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There is an older, but apparently persistent issue on gigabyte B450 motherboards where using hdmi out on the motherboard or gpu will cause the cpu fan speed controller in bios to read -50C. Since it’s not possible to set a minimum fan speed in bios, this means your cpu throttles extremely hard as it effectively has only your case fans cooling it. Software can read the cpu temperature just fine, and Gigabyte support dismisses this bug when notified, as “just on some cpus”, “bad hdmi cords”, and/or “just on some versions”, despite all of those being know to be false.
A couple years ago I had a Finalmouse for less than a year and it stopped charging or connecting. I RMA'd it to Finalmouse and they took several months to identify the issue. By the time they got back to me my mouse had been out of warranty. When I pushed back about having to pay for a new unit they told me it was water damaged. I have the mouse as a reminder to not get scammed by shiny marketing.
Known user error weeks ago tbh. The guy mounted it ignoring the marks and guides. I havent even watched the video yet. Watching purely to see how Steve and co dig into it.
@@PhantasmXYZ computer seeking dogs actually do exist. They use them to find hidden computers in raids. They can smell something in the silicone that is not perceptible to us or something. Not super knowledgeable on this just something I came across bumming on the interwebs.
@@hiddenguy67 That's never really been the case, though it has gotten easier to not feck up over time. These newer sockets with the pins on the board, do look more likely to have accidents than the older pins on cpus, as you cannot feel the cpu seating as well.
Or forgot the golden rule of new system building, make sure that your CPU is socketed and hidden under your cooler before you unbox your thick GPU and it tries to jump it.
Pushing power connectors in with their sharp edges makes you look like you were ambushed by several feral cats. The scars are your good luck charm and proof of your honorable fight. Oh and never forget that feeling comfortable or confident during PC building is a bad omen and should be taken as a sign that you did something wrong and your neighbourhood will be destroyed by the inevitable meltdown of your athlon cpu... wait, wrong era.
I work at a prominent electronics retailer. A customer came in looking to replace their motherboard because it had “bent pins” and wouldn’t socket. Of course the same customer was trying to put an AM4 CPU into an AM5 socket, and was hugely surprised when they were told that’s not how that works
I was this guy once. I had to upgrade my motherboard because I needed more pci slots. Because I wanted to reuse the rest of my parts I chose MOBO with the same socket. After installation it didn't work. After a lot of trying I concluded the mobo was dead, because I retried my previous mobo and everything was OK. I replaced my new MOBO in the store and to my suprise the replacement didn't work either. After some research I found my problem. The socket name was LGA 1151. It was of course stupid of me to assume LGA 1151 and LGA 1151 was the same thing.
@@IceDee No, it's LGA 1151 v1 (Intel 6th and 7th gen) and LGA 1151 v2 (Intel 8th and 9th gen). They basically use the same socket, but are incompatible towards each other. Aaaaaand it happened to me too.
@@IceDee I think he meant 1151 and 1151. Intel in their infinite wisdom used the same 1151 socket for the 6th, 7th, and 8th gen cpus. However the pinout for the 8th gen was different, so not compatible with the former two.
That magneto reluctance bit was so well placed i had to mention it. I was thinking "this could all be gibberish and I'd barely be able to tell cos I don't know enough" so e 10 seconds before. Editor gets the highest praise I can award "you made me exhale sharply through my nose"
For those curious about that clip, look up Rockwell Automation Retro Encabulator if you want to see the whole video. There's a couple of different versions out there, but the Rockwell one is my favorite.
Steve, first off, thanks for offering to help this user out, as well as helping out everyone else in the community in terms of new knowledge. Second, as a component level repair tech, your team's investigation was pretty much spot-on with the failure analysis route I would have done. I can smell the magic smoke from here.
I'm pretty sure that's not a real job title. Almost no one repairs anything at the PCB level today. They just replace it with a new part and toss the old one in the trash. People stopped repairing PCB's many years ago. It's not worth the time anymore.
@@Sabrinahuskydogit's not just about repairing. It's also about finding out what went wrong to avoid another fiasco in the next revision or next board.
The very first pc I ever assembled, I wound up not seating the 24-pin fully. So, of course, I try to boot up, and the pc won't post. I got frustrated and brought it to canada computers and had them look at it. The guy opened it up, poked around, and found the 24-pin on an angle. He fixed it, and it posted no problem. Cost me $50 to learn a lesson to slow down and be more methodical more than 13 years ago. Thanks for always trying to educate us, Steve.
That's nothing. When I built my first AMD build I didn't know they didn't have integrated GPUs. I drove 2 hours to my buddy's place to get him to troubleshoot for me just for him to be like "Where's your video card?". Every rig I'd built until that point had been Intel so I was used to not installing my graphics card right away to make sure it would post without it.
My lesson was that the screws securing the mobo to the case were more than just structural. Similar trip to the shop followed by the tech taking 2 seconds to ask me where the missing standoff screw posts were. Lucky for me he didn't charge me - only cost me a little chagrin, time, and gas. I, too, learned a bit about RTFM and being more methodical :)
I remember starting my research when I went to build my first PC. At first I was like, "Wow, GPUs are expensive I'd hate to screw putting that in." My brother: "Wait until you put your CPU in the socket." Me: "Oh... oh... no..." I was almost crying the first time I had to relatch the socket. I was sure I did it wrong and killed it. No, had a DOA mobo. Got it returned got another one, CPU worked a treat. I swear to God those engineers designed it to use the most destressing amount of tension possible.
In 30+ years of working with computers, I have only ever installed a CPU incorrectly once and fried it. It was a 486 Socket 3(?) CPU. The ceramic shield melted and I never made that mistake again. I've never installed a LGA CPU "sideways". That took talent, and not the good kind. Also... holy hell, Steve, hitting us with the Rockwell Retro Encabulator... OMG you truly are Tech Jesus.
