Hey guys,

I'm having a problem.

It all started when I bought a Gigabyte G-Power cooler at a sale at NCIX.

I got home to install it. I took out the motherboard, and unlocked the lever to take out the processor to clean the thermal paste from a stock Intel cooler.

I used ArctiClean and NEVER touched the bottom of the CPU, though I did leave it on a tissue paper.

The thing is, this was my first time working with a LGA775 socket. When I attempted to close it, it was really firm. The processor was above the surface of the retainer, which I thought was odd. So I pushed it really hard, and I heard some crunching sort of noises.

I opened it up and saw that all my pins were pretty much put down flat onto the surface. Being a first-timer on this socket, I spent an hour straightening it with mechanical pencils, but obviously it wouldn't be perfect.

The second time around, I researched around on Google about the amount of force needed to close the retainer and it said don't worry if you had to apply a lot of pressure. So I did anyway.

After another hour at figuring things out and such, I finally put back my system to what it was. But now, it won't start. And by not start, I mean that the fans, hard drive and such all go on, but there's no image on the screen and I hear some noises from the CPU.

I don't know, but did I fundamentally screw the pins up by flattening them? Although I do swear, there were no other choices, because it just wouldn't close unless I forced it.

Specs:

Core 2 Duo E7200 stock
4GB RAM
MSI 945P Neo5
450W PSU
20" Acer on DVI from 8500GT.

Thanks for any help given!

I never had to apply a lot of pressure to close the lever. You normally shouldn't have to apply much more pressure than you had to in order to unlock the lever when you removed the CPU. Are you sure the CPU was inserted correctly? I'm asking because you wrote "The processor was above the surface of the retainer".

Yes, it was in correctly, because the two notches did match up as well as the arrows.

I spent about an hour just staring at it, trying to find out if it was my problem or the motherboard's problem. But I couldn't come to a conclusion anyway.

The thing is, when I unlocked the lever it took bit of an effort to do as well...it was like the lever was jammed in there.

It does require a lot of pressure to get the CPU closed in there, but I have never had an issue where I felt like I was "forcing" it or bent pins.

You might have messed it up, but why don't you post some pics and we'll look.

The good news is that an E7200 can be had for $100 now, so that's not ridiculous, but it would be a bummer to have a ruined CPU.

Crap, I had a camera just lying behind me but it never occured to me to take a few pictures ><

I'm hoping its just the motherboard, because if that's the case then I can just shell out another $110 and buya P35...but I really hope I didn't ruin the CPU.

Is that even possible, to ruin a CPU by using it with a motherboard that has a whole wad of bent pins?

I found a picture on Google, but I'll just explain using words.



Imagine the pins at the bottom all bent down to the plastic. Thats how rest of the socket was as well. So I used a mechanical pencil to straighten them all one by one.

I was reading and some website said that LGA775 pins are somewhat s-shaped and not perfectly straight. So that possibly means I seriously screwed it up by straightening it.

Based on your description, I would say that your motherboard most likely is defective. If I were you I'd bring the CPU to a shop and have it tested before buying a new motherboard. If it works, then have them install the CPU on the new motherboard.

I'll certainly try that. I'm taking it to a shop now.

On the other hand, anyone know what happens if a bit of thermal paste contacts the gold surface of the processor, then spreads thanks to poor removal attempts?

Got that now =(

Notify the shop and let them take care of that issue. They should know how to clean the CPU properly without damaging it.

They said it was fine, and I ended up getting a Gigabyte P35 board.

Now my system would bluescreen when I try to start it.

You need to repair your OS to install the correct drivers for the P35 chipset.

Great, now that I repaired the OS, it tells me that I have 110GB of unallocated space which I can't do anything about.

I seem to get an endless stream of problems. This is really annoying me. Now I have a totally useless 110GB out of 250GB.

Your disk capacity hasn't changed. If you have 110 GB of unallocated space, you can use a utility that will allow you to add it to the current partition or you can create an additional 110 GB partition.

You could also reinstall from scratch as most people would recommend. I rarely had to do it as I can usually fix issues when changing hardware, but it sometimes is challenging.

Well, after two days of messing with the system, I managed to get it back working (somewhat).

I reinstalled the OS, recovered the 100GB of missing space, and overclocked my E7200 to 3.16GHz stable after 10 hours of Orthos. I don't want to take it much more because I keep getting random crashes of Vista and other games I play like C&C3: Kane's Wrath. About 6 times Vista even refused to start so I had to do a system restore.

Actually, the last point might have had something to do with the fact that I overclocked my 8500GT way too much more than once...

It ended up costing me $200 for everything. Not a bad sum, but nevertheless hard on a student on a budget.

Thanks for all the help guys, really appreciate it.