Just a note on shipping insurance that bit a guy I bought a xyratex shelf from; at least for UPS if they don't pack it they will likely deny the claim, so your seller may have a nasty surprise. My shelf took a hard hit on one corner, destroyed the ears and two caddies. The drives themselves fine at least....

 

[e97]

@Patrick eek thanks. only send me fun things folks!

Thats a good idea! I was going to return to the seller and let them handle it. I wonder if its only applicable for the seller? update: either party may file a claim

The mailer was a bubble wrap and in electrostatic pouch and seller said they sent hundreds like this with no issue.

Other sellers have sent CPUs in clam shell + industrial bubble wrap x2 + hard cardboard packaging. I like those sellers.

 

[RageBone]

i have made good experiences with damaged cpus in the past.
Your bend or damaged corner is considerably less worse then the two cases i had so far, making me think that this is not an issue.

Just clean it up so that the toner doesn't short anything out, though if it does, it will probably not do anything since it is relatively low voltage compared to it's use-case.

The only case where i had a cpu damage a board was a cracked core i9 wehre only some pins were shorted because of the crack.
So once VCore came online, those pins evaporated.
If a CPU is shorted dead, you won't get any VCore / VTT, or how ever you call the voltage that comes out of the vrms.

 

[e97]

i have made good experiences with damaged cpus in the past.
Your bend or damaged corner is considerably less worse then the two cases i had so far, making me think that this is not an issue.

Just clean it up so that the toner doesn't short anything out, though if it does, it will probably not do anything since it is relatively low voltage compared to it's use-case.

The only case where i had a cpu damage a board was a cracked core i9 wehre only some pins were shorted because of the crack.
So once VCore came online, those pins evaporated.
If a CPU is shorted dead, you won't get any VCore / VTT, or how ever you call the voltage that comes out of the vrms.

I was hoping to hear from folks with CPU damage experience. It may be low voltage but its high Amps which causes the damage..

If I had a spare x79 mobo I'd consider it

 

[RageBone]

Well, it is low voltage with the capability to deliver high amperage.

i doubt that toner is conductive enough to have low enough resistance that the current rather vaporizes the pin instead of the toner.
And that assumes that you missed a lot of toner in the wrong place while cleaning.

Clean it properly, and if you want to be safe, make better pictures of the corner, and at that point i'd say you have a working cpu.
You might want to check that the heat spreader is level. if he isn't, the core could be damaged

 

[Bernhard Neuhauser]

I would simply grab some q tips and iso alcohol to clean it carefully. Should be possible to remove most, if not all of the toner. Chances are high that it is still okay.

But to be honest: If you bought the cpu for a small company, i would send it back to get a new one. Think about long term implication - who knows, maybe the cpu will die some month later. If its your homelab i would probably risk keeping it.

Sadly, some shops make 0 considerations when it comes to packaging.

My worst parcel so far: 64gb lrdims simply thrown in a parcel with only it's esd bag as protection. In transit, they found their way from the top of the parcel to the bottom with heavy things like the PSU on top of them. It leaves a nice feeling, when you see the smd components imprinted in the esd foil. If the responsible guy would have used his brain, he would have simply opened the unsealed supermicro box and put them in there. So running out of proper packaging would be not an excuse. I think this was my first time that i wrote a package complaint to a retailer.

 

[e97]

Good news! I gave the CPU an 99% isopropyl alocohol bath with Q-tips and Cotton swabs. After it looked clean -- I gave it another one until it wiped clean. I dropped the CPU into a system, dabbed on thermal paste and bolted down a heatsink, hit power and held my breath.. and it POST'd! Reset BIOS to defaults and it went straight to OS. Running Prime95 now to see if its stable.

I plan to use this as my new main system so having it die on me would suck. Intel Xeons are tough mofos. Love me that Intel inside.

 

[Evan]

I dropped a e5-2620v4 the other day and bent the corner but it affects a pin so I guess it’s toast, lucky it’s not worth that much, but not really worth trying it out I don’t think.
Looking at yours and I know you have it working now I was going to say with all the capacitors in place maybe all it needs is a good clean and allmut seems to be.

 

[e97]

@Evan sorry to hear
Luckily theres carpet where I work on my systems but where they are moving to is concrete so I'll have to be extra careful.

Prime95 - 2 hrs - 0 errors - 0 warnings. max 57 C. Hope it lasts at least a year.

 

[Evan]

Yeah normally I would be doing this at a workbench or on the floor (yes I often just hills systems on the floor, if you drop anything even a screw or small item it can’t go far) or whatever , I was just cleaning some heatsink paste off it near a bin... should be more careful but not going to beat myself up too much over it, pretty much first time ever doing anything like that, can happen...

 

[RageBone]

@Evan affecting a pin, doesn't mean anything.

I mean, i had a e3 120v5 with a vertically split and bent corner. It was dropped onto concrete from like 2 stairs up.
Bent it back, put glue into it to make it more ruggid that the ilm doesn't crush the cpu into the LGA, and it worked.

Only the first and only pcie by 16 slot didn't work, all the other were fine.

 

[Marsh]

I can''t make out of the CPU model from the picture.

If it is very desirable CPU, tested the CPU, otherwise return for full refund.
If it works. Ask for a hefty partial refund as future insurance , in case the CPU died.

 

[wildpig1234]

I can''t make out of the CPU model from the picture.

If it is very desirable CPU, tested the CPU, otherwise return for full refund.
If it works. Ask for a hefty partial refund as future insurance , in case the CPU died.

it's e5-1620 v2.... you can definitely make out the mark on one of the images in the original post...

it's not a very expensive cpu..... not worth ruining your MB over it......

 

[e97]

I kept the CPU and seller agreed to 65% refund. Had eBay confirm everything was kosher. Seller didn't send refund without a second reminder.. claimed PayPal lost the refund process..

Don't fall for the PayPal 5-7 business days "delay". PayPal will notify you instantly for refunds/transactions within 24 hour. The 5-7 business days applies to transfers from PayPal to original payment method outside of PayPal.