Happened to me as well. I used to build computers for my family and friends when I was young. I put a 478 socket CPU into the socket rotated by 90 degrees, didn't notice, and hard pressed the stock cooler on it. It made two more holes into the socket on one side, by pressing the cpu pins through the plastic. Nothing happened luckily, when I found out the issue and placed the cpu correctly, it worked fine. I called this board "the socket 480" later on
Hehe, the first grade in secondary vocational education for becoming an IT-person (never worked in it by the way) was coming from building your own computer. A LOT of people installed their CPU's wrong, cracking the PCB/substrate. They didn't even get to the power-on stage. There were also quite a lot of people who managed to install their memory banks the wrong way, with their motherboard even IN the case appearing visibly bent. The people who only did that last thing didn´t suffer problems by the way: they had to reverse the banks and they worked normally. But the absolute scariest/most shocking defects I have witnessed was the result of insulation on datacables being shaved off and contacting the chassis where the grid-seperation of the power supply caused a MASSIVE short. In one case a user's internal PC speaker (the little beep-thing) had it's positive wire come off the speaker and hit the chassis. It became scorching hot and melted the insulation, blowing out the smoke from the melting insulation out through the case fan. The second case of smoke was a clam-shell Dell computer with some beautiful cable routing. But it was an older, cheaper case, with really sharp edges. And upon closing the shell, the floppy drive cable pin 1 strand got stuck between the chassis which cut straight through the insulation. This pin 1 strand got so hot that the insulation didn't melt, but turned into carbon. It blew out a huuuuge amount of smoke through the case fan. The person working on it stepped back in total fear and someone else jumped up towards the table from the back to pull the plug. The floppy drive controller was toast on that machine, we used a new cable but it never worked again. The machine otherwise was fine though. Glad my dad always told me about observing the orientation (he was a system administrator in the 80's, 90's and into the 2000's)
Add a AMD Duron to that list... Was switching out the cooler for a new one, but forgot to switch the PSU off / pull the power plug. Do not remember if that PSU (at that time) had a manual power switch. System booted, not sure what triggered it, and i scrambled to stop the boot. But ... remember that missing cooler (there was no overheat protection on a CPU during those days) aaaaand, it fried itself during that short boot cycle. "He's dead, Jim" ... rip. That was a expensive error. 25 years later, my CPU destruction counter still stands at 1/100's. You quickly learn your lesson from a stupid mistake like that.
Same experience of 30+ years, i fried a PIII when i didn't ground myself. But i had several repairs of inproper installed CPU's. Those discolourations are know by myself to some extend. Those LGA Sockets are not idiot proof. Especially when you make a Aliexpress/Ebay CPU Upgrade you can start polishing the Pads on the CPU, as most of those CPU's are from dead machines, retested and then sold. Seat them carefully and "rattle" them carefully in the socket is my way to seat them properly. I had one situation were this "ratteling" prevented me as i felt a solid "click" and then the CPU was correctly seated and worked. That was as someone which had already mantained and worked on literally thousands of CPU before and is the "get to guy" for problematic cases.
Mate in 30+ Years lets see. Ive cracked dies Cracked substrates Melted Pins clean off the CPU Set them litterally on fire. When i was 8 according to mum and dad i wanted to see if a CPU could work underwater with no heatsync, so i threw it in the bath damn near blew the house up Killed with Voltage Killed with Current (always fun) Shorted Pins together to disable protections Drilled holes in CPU's to disable something And i was an equal opertunitys killer, i killed Celerons, P1, P2, P3, TONS of P4's, AMD Bartons (blew up about 20 of them), FX, I3, i7, I9s, Xeons, Opterons, ARM (Always hillarious)
Well the main issue is letting out the magic smoke in the first place! Every tech savvy geek knows you need to keep the magic smoke inside or your computer stops working!
Hmm. That explains a lot. I thought you were supposed to let the Magic Smoke out. Like letting the genie out of the lamp so you can get your three wishes.
A dark night in the city. Steve is being cornered in a dark alley by two shady looking guys, one from AMD and the other from MSI while he desperatley holds the motherboard and CPU in his shaking arms. "Now now, be smart. Just give us the package and nobody's gonna get hurt, capisce?"
The reddit thread pretty much came to the same conclusion. He literally crunched it into the socket, which is insane to think he applied that much pressure using the little lever lol.
Those levers always make horrible crunching sounds for me but cpus been fine. I installed it first time thought pins were gone after the noise took it out saw they were fine and reinstalled it. This was an AM4 socket 5600 and my first time installing a cpu lol.
Considering the lever is a force multiplier, and it's metal vs plastic, it's not surprising at all. From my experience with various sockets, it can be quite nerve racking how much force can be required to properly secure these mechanisms. Same goes for how much pressure some CPU coolers require, older intel stock coolers are particularly sketchy.. Any one of us could make this same mistake
@@Ben-Rogue I remember the first time i built a pc. The amount of force required for not just the CPU but also RAM is definitely nerve wracking if you don't know any better.
Really? You’re gonna pull that one bro? My hands hurt! Side note, my uncle was included on that spoof back in the day at Chrysler 😂 he told me they had fun fucking cars up and finding out how the POS fails 😂 he worked at the proving grounds.
Nice in depth investigation, the socket damage is clear enough for me to have a clear idea of what or who caused the issue but your deeper investigation on pin damage and scorched pin alignment leaves no space for doubts. Great work
I am a metrology engineer in a materials testing industry. Steve I show your videos to manufacturers of our testing equipment. Thanks your integrity indirectly helps our roads. So feel good about that. One of those manufacturers are based in raleigh.
Good for you for keeping an open mind. After all it didn't look like it was intentional damage. And also from the photos, one couldn't say that the socket wasn't damaged prior to installation. And thanks to that you found out about 2 different socket manufacturers. With honestly a bit worrying issue on foxconn one that the ILM/SAM might damage the part beneath it, with "just" the pressure of closing it. Especially repeatedly.
