Curious about socket pin episode

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I was swapping out my chip for a better one and I dropped the old one back into the exposed pins and socket. It looks like one of the pins is flattened out. I tried to lift it back up with no luck. I probably could with some surgical glasses.. The back story is I didn't reset the bios. I just dropped the new chip in: from an L5639 Xeon to an X5650 Xeon.. from what I understand is the TDP is a little higher from, 60w - 95w, and the multiplier is higher, 16x - 20x respectively. So I didn't reset the bios; thought I had a bent pin; booted up the machine and it didn't do anything except power the fans, GPU, and SDD drives.. I reset the bios, booted, nothing again. I pulled the X5650 and replaced it with the L5639 and pulled the bios battery. The system booted up fine and I am typing this from the very machine. Can a system run with a pin not touching the chip? It might or it might not be touching the CPU. I'm not sure. But all I know is the L5639 works, and the X5650 doesn't. The last thing I'm thinking is the X5650 is dead but the next thing that is suspicious is the motherboard support yet at the same time they are both Westmere chips :hmm:

 

[Tristor]

It may be able to run minus that pin depending on what the pin is. It's always better to repair it. To repair it you just need a 0.7mm mechanical pencil (the push button type) with all the lead removed, a magnifying glass, and good lighting. You slide the tip of the mechanical pencil over the pin that's flattened and lift it back up into the proper position. It's very risky to power on a board with bent pins because if they're touching each other and they're powered it can cause a short that fries the board (been there done that).

Good luck.

 

[Ieat]

If I remember correctly about half the pins are power or ground pins. If one or even a few of those are missing the board will continue to work fine. I'm typing on a Z68a-GD65 I bought with two bent pins about two years ago. Never given me any problems even with hefty overclocks. If its one of the other pins then its random what might occur. It may become unstable, or certain functions like a ram slot may no longer work or it won't post at all.

 

[crashtech]

I have an LGA1155 board that works with a bent pin. It caused one memory channel to die, but it's been in my HTPC for around a year now with no problem.

 

[gbeirn]

I swapped my L5639 for a X5650 without doing any BIOS reset. Worked just fine.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I think the X5650 is dead. I just got done trying it out again and it wouldn't boot. This L5639 booted and I am typing this out from the system.

Thanks everyone for sharing their experiences. I may try that mechanical pencil trick!