 You just finished up your new gaming rig, you boot it up and... Nothing. In desperation, you pull out your CPU and you see it. The pins... They're gone. Accidents will happen, guys. Believe me, I totally get it. Isn't this beautiful? Oh! Oh! Oh! And sometimes, accidents happen to you. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! One of our fine viewers, Ethan, I hope you're doing well, had a little accident a couple months back with his shiny new Ryzen 7 3700X, and he managed to break three of the pins clean off. Now sometimes, you'll get lucky, and the pins are just bent and they can be easily straightened. Other times, you'll get just a little bit lucky, and you can't straighten them, but you pop it in and it... Oh, great! It turns out the broken pin was a non-essential extra grounding pin, or a reserved pin, or something like that. Other times, you press the power button and... Nada. Well, that was Ethan, but fortunately, he still had a little bit of luck to spare and traded his completely non-functioning chip for some merch from us so that we could take a crack at fixing it with just a few cheap and easy-to-get tools and some other supplies that you might have lying around your house. Speaking of around your house, grizzlies! Oh, geez, I hope not. But thermal grizzlies! Conductor Not Liquid Metal Tim offers maximum cooling performance. Check it out and keep things cool at the link in the video description. Before we start, let's talk about the tools we're gonna need. A magnifying light like this would be ideal, but a regular magnifying glass will do in a pinch. And if you go that route, you're also gonna need good light because you need to see the tiny, teeny little pins that we're gonna be working with. So a desk lamp, or ideally two, so that it's illuminated from two different angles, would be freaking fantastic. Next, you're gonna need a hot air solder sta... Can you stay, please? Stay? Good boy. Next up, you'll need a hot air solder or SMD rework station. You can think of this kind of like a regular soldering iron, but with a fan attached to it. So instead of poking and prodding at the things you're trying to solder, potentially knocking them over or accidentally jabbing the tip into the PCB, we're just going to be able to take the hot air that comes out of the tip of it and kind of heat up the entire area that we're trying to work on without touching it. Now, normally these include tips. We seem to have misplaced ours and the replacement tips weren't a prime item, so we're just gonna yolo it with the big old fat tip. You'll need a good set of tweezers. We really like these ones from iFixit. As well as some flux. This will help our solder flow very nicely as we are putting the pins back on. We're gonna need some solder masks. These are available cheaply on sites like AliExpress or eBay. The one we're gonna need in particular is the 0.65 millimeter pitch one, because that matches the pin arrangement of our CPU. As you can imagine, you're not gonna wanna blow super hot air onto your kitchen countertop, so we recommend something like a couple of fireplace bricks like this, or failing that, a nice large sheet of many layers of aluminum foil. So something like five, six, seven of them, and anywhere from kind of seven inches or around 20 centimeters square. It's really important to make sure that your entire work area is clean and clear, because the last thing you wanna be doing is bumping something over or accidentally touching a hot surface. Now that all our tools are set up, all we need is the donor. What? Donor? What the, it's not a big deal, the thing's already dead. You know what, screw it, I'm gonna embrace it. Bring in the donor! Mwahaha! Our first order of business is to harvest some good pins, so we're gonna set our station to somewhere between 300 and 350 degrees Celsius. Here's a hot tip, by the way. Hey, get it? The hotter the temperature, the faster the solder melts, but also the faster you can damage your components. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Grab your tweezers and pick a good candidate for a straight pin that you wanna pull off. Start to heat up the area and don't burn yourself. When you see the solder at the base of the pins get really shiny, that means it is melted. So pick off the good pins that you wanna use, grab an extra one or two, keep the area hot until you're done, then place the pins off to the side to cool. Is this taking too long again? No. Okay, I swear to God, if these don't melt. Hey, well, we got one. Hello. There's one. There's another one. There's another one. All right, we getting the hang of this, boys. The last thing you wanna do while you're at this is pull too hard, because then you can actually rip off the pad. And once the copper contact point comes up off the CPU, you are