I just built my first PC and was really excited until I ran into a huge problem. My motherboard was showing an error code of 00, and after trying a few things, I decided to remove the heat sink to reapply thermal paste. But then the worst happened—the CPU got stuck to the heat sink, and when I finally got it off, I noticed there were 4-6 bent pins on the corner of the CPU. I'm looking for any advice on how to fix this or tools I might need before I attempt a repair. Any help would be appreciated!
3 Answers
If you don’t have tweezers around, you can use a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil! Just take out the lead, and you can slide the empty tip over the pin to help bend it back up. Be gentle with it though, as the pencil gives you more leverage than you'd think.
I dropped my CPUs and bent pins too. I actually used a Pokémon card to straighten them, and guess what? It worked just fine after that! So don't lose hope; you might have a quick fix here.
Nice! That gives me hope!! Thanks for your optimism & sharing your personal experience.
Just take your time with the alignment. Use a razor blade to adjust the bent pins by comparing them to the straight ones. And for future removals, try heating it up for a few minutes first—makes the thermal paste easier to deal with!
Thanks a ton for your response. I had been letting it run but I guess the 40 minutes to an hour didn't heat it up enough.
Thank you very much for the Intel. I appreciate your time & reply.