Eeeh. In my personal experience they could actually survive being installed 90 degrees off. Or maybe it was 386. There was even a bit of smoke, but it actually did post, boot and work after installing it correctly. On an unrelated note we also had an IDE cable that would only work when both drives were plugged in. Or, rather, not drives, you could just plug it with an empty socket torn off the drive motherboard, that was enough.
@@infine-8222 In my experience, most of the time the CPUs just died and never worked again. ...Except for that *one* time. One day, there was a guy a few bench spaces down working on a 486 something. he had walked away after the machine wouldn't boot, when suddenly there was a violent explosion. Fortunately the case was on its side. Pieces of the CPU had been ejected into the spray foam and insulation in the ceiling. After we all got up off the floor, we went over to check the system out. It had the smell of electronics death and a hole in the board under the socket. We thought he may have done something dumb like put a firecracker under the CPU, but there was no residue. I think we came to the conclusion that the cheap chineseium power supply failed and just sent rectified mains to everything and it went downhill after that.
@@bland9876 It was definitely IDE, not SCSI. It was consumer tier PCs, SCSI is for more expensive toys. I've only seen SCSI much later, at work like maybe twice. Just the cable itself was faulty in a funny way. Probably extensive wear in the plugs area.
This is exactly why I dislike the flat pad cpu style, the sea of pins into holes made damn sure you couldn't rotate out incorrectly and much harder to misalign in the first place -_-
I still haven't received my 9800X3D due to the abysmally poor availability in my country. Seeing someone on Reddit light $1000 worth of components on fire was... very painful.
Same had mine pre ordered was supposed to get it by Christmas ordered through a PC building company a tray version instead boxed. them being upset having payed for these cpus they supposedly got a meeting with someone at amd around January 8th? Hopefully will come soon
Statement I got: Happy Holidays and New Years from Thank you so much for being patient with us and we hope your holiday season has been going well! We are sorry in regards to any delay in communication, as we have been swamped with getting as many systems out for the holidays as possible to fulfill as many folks holiday season and information has been fairly limited even though we ask every few days for an update. We had most of our staff off for Christmas Day and Boxing Day so we are going through our messages now and responding to everyone as we are getting our holiday shipments out. We understand this delay may have affected your ability to do the same with your own PCs and from the bottom of our hearts we sincerely apologize for that (we have been affected by this as well as we have over a dozen of systems missing 9800X3D/7800X3D that we cannot complete, just waiting on CPUs to arrive). We were expecting our stock of 9800X3D (both box and tray) to arrive by Christmas Day, but as it is obvious at this stage that has not happened. We understand that is frustrating for you as it is frustrating for us as well as we get half hearted responses from distribution telling us much larger companies are still waiting on much larger orders and AMD has many of their key folks out during the holidays. To address this issue in a manner that cannot be ignored, we have taken the liberty of securing a meeting with AMD at CES on January 8th in person to both discuss the issues we have encountered with supply constrains (for product we have already paid for) with a higher level executive and *hopefully* securing our allocation for 9900X3D and 9950X3D to make sure those units ship on time (we expect large demand for the 9950X3D when it launches, and we do not want a repeat of this situation ever again). AMD has not been responded to our other emails and meeting requests for an earlier meeting, most likely because they know this is an issue across the whole industry and that key folks are out of the office during the holidays. As a precaution we have closed preorders on 9800X3D until we get concrete information.
This is some pretty damn high quality tech journalism. They saw a potential issue, researched TF out of it, and came to a very logical and well thought out theory that it was improperly installed. AND NOW more people are aware of the issue and hopefully this prevents OTHER Users from unintentionally nuking their own systems. Kudos! I haven't been watching much lately but this video was REALLY good!
let's be honest - it won't. whoever is likely to make such a mistake is someone who is trying to build a pc without sufficient experience and such a vid will just spook them, but unlikely to help them. unless it spooks them to delegate the installation to actual professionals.
@@indeedinteresting2156 I am about to tell you something shocking: people are usually learning on their own mistakes best. Someone who'd interpret the way to put a cpu into socket incorrectly, will not automagically gain an ability to interpret the instructions / get a feel for when things are going wrong just because they know there were precendents.
@@Zekses "People are [usually] learning from their mistakes" - That is true, but misleading. People can learn from their mistakes while also being able to learn from videos like this one just like what the OP said that YOU rebuked, stating that this video will only "spook them." "Someone who'd interpret the way to put a CPU into socket incorrectly will not magically gain an ability to interpret instructions..." - What? No. People are not as dumb as you think, especially normal people which is the average cognitive performance. Where did you get this conclusion, from the internet? 🤦
@@indeedinteresting2156 it's one thing to know on paper how to do something. it doesn't prevent you from making a mistake by omission. like. let's say there's a certain rule of thumb to feel if the cpu is slipping into the socket corrrectly, or rule of thumb to know how to not mess up once it did. it's also very easy to "interpret" instructions instead of rading them. any kind of stuff can happen and these parts are waaaaay too expensive to risk. you can also very easily apply thermal paste in some incorrect way. or, god forbid spill it while applying. Will everyone make a mistake? No ofc not. But I'd venture a guess that a person who is willing to install by oneself and make a mistake as the one who burned their cpu in this vid would be just as likely to do it exactly the same if they watched a vid like that prior.
The Foxconn / Lotes socket stuff was massively interesting. They also appear to be using quite different plastics as the graining is different. Lotes seems to be of a larger grain to my eye, theoretically that would make the Foxconn plastic denser but the Lotes plastic has much more defined edges. Some basic hardness testing would be interesting!