done. Well, that's more important for the one that's not already dead, I guess. Ah, there's a perfect example. See that? We ripped off the pad. If we do that on our working CPU, game over, ladies and gentlemen. One thing to watch out for, guys, the CPU and the end of your tweezers are going to be hot. Don't touch them. That's not a smart idea. Let them cool down for a few minutes. And while you're waiting, why don't you refresh yourself with some ice cold water. LTTstore.com. I'm gonna be the next Billy Mays. Hey, it's Linus Sebastian here with extra heavy duty Alcan foil. It slices, it dices. Oh my God, my fingers. At this point, we strongly recommend practicing reattaching pins to your donor CPU. We've... Ah, ha, ha, ha. All right, all right, all right, enough. We strongly recommend reattaching them to your donor CPU till you're comfortable with the whole process. Now, I don't have time for that. Somebody ordered some tech tips on Uber Eats and these babies ain't gonna deliver themselves. So we're going straight to our new CPU. Hoping for the best here. We're just gonna go ahead and pop that on, make sure that that is in fact actually... Yeah, okay, that works just fine. And this gives us a really good look at the broken off pins on our CPU. I don't know what Ethan did here because they are straight, almost cleanly snapped off, which unfortunately is gonna make the job of removing the pins from the pads a little bit trickier. Even with these teeny tiny tweezers, it's gonna be hard to get a good grip on those. Dang it, Ethan. I really hope I don't knock off any additional pins too while I'm at it. I actually kind of wish I had practiced before doing this. I mean, you know the saying though, practices for chumps. Hey, number two's out. This last one's the hardest one. Come on. Yes. Now I just gotta find where that first pin fell. How hot is this CPU? Ah, ah. Okay, yeah, it's, oh, it's in there. Ow, ah, dang it. Brandon, can you see this? Ow. No, no, I got this, I got this. Can you see it there? Oh man, I think it might've stuck back on there. You know what? And it's gone. Perfect. 20 bucks, this thing works when I'm done. I don't actually bet money though, so it'll have to be like lunch. All right, so now we're gonna put our mask on for real. There you go, that's an important step. Then we're gonna add a little bit of flux just around the pins that we're trying to reattach here. Badoop, badoop. Now's a great time to clean our pins. So just a little bit of isopropyl alcohol and some tissue paper. Wipe the contact pad there. Clean pins will adhere a little bit better. Something to notice that the flux we're using is a bit of a thicker flux. That's gonna help hold the pins in place while we are heating up the CPU. Now let's go ahead and stick our pins where they go. Oh, why am I doing this left-handed? Now you can do the pins one at a time, but we are opting to position all of the pins on the CPU, so we're just gonna go full Hail Mary, heat the whole thing up, and hope they all kind of snap back into place here. Oh crap, I just wanna push this one over a little bit. Why am I doing this left-handed? Oh, I lied, I know the answer. The answer is that it's because I need to show the camera. Okay, I'm pretty sure that's about as good as it's gonna get right now. Whew, time to heat this baby up. Oh, and it blew them over. Okay, we need more flux, more flux. Okay, get off there, all of you. There you go, you got like a flux booger on there. All right, this is not easier. Okay, I think that's where that one goes. My certainty level is very low. Yeah, I kind of put, I think, too much flux on. So we're gonna try to melt our flux a little bit to give us a better look at what the crap we're dealing with here. Yeah, it's not getting easier. Man, you guys should go watch that other guy's guide on this. He does it better than I do it. Okay, I'm doing this right-handed, I give up. I can't show you guys what I'm doing because I need to do this with my dominant hand. Can I just put this on first and then slip the mask over top? So another thing is I think last time I kind of blew it over, whereas this time I'm gonna come straight down on it. It's gonna snap into place. Why do I doubt that? Hold on, hard bail, hard bail. I'm bailing. Okay, none of those are attached. Okay, new plan. We are putting all the pins on and slipping the solder mask over top because I don't think these pads actually slip through here. They do not. Well, that's good. Oh my God, we can just put the pins in the solder mask. Nicholas, bad instructions. Holy crap, that's how you're supposed to do it. This is so much easier. So all we're gonna do now is line the pins up in the solder mask. Did you manage to reattach pins the way you were doing it? Yeah. Well, you're a genius. I actually cannot do this with this