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  • My son's circa ten year old desktop isn't firing up and upon investigation I spot that the thermal paste had spilt everywhere and some of the pins on the CPU mount are bent.

    Is the motherboard fucked or is there a replacement simply for the mounting socket?

    Edit: added second pic zoomed in with arrow indicating bent pins

  • I’ve unfucked socket pins like this a few times in the past. Helps hugely to have fine-point tweezers, and magnifying glass/microscope.

    Soak the thermal paste overspill with isopropyl alcohol and very gently dab with micro fibre cloth fragment (using aforementioned tweezers); do not go ‘against the grain’ or it’ll fuck the pins.

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