I'm glad it turned out to be user error. And I want to commend you for the way you laid this out. You stuck to the facts and treated the guy fairly, while also showing that it was his error and not AMD or something like that. I worry this will become more frequent as these pin connections get more complex, but I don't have any good answers on how to make that better.
@@lubricustheslippery5028Not necessarily. Installing a CPU is rather simple and it has been the exact same for literal DECADES. If you build your first PC, watch a build guide. Everyone and their mum will tell you to align the triangle symbol on the CPU with the triangle symbol on the socket. After you put the CPU into the socket, wiggle it a little bit to make sure it really does sit in there securely. Again, the same for decades now and you can look up how to do it properly. Do not get me wrong. User errors happen. When I helped my best friend build a PC recently, the fans of the AIO didn't turn on. Found the error quickly. I had connected the current cable for the pump but had forgotten the current cable for the fans. Easy fix. But shit happens to all of us. Doesn't mean the part is badly designed.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 its not common though. it just happens from time to time. doesnt make it that much better, but thats how things work from time to time. nobody is perfect and not every product can count everything in.
Whew. I saw the title without knowing about the reddit thread. I picked up a 9800X3D a couple of weeks ago and just ordered an MSI (X870E Carbon, not Tomahawk) motherboard, so you had me worried there for a minute. Glad to have seen this.
I really appreciate how in touch and empathetic Steve and the team are with this, I feel like it's quite easy sometimes to see someone do something wrong or make a mistake sometimes that might appear trivial to other people and to immediately scold or bash them. I really liked the emphasis on not having a go at the user, and for making a point to investigate this thoroughly and to use it educationally. Big props for this video, I thought it was great!
Completely agreed. Unfortunately, I somehow don't think that all members of the Reddit community named "PC Master Race" will ever really have the maturity to act this way. Which is a shame, because as Steve pointed out, it could've been a good learning opportunity for everyone.
Yes, the empathy is nice and props to GN for the video, but personally what irks me the most about this is how the user didn't even contemplate he did something wrong, just goes and posts it and feeds into the conspiracy theory that somehow this could be either AMD or MSI's fault. This is something that could have been avoided by watching a 2 minute video of basic CPU installation. Inserting the CPU sideways and then slamming it into the board with the lever (probably required ridiculous amounts of force) is not just a mistake that can happen to everyone. At least I think most people don't try to power through hardware installation when keys exist precisely to avoid this happening. This is probably what would have happened if I asked my mother to install the CPU. The dude looks into MSI forums after the incident to research the 00 code but doesn't have the same skills to just go on UA-cam and watch a basic AM5 installation that outlines all the keys on the socket and how to align the CPU? Just treats the components as if they are LEGO? I'm not trying to be elitist but this was just disrespectful and totally careless installation, I'm pretty sure the user knew deep down he caused the damage and he basically got off scot-free with GN buying the damaged hardware back. Lucky for him but probably undeserved. Still great video though.
This reminds me of the time a friend ask me to look at his son's computer that he just put together and it wouldn't boot. After I attached the heat sink on the CPU, it and the CPU just fell out. Looking at how the CPU was aligned the triangles were not matching. Then when I looked at the CPU it had bent pins. I informed them of my findings and that the pins might be able to be bent back, but that might not work and might cause more damage, they asked me to do it. My first time bending pins back. After it posted and booted. I think the CPU was just dropped in the socket and the heat sink placed on top with no other things needed being done, but I was glad to have got it working for them.
The remarkable thing is that an error of 1mm and an angle of 1° is enough to annihilate both the cpu and the motherboard. In the olden days the pins were further apart than that, and you could feel the cpu pins drop into the holes. If it went in level and you weren't heavy handed everything was good. The modern pins and pads are so delicate by comparison and there's no natural alignment within their mechanism. Even tiny hand movements could damage the pins. The design with alternating power and ground pins rather adds to the short circuit risk. Exciting. Obviously there are the outer alignment notches, but clearly they are not fail safe. A better idea would be longer solid alignment pins (or notches) that have to aligned and engaged with before the final lowering of the cpu. Then the cpu would be aligned mechanically before even meeting the tiny pins and well before the clamps are even touched. Reducing any alignment error below the critical level, which is probably only 1/4 of a pad, maybe less.
I have installed a server CPU (I do not remember which model, but it was recent and IIRC it was Intel, but I am not completely sure) where I had to first attach the CPU to the heatsink and then install the heatsink+cpu combo on the motherboard. It was less scary than installing a regular LGA CPU.
I am not a huge fan of pins in sockets. But that's the way the world went. So here we all are now. I load a CPU into those sockets like it's nitroglycerin. Very carefully.
@@Pentium100MHz i've seen that even back when intel had PGA still, socket 604 dl580 g4 or g5, you attach the cpu to the heatsink, which then aligns with pins before even touches the socket. would make even more sense for these lga sockets
@@VivianDoremy I have not really used Intel CPUs at that time, I used AMD. From the newer Intel CPUs I think the ones named after metals (xeon silver, xeon gold) do this. It was weird when I first saw the instructions, but then it looked better than the usual way of installing LGA CPU.
You should be able to feel the CPU locate properly in the plastic perimeter of the LGA socket as well. I mean sure accidents happen but also 1mm offset as suggested by the video is kinda a LOT. It has also happened to many people to install a PGA CPU improperly and bend the pins, these sorts of accidents were never anything out of the ordinary. Most classic sockets pin pitch was 1.27 (370 478 754 939 AM2 etc) and AM4 was 1.0mm
I remember seeing this thread after I ordered my chip but a while before it arrived because of backorder delay, and it helped me to be extra extra careful with installation as I'd never done a build on this style of socket before. Absolutely agree with you that investigating it was still worthwhile for user education!
Smart move not roasting the guy. The next person won't be hesitating over fears of being clowned on. If he reads this, I nearly fried by first build by forgetting motherboard standoffs. That phenom 965 was the most expensive thing i had ever bought at the time. Not a good feeling.