stupid light in my way. Okay, there we go. Getting hot in here. So take off all your pins. I don't know if I would describe them as having snapped into place, but they're definitely pretty straight. Like we should be good by now, right? All right, gonna let it cool down. We're gonna pull the mask off and see if the solder soldered. I'm gonna use my very sophisticated cooling technique. Here you go, what do you think? Are all the pins gonna come up? They stayed. That's a good sign, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are attached. Nope. That one's loose AF. They're all loose. I hate this, I'm not having fun anymore. There's still a lot of flux, but the problem is that it does, blows it over right away. We're going in hot. Kind of makes sense that the mask would actually slow down the process, I guess. Okay, so it's not melted. Oh my God, is this heated up yet? Oh, one of them just moved, for sure. This is supposed to be like a quick and easy video. We were like, oh, you know, yeah, what about that dead AMD CPU? We got those solder masks? Yeah, sure, we'll just, you know, we'll put the pins back on it. Oh boy, I think we ruined it. It's not great, but the pins are on there. That could just be some burned flux. So can you see how crooked they are? Did we try and throw it in a socket at this point? Are these pins longer than the CPU though? Hold on a second. Oh my God, they're longer. Well, let's see if they even fit in the socket. You know, I specifically asked you if the pins were the same, didn't I? You can tell just looking at it. Nicholas, your only way out of this is for the audience to just love how much you've been messing with me for the last 45 minutes. So Brandon, how excited are you to find out if this works? I have faith. You have faith? But the thing is sometimes you can kind of straighten them out with the socket. Even after re-soldering them, I might need to bend them a little. No, this one is not attached well enough. Crap, we gotta heat it up again. Holy just loosen. Actually, they all seem to be on now. All right. I have a new and fresh concern, Nicholas. These pins look like they might be a little thicker. Well, we'll see if they go in there. Moment of truth time now, boys and girls. I don't know if I actually wanna know or not. Quick, get another one, let's fake it. We never actually do that, guys. No signal detected. Those fast spinning fans, that is not a good sign. Do you wanna grab a different CPU? Let's make sure the bench actually works. Wait, this is an X370 Pro. Has it been BIOS flashed? Nicholas! So we're gonna put an actually out of the box compatible motherboard on the bench. So crosshair something or other. Just get out, I'm in a hurry. This is known as a speed motherboard swap. Okay, we're going with the broken one. We're going straight for the Hail Mary here. Feels like I'm having... Oh, shh. They're moving. Well, that was either a good sound or a bad sound. No, it's not making it, okay. Trying the known good CPU just to make sure there's not something else wrong with our configuration here. This is an X570 board, right? 470 is not compatible out of the box, Nicholas! Yes! No! I can't keep track of which crosshair number corresponds to which damn chipset. Okay, Asus, take notes. Just call it the crosshair fucking X570, okay? And if you do another one, call it the fucking crosshair X570-2. There, you're welcome. Is this an X570 motherboard? I want you to read it off the motherboard itself. It's in there, I saw it, it's fine. We have to take another, we have to hit it with this. So like, what do I do? It doesn't melt. I'm fine. Honestly, if this thing managed to survive being heated up and cooled down this many times like this, it's, you know, kudos to AMD. You know, you get a bunch of... No, come on! A different pin just came off. We're back where we started. Three missing pins. Do you want to take a break from this? Nope. One more time. And it blew one of them over. Show me the snap into place, you horrible piece of garbage. No, but the ones next to them aren't melted. Nothing is melted. Like, is this the right temperature? I'm going up. Melt, you piece of garbage. Every one of these pins should be melted right now and they're not. I'm cranking it to 450. Just flow! That didn't do it, I don't know what can. Nope, nevermind. This just pulled the thing right off. We actually managed to reattach the three pins that we were trying to last time, but the pin that I was using to check and see if it was melted, that one did not reflow. So we need to put a new pin there now. Give me more flux. And it's dying. That one's solid, that one's solid. The one we just tried to attach is solid. I think all the pins are on. This one's bent at a bit of a funny angle, but maybe we can just give it a little... Well, let's get a heat sink on it. Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. F***. Yep, lost a pin again. Just putting this back on for the 18 billionth time. Okay, the RV. That's hilarious. All the pins just snapped into place. I'm pretty sure it reflowed this time. I think it's the camera operators. I think they will us to fail. Okay, you might as well roll on this. Gave it one more crack without the camera rolling, so I can get this light out of my way and actually see what the heck I'm doing. And as far as I can tell, all now five of the pins that we've had to either reattach in the first place or reattach after knocking them off are solid. And more importantly, I actually got that snapping effect and everything is lined up real nice now. Just goes to show you, as soon as you turn on a d*** camera, it's in. Why does it just say AMD 50? I don't care about AMD's 50th anniversary right now. I just want to know what's going on with this computer. What was that? No way! Yes! Okay. I can't even believe it. It's all dried up. Ryzen 7, you had no reason to have faith, Brandon. Ryzen 7, 3700X, eight core processor, 64 gigs of RAM. I'm going to put two more sticks in. I'm afraid to feel too good about this yet. Show me all four sticks. Where is it? Oh yes, there it is. It works. Let's do it live. Okay? There's the HDMI cable. Okay, you can tell it's the right one because the TV is going to turn off. You see that? I am shutting down this system. I am pulling it off because there's always some jackass in the comments that's like, oh, oh, fake, oh, pre-recorded. Yeah, carefully. Those pins are a little bent. It's kind of hard to take out. And there's a lot of flux in that socket now. So that's pretty cool. But there it is. That's the one. You know how you can tell? Cause there's a bunch of pins that are taller than the other ones at the back. So guys, you might be thinking at this point, gee Linus, that looked like a lot of work and frustration. Why would you want to do this? Well, reason one I think is pretty obvious. Out of necessity. Maybe like Ethan, you accidentally dropped your new CPU while you were attempting to install it. Another could be to save a buck. Maybe like us, you found a sweet deal on an upgrade, but it's got some pins that are bent or broken. Or maybe you just want to learn a new skill. If RPGs have taught me anything, more skills, even if you have no idea what they're for yet, are always worth putting at least a few points into. That was about the most stressed out I've been since probably the last time I did an AMD CPU pin repair video, which coincidentally is still running. That CPU, because it actually had a broken pin and all we did was jam a little piece of metal or pin into the socket and then put it on there. So I couldn't like take the CPU off because it would unfix it. So NCIX didn't want it back. And I was like, oh, okay, my parents need an upgrade. That system still runs to this day. I had a bunch of haters on that video to be like, oh, it's a bad way to fix it. It won't last. It sure did. Just like my segues will last forever to our sponsor Squarespace for sponsoring today's video. You may have heard about Squarespace. It's the easy use system that allows you to make a website in just minutes. They're a leader in website design and their all-in-one platform allows you to create your website and even do things like buy domains. You can create email campaigns even. You can make any website with Squarespace from a personal portfolio to a resume, to a fan fiction website, to even shopping websites. You can sell stuff. They have website analytics tools to help you keep track of how your website's doing and find all the weak areas to get a steady stream of traffic and their award-winning templates will help your website stand out instead of looking like it's from the 90s. We use Squarespace for Alainus Media Group and LTXExpo.com. We built them both quickly and we maintain them with Squarespace. And if you get stuck, like we have at times, you can reach out to their 24-7 support team via live chat and email. Go to squarespace.com slash LTT for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, you can get 10% off at our link in the video description. So thanks for watching, guys. I am going to go have our studio managers inventory the CPU because I just traded a bunch of merch for a 3700X. Yay, go Linus. So guys, if you like this kind of DIY nonsense, you might also enjoy our finale of our Red Camera Water Cooling series. Go check that out and subscribe to see that when it comes out. Wait, that one's not out yet by the time this comes out. I suspect it will be, so go check it out and subscribe anyway. Honestly, I feel like I earned this. Yeah, between the hours I put into it and the merch that I paid for it, I don't even feel bad, I'm keeping it.