Bent pins on an AM5 mobo, any way to test them and also find which ones were on the schematic?

[mrpaco]

A friend fucked a mobo and bent 2 pins, on the left side south to north, the pins 4 and 6, which had a HUGE bent

I fixed them as good as I could

Based on the schematic pinmap of wikichip If I'm reading it correctly they should be this ones and are VSS (i think ground) pins

Socket AM5 - Packages - AMD - WikiChip

Socket AM5 is a microprocessor socket designed by AMD for their fifth generation Ryzen desktop processors with CPU cores based on the Zen 4 microarchitecture, the successor to Socket AM4. It has counterparts in Socket SP5 for servers and the FP7 package for the mobile market.

en.wikichip.org

so to test the motherboard should I just try to boot it and if it does is fine and the ground pins are working? Or am I wrong and could be another thing and should we try the system with any other test?

 

[freeagent]

Drop a CPU in and send it, pretty much the only way to know for sure

 

[pavle]

Fixed pins look alright, maybe you want to have the tips a bit higher (not lower) than other pins so the CPU presses them down and have a good ground connection as these two pins you say are ground.

 

[Bill_Bright]

The upper pin looks (from here) to be slightly tilted to the left. The bottom pin looks, (again, from here) to be leaning slightly back compared to the other pins in that row.

If me, I would try VERY CAREFULLY and GENTLEY to straighten them just a tiny bit more to [hopefully] coerce them back in line, aligned with their adjacent pins. If they resist further movement, I would stop trying. Forcing them any further may break them. Not good.

There is no way to test to see if you were successful other than to (1) plop it in the socket to see if it appears to seat completely without force and then (2), see if it boots.

Note, obviously these pins are not meant to be bent. That means the metal alloy material used for the pins was not designed to tolerate multiple bends and stresses without metal fatigue (micro-fractures) setting in. That means even 1 or 2 bends is enough to fatigue the metal. Once fatigue starts, just 1 more bend could be enough to cause it to completely fracture and break off. Not good. Therefore, you must hold the number of times you attempt to straighten the pins to a bare minimum.

Having said all that, my concern is whether or not you (or your friend) took the necessary electro-static discharge (ESD) precautions to ensure you didn't zap the processor with 10s of 1000s of volts of static electricity.

It should be noted a static discharge can be so tiny, we mere humans cannot see it, hear it, or feel it yet the discharge still has enough "potential" to torch a Grand Canyon size trench (microscopically speaking) through 1000s or even millions of transistor gates, totally destroying the ESD sensitive device. And note one does not even have to touch the device for the discharge to happen. If the potential is high enough (and it usually is) the discharge (spark or arc) will "jump" from your fingertip to the device - again without us even realizing a discharge occurred.

Modern CPUs are designed to help prevent such damage by shunting such discharges through the outer protective cover; the CPU's heat shield, to ground. But obviously, that is not possible when the discharge goes through the device's exposed electrical contacts, or pins in this case.

Sadly, the only way to verify if a dead device was damaged by ESD is through the lens of a powerful microscope.

Good luck and please keep us posted.

 

[mrpaco]

the psu arrived, we installed the components, and the system booted normally, we passed some cinebench for an hour to see if it was stable and we didn't see anything wrong, not reboots or system problems, so it seems like I fixed the pins and he saved 300 from a new motherboard

 

[Bill_Bright]

Great! I am glad it worked out and thanks for coming back with your followup status update.

 

[BlueBee]

the psu arrived, we installed the components, and the system booted normally, we passed some cinebench for an hour to see if it was stable and we didn't see anything wrong, not reboots or system problems, so it seems like I fixed the pins and he saved 300 from a new motherboard

Bet that was a fingers crossed, touch wood moment, he needs to buy you a beer or two

 

[_roman_]

VSS pins should not be that problematic assuming no pins were shorting other contacts.

Thanks for keeping the topic updated and sharing your way with that situation.

 

[Launcestonian]

This is a problem I had with an MSI B650 board over a year ago, I was hesitant to do anything about it until I invested in magnification tools for my old eyes in order to approximately get tiny pins at the right angle like the rest of the pins. They don't have to be perfect just near enough so when the CPU is fitted correctly the little pads at the bottom of the CPU can contact the pins - that's all that matters. I did it & it booted up just fine with my lapped 7600X! ever since then I leave that cpu as it is cause' its working just fine & OC well to this day. Lesson learned!
I used a sewing needle & took my time to fix it, whatever you do - do not rush it.