My first PC was around the time the first x64 processors and 1TB drives were commercially viable. I spent a lot. I didn't use stand offs. I shorted a lot of stuff. 😑
Heh, I remember looking into a build that wouldn't start at all but all the parts were tested separately and working fine. Turned out that the (very cheap) case had those raised nipples pressed into the motherboard tray instead of regular screw-in standoffs, and the top part of those was just wide enough to contact some of the solder points on the bottom side. Fortunately those aren't very common, but it's something to keep in mind.
I remember building a PC for a friend, and he got the components and started building it and when I got there they had the motherboard in the case without the standoffs. Lucky I got there before they tried it. The way I see it, it's like Ikea furniture, you're not smart if you think you can ignore the manuals. It's smart to just follow the manuals because you can make mistakes, some steps might not be obvious when needed, and you might just miss something less obvious.
i think it was Buildzoid whose video about this incident i previously watched and he came to the same conclusion after analyzing the pictures. good to have multiple qualified and congruent opinions on this now
Back in the day when I was doing my CompTIA A+ we were looking at memory DIMMS. The trainer pointed out that the DIMMS are keyed and you can't install them incorrectly. Unless, he told us, the installer uses brute force and ignorance. He said any keying can be ignored with this method, and it sometimes is. This is the first time I've directly seen the result of the brute force and ignorance install making it to power on. I'll hand it to the user for allowing us to have this educational and entertaining investigation! I hope he paid attention to keying with his replacement hardware!
@@GamersNexus yeah, better add some liquid metal for better thermal conductivity. Top tier CPUs are pretty hot nowadays, regular thermal paste just doesn't cut it anymore
Thank you for that awesome advice, I'll start doing this from now on. Should I also apply thermal paste to the fan blades of my GPU to encourage heat transfer between the airflow that flows through them? I figured I'd also start putting thermal paste in my USB ports to ensure that I don't overheat devices attached.
It would have been nice to see how the user had installed it improperly by giving us the "incorrectly installed" shot vs what it should have looked like. When I put CPUs in I always put my finger on it and give it a little jiggle to make sure it's central and secure in the slot before closing the bracket
@@Nebbia_affaraccimiei you can pretty much picture it by the deformations of the socket... The cpu was sitting partially on top of the sockets cpu orientation tab, and then the latch was forcibly closed, crushing that locator tab with the CPU. It's ham fisted levels of installation, or even a case of trying to install the CPU while the motherboard was already in the case and vertical. Total amateur incompetence, as if they never even watched a PC build basics video.
@@Wil3vlbc9gvk604 Don't be so hard on people, especially new builders. That's how you turn them away from the hobby and push them to buy a prebuilt that runs at 1.3ghz below spec.
This is why I love you guys and bought a shirt earlier this year. I know NO ONE out there that is either willing or able to go through all of this to find out what happened. This is invaluable information for ANY OEM or user level system builder. 💪
Maybe they did use software to measure it first, but due to their integrity felt it was better to double-check manually to avoid a miscount on the software part
I actually saw this post just before building my first PC. I was looking around about the 9800X3D after grabbing one shortly after launch, and built my PC shortly after reading the post. It was my first PC I built myself with 0 help and the entire time I was thinking about that reddit post, as it definitely seemed from the comments that most people thought it was user error. That post made me take extra extra careful caution in setting up my PC. I'm glad I saw it. It's possible it would have been fine, but I like to think that post being in the back of my mind definitely made me take extra care when building my PC.
Regardless of whose fault it is, it is a good informational piece to others that will help them. Kind of like the AIO placement videos you did prior. Sure it’s common sense sometimes but the more you know, you know.
@GamersNexus I do think it's odd that each socket manufacturer apparently has different specifications for the retention bracket. I would think AMD would dictate the spec of the entire thing instead of just the CPU slot.
the level you guys took this investigation is phenomenal. Always enjoy these vids. I am planning on doing a refresh on my system next year so knowing these things will def help out! Thank you!
@@GreySectoid Warranty only covers what the company thinks it can/cant get away with. You can install a part perfectly and if the company thinks it can reneg, it will. If health insurance companies can get away with it where people die, motherboard manufacturers can get away with it when users just need to buy another mobo.
@@charlie7mason None of the mainboard companies are that much better about it. Particularly hilarious is Gigabyte where factory warranty repair might take half a year and make it worse than it was and hazardous to use. Your only recourse is to buy from a seller that knows how to kick their nuts when the company is being garbage.
@@masmullin Fully agree, I had warranties declined due to "user dropping the laptop" and after I disassembled it I found a burn mark on the motherboard exactly matching one of the heatpipes and a melted capacitor (on one laptop) and melted port (on another) right next to the burn mark. Don't know what is more crazy, the fact that companies get away with it, or the fact that the same thing happened to me twice.
Just one word , integrity. You guys are always on the level and always trying to inform . All while keeping your video format tight , precise , articulate and not letting the companies pay sway your opinion . Keep it up team !
Excellent forensic work, guys! I made PCBs for a number of years and used the AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) machines that you spoke of. When you speculated that the AOI missed the alignment of the socket on the board, I laughed and immediately thought that there's no way. The system can and does detect the smallest deviations and will immediately flag them for review by the person at the end of the line. If for some reason it didn't flag it for review, it wouldn't flag any others with the same defect for review either, which would have resulted in a whole batch of defective motherboards burning up on people.They are also usually tested in-house before shipping, so it would have malfunctioned at that time and not at the end-user as seen here. Not to say that escapes don't happen, but it would be extremely unlikely in this case. My next thought was to inspect the alignment of the processor within the socket and inspect the contact area of the pins and the processor. The next thing I know, that's exactly what you're doing! With that said, based on the evidence presented, I agree with your conclusions. This was human error. A expensive mistake. Keep up the great work!
Thanks to Steve & Gamers Nexus for the detailed look! I feel better knowing the problem was an installation flaw and not a manufacturing or design defect. I hope we all know how small and fragile these parts are. In the future; I hope the person who put this together takes the care required to avoid this assembly issue. Once again, thanks to Steve and the excellent reporting from Gamers Nexus! You guys are the best and have earned our trust with this kind of reporting!!! Well done.
Really appreciate the quality of journalism and attention to detail demonstrated throughout this investigation. Really impressive work all around. I like that you brought attention to the different sockets, I found that interesting.
great analysis as usual! super interesting to see what happens in this situation, and the way you illustrated the pin layout made it super easy to understand.
Buildzoid sometimes forget that he started out as a clueless noob too. We all do. And I bet that Buildzoid has fried more hardware than most. Granted, he knows when he is poking around the dangerous bits, but he too finds the limits the hard way.
I find that a dangerous attitude for the hobby. Insulting everyone that wants to give it a try will lead to people not even trying. Aside from losing the next generation of enthusiast, we will have a world were only overpriced pre-builts are sold.
People used to argue with me that AM4 was awful because PGA is too easy to destroy and that LGA is vastly better b/c it prevents that kind of mistake. I would say that the same carelessness that would result in a destroyed AM4 CPU will easily destroy the LGA version as well.
this was useful info, props to the guy with TDS to sell you guys the damaged parts. I didn't know it was even possible to close the lid if the CPU wasn't seated down fully. This is just a good reminder to double check that all corners and sides of your CPU are inside the socket walls before clamping down.
I saw this, everyone was saying Steve was about to get scammed because it was 100% user error, not knowing how to put the square in the square hole is pretty bad
This is also why I photograph ALL new parts, before putting together a system. Never know when that 5 seconds of taking a photo, and 3 mb of storage space on a HDD/SSD will save you from a trouble-some support ticket argument, or heaven forbid, a lengthy and costly lawsuit...
I had magic smoke from an ASUS ARGB controller. It was a mostly harmless failure other than the trauma to my heart and psyche. All of it still works except that pathetic little controller.
@@TylerSL92Some people just aren't meant to build their own PC, the socket is designed so that if you put the cpu on it's place, it will slide down to it's correct position due to gravity, unless you install it vertically, which isn't the correct way to do it.
Ive built quite a few PCS and done upgrades but man i still look at the manuals and just quick online help for new/old used parts. ya never know that one time your forget a step on a simple thing like a cooler bracket.
This reminds me of a neighbor of mine, that was saved from his fuckup by another fuckup. 1st time attempting a PC build, his PC wouldn't turn on at all. Not that it wouldn't boot, it simply wouldn't turn the power supply on at all. Turns out he had connected the power button cable wrong, which saved him, since he had also the motherboard EPS 12v with a GPU 8 pin inserted (dead short), some badly inserted RAM and... an AM4 CPU 90° from it's correct position. It had some pins bent, one completely ripped off (thankfully it was just one of the 3 DisplayPort connections, that was unused on that case), one pin that had no matching hole...made a hole for itself. That wasn't fun but got it working thankfully, with much care managed to bend the pins all back, other than one that snapped before even attempting this. Much cheaper than it could have been.
Holy crap, it's amazing how rough people can be with such delicate components. I've seen RAM inserted backwards and forced to latch, that's about it. The force was so great that the stick shot out of the board when I undid the latch.
Just *_loved_* this episode. Thanks. One note: I'm concerned that the lines you saw had a variance of roughly .3 degrees between only 4 rows and weren't much closer to deadon parallel. I believe you mentioned something akin to not knowing the rotation point. But regardless of rotation point, I can't see how the lines would be diverging from each other. Even in the case of a compound angle (a z-axis tip because of the crushed plastic guide you showed), the intersection of the CPU plane with the with the board plane would result in parallel contact points. On angle, sure, but I can't quite see how they wouldn't be parallel. IOW, seeing them all off by 1.1° makes sense. Seeing them vary.......not so much. Perhaps it's because of a cascading crush of varying amounts, but that seems sketchy.
Magic Smoke. Wow. There's something I haven't smelled since 1986. Edit: Nevermind. There used to be a toy you could buy that was a tube of stuff you could rub between your fingers and produce Magic Smoke. That's what I was thinking of, rather than an electrical fire.
@@JustinAlexanderBell I had to look it up. Actually it was phosphorus in a tube. You can apparently make it by lighting the strike pad from a box of matches on fire, with the strike pad facing down, which puts some of the phosphorus from the pad onto the surface of whatever you burned it on. You can rub that stuff between your fingers for the same effect.
Controversy? Clearly this was a delusional Redditor, which is no big surprise. Classic case of an emotionally immature person incapable of dealing with making a significant error. Either that, or posturing to try and scam a warranty replacement. I've seen it time and time again on Reddit, it just usually isn't this extreme and doesn't get multi-platform coverage. This is just what you get when you have numerous You Tubers convincing every idiot out there that 'building a PC is easy!". That is a big lie. So is the concept of 'future proofing'. As someone who came of age during the dawn of 3D gaming, I can guarantee that your 4090 or 9800X3D is not going to last as long as you think before it is obsolete. Things like Pascal or AM4 are anomalies in the history of PC gaming. If it doesn't support PCIe 6.0 or Direct X 13, it is going to be done before this decade is finished. We are clearly entering a period of rapid development in tech. Frankly, I didn't think it would even take 5 years of 8 core CPUs being common. Now they are mandatory. Future games will have to fully make use of multicore CPUs to achieve the graphical performance the component manufacturers and developers are colluding to produce. GPUs will rapidly evolve in the next few years. And, by the end of the decade, a gaming PC will definitely need a NPU and probably also a QPU in order to run the latest games. That's what DX 13 will be all about. Incorporating AI and basic quantum computing into gaming. And fully path traced rendering. As for whether you even want to play the latest AAA games in 4 or 5 years, that's another matter. Because of the focus on graphics, gameplay has taken a backseat. Not much innovation happening there so, over the next few years, we'll get those photorealistic graphics, but at the cost of not having games you actually enjoy playing.
This happens to the best of us. I'm a software/hardware engineer & I was doing a service of some systems I run as dedicated servers. I took out a i5 8600k CPU to give it a clean & new paste, put it back in & as I was closing the bracket, it felt like more resistance, I pushed a little more & then I heard the crunch. I put the CPU in the wrong way & disfigured the CPU. I’ve been doing this for over 25 years & the amount of system builds & services in that time is staggering & I think I can count on 1 hand how many times this has happened. So, I sympathise with the user who did this & no shame should be put on him. It can happen to anyone, a momentary lapse of concentration can lead to disaster. This is why I double check everything, but these being my own machines, I didn’t. We live & we learn, the main thing is, we learn from it!
I honestly feel like the manufacturers need to do a bit better job of designing the socket notches and the latch. AM5 takes a surprising amount of force compared to AM4, I can definitely see if a user accidentally bumped the cpu during the process and ended up crushing both the mobo and the cpu in the process because "the surprisingly high force for the latch is expected". Either make it so that the cpu recesses into the socket only one way with no possibility for movement, or make it require less force so the user stops if it takes too much force
No. Judging from the damage at the bottom plastic notch , looks to me like, the end-user is trying to install the CPU when the motherboard is standing vertically.
Only need to look at the picture of the socket for 10 seconds to be able to see the guy made a mistake when inserting the CPU. Probably didn't place it correctly and closed the lid by heavy force as shown by the bent plastic notches. Absolute nothingburger
thankfully these guys got to the poster before some of these snarky losers in the comments could. a lot more people just learned valuable lessons that way.
"Yo Boss, Lisa, check this out. Steve from GN just bought some fried PCMR sourced 9800 X3D chip" Lisa: "I am not ready to be hearing boss music this early in the morning"
I've always told people, be very careful. CPU's should go into the socket very easily, you shouldn't have to use any force whatsoever, and everything should line up perfectly. This applies to both PGA and LGA, though PGA is obsolete and a lot more prone to improper installation.
I've always kind of hated when the pins are on the motherboard. I've done two Intel builds for family members and both times I felt like I was going to break something even though it was perfectly fine.
@Eepy-Rose No lie, I've always suspected Intel moved to LGA because it meant a broken pin was a motherboard manufacturer's problem instead of a CPU manufacturer's problem. Eliminated damaged pin warranty claims overnight.
Installation in PGA is a breeze. Trying to switch coolers with them is not. I yanked my 2700X right out of the socket even though I thoroughly heat soaked it before trying to remove the old cooler. Had a couple of fun hours with isopropanol and dental floss, and finally a heat gun to soften the paste to get the old cooler off, and then a couple of nerve wracking minutes with a credit card to straighten the bent pins. Not fun. Glad they switched to LGA for AM5.
You guys just saved probably a combined million dollars of research time, downtime, engineering time, and administration time from MSI and AMD. Good job, guys. Your journalism is second to none. I mean it.
Watch the WORST OF 2024 here! New Disappointment PC: ua-cam.com/video/5KZ3d_624Ws/v-deo.html
This was a fun one. If you have parts you think were manufacturer failures, and especially if they reject what you think are valid RMAs, don't hesitate to let us know! Always looking for more failed components (though ideally from clear manufacturing issues). You can support our work here: www.patreon.com/gamersnexus
Check out our recent review of an ASUS prebuilt PC here: ua-cam.com/video/JNxHEj9PKoY/v-deo.html&
Grab something on our store! store.gamersnexus.net/
Thanks, Snowflake
d4m4ge r3p0rt !
Best tech channel ever
There is an older, but apparently persistent issue on gigabyte B450 motherboards where using hdmi out on the motherboard or gpu will cause the cpu fan speed controller in bios to read -50C. Since it’s not possible to set a minimum fan speed in bios, this means your cpu throttles extremely hard as it effectively has only your case fans cooling it.
Software can read the cpu temperature just fine, and Gigabyte support dismisses this bug when notified, as “just on some cpus”, “bad hdmi cords”, and/or “just on some versions”, despite all of those being know to be false.
A couple years ago I had a Finalmouse for less than a year and it stopped charging or connecting. I RMA'd it to Finalmouse and they took several months to identify the issue. By the time they got back to me my mouse had been out of warranty. When I pushed back about having to pay for a new unit they told me it was water damaged. I have the mouse as a reminder to not get scammed by shiny marketing.
A bunch of AMD engineers just breathed a huge sigh of relief
I did hear that they had fun trying to repro it by just attempting to blow up boards, though.
Many pants were harmed during this viewing.
Thanks for the spoilers!
@@blackhorseteck8381 maybe dont read the comments
Known user error weeks ago tbh. The guy mounted it ignoring the marks and guides. I havent even watched the video yet. Watching purely to see how Steve and co dig into it.
I used Olive oil under the CPU, just to give it that extra Mediterranean cuisine smell and flavor
How long do you normally cook it for?
dude i kinda wanna do this
Olive really is the best oil out there. I pour some into my car's gas tank once in a while to make the exhaust healthier
You stooopid 😂😂 ahahahah
I personally prefer something with a higher smoke point, like canola or grapeseed. Keeps the magic smoke in for longer!
5:39 the fact that AMD and MSI showed up in your DMs alone ....really makes this video worth it. Thanks Steve!
It's just damage control..
@@gentle285no
It was actually really great to hear this part!
@@gentle285 yea, but it means they care. Even if it's just their own public image. It's better to care somewhat, than ignore completely.
@@ximaxwellix The caring starting right when a more prominent tech channel shows interest is quite telling, though...
7:37 I like the implication that you have a smelloscope sensitive enough to tell if an individual pin smells bad.
Steve’s 👃🏼 is highly trained at this point.
Truly a computer bloodhound if there ever was one lol
@@PhantasmXYZ "computer bloodhound" LMAO 🤣🤣🤣
@@PhantasmXYZ computer seeking dogs actually do exist. They use them to find hidden computers in raids. They can smell something in the silicone that is not perceptible to us or something. Not super knowledgeable on this just something I came across bumming on the interwebs.
"We investigated your problem and found out you're the problem"
"Problem located between chair and keyboard."
@@diestormliea classic case of PEBKAC
thought pcs were idiot proof, not
When the problem asks you what's the problem:
@@hiddenguy67 That's never really been the case, though it has gotten easier to not feck up over time. These newer sockets with the pins on the board, do look more likely to have accidents than the older pins on cpus, as you cannot feel the cpu seating as well.
they probably forgot to give the blood sacrifice required when building a pc.
That's why they fit razor blades on the case panels
The fins on air coolers.... every time...
*Applies RAM to wrists.*
Or forgot the golden rule of new system building, make sure that your CPU is socketed and hidden under your cooler before you unbox your thick GPU and it tries to jump it.
Pushing power connectors in with their sharp edges makes you look like you were ambushed by several feral cats.
The scars are your good luck charm and proof of your honorable fight.
Oh and never forget that feeling comfortable or confident during PC building is a bad omen and should be taken as a sign that you did something wrong and your neighbourhood will be destroyed by the inevitable meltdown of your athlon cpu... wait, wrong era.
I work at a prominent electronics retailer.
A customer came in looking to replace their motherboard because it had “bent pins” and wouldn’t socket.
Of course the same customer was trying to put an AM4 CPU into an AM5 socket, and was hugely surprised when they were told that’s not how that works
Have you seen the pictures of people filing in a new notch into their (wrong type of) memory stick because it wouldn't align? ;)
I was this guy once. I had to upgrade my motherboard because I needed more pci slots. Because I wanted to reuse the rest of my parts I chose MOBO with the same socket. After installation it didn't work. After a lot of trying I concluded the mobo was dead, because I retried my previous mobo and everything was OK. I replaced my new MOBO in the store and to my suprise the replacement didn't work either. After some research I found my problem. The socket name was LGA 1151. It was of course stupid of me to assume LGA 1151 and LGA 1151 was the same thing.
@@TheMarcQ you meant 1151 and 1150?
@@IceDee No, it's LGA 1151 v1 (Intel 6th and 7th gen) and LGA 1151 v2 (Intel 8th and 9th gen). They basically use the same socket, but are incompatible towards each other. Aaaaaand it happened to me too.
@@IceDee I think he meant 1151 and 1151. Intel in their infinite wisdom used the same 1151 socket for the 6th, 7th, and 8th gen cpus. However the pinout for the 8th gen was different, so not compatible with the former two.
glad to see we all got the opportunity to learn from this. Thank you to you and your team for doing that for us!
That magneto reluctance bit was so well placed i had to mention it. I was thinking "this could all be gibberish and I'd barely be able to tell cos I don't know enough" so e 10 seconds before. Editor gets the highest praise I can award "you made me exhale sharply through my nose"
That edit got me so good I even made a small "heh!" sound.
I troll my students with the retroencabulator bit. Some actually start taking notes.
Bump bump BUMP BUMP BUMPY,
BUMPITY BUMP bumPBuMP BUMP
Bump.
@@LabCat At least they are listening ;)
For those curious about that clip, look up Rockwell Automation Retro Encabulator if you want to see the whole video. There's a couple of different versions out there, but the Rockwell one is my favorite.
Steve, first off, thanks for offering to help this user out, as well as helping out everyone else in the community in terms of new knowledge. Second, as a component level repair tech, your team's investigation was pretty much spot-on with the failure analysis route I would have done. I can smell the magic smoke from here.
Thank you! And that's an awesome job you have!
I'm pretty sure that's not a real job title. Almost no one repairs anything at the PCB level today. They just replace it with a new part and toss the old one in the trash. People stopped repairing PCB's many years ago. It's not worth the time anymore.
@@Sabrinahuskydogit's not just about repairing. It's also about finding out what went wrong to avoid another fiasco in the next revision or next board.
@@Sabrinahuskydog Louis Rossmann would like to have a word with you
@@Sabrinahuskydog Still happens on gpus all the time.
URL Slaps
Slap like now!
Nob Ass?
Epico!
NOBASS!
BaSs 🫨
0:20 i swear to god i thought he is gonna say "and it's also smell like this segway to our sponsor"
Wrong channel, but a very good one indeed. Also, *segue.
LTT 😂
ptsd at this point
LMAO 🤣🤣🤣
Me too. I came to the comments to post that lol.
I was thinking, id love you to show user errors, because its a good teaching point.
Agreed!
@GamersNexus thanks steve!
Exactly. And if a certain user error shows up quite often, like a certain melting plug type, then we go from user error to "user error".
"It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes" - Warren Buffett
This. Like, I didn't even know you could missalign the CPU that badly by simply installing it. Might pay more attention to that in the future.
The very first pc I ever assembled, I wound up not seating the 24-pin fully. So, of course, I try to boot up, and the pc won't post.
I got frustrated and brought it to canada computers and had them look at it.
The guy opened it up, poked around, and found the 24-pin on an angle. He fixed it, and it posted no problem.
Cost me $50 to learn a lesson to slow down and be more methodical more than 13 years ago.
Thanks for always trying to educate us, Steve.
Damn, I would've just told you to take it home and not charge you if it was something that simple...
But I get it, businesses gotta make money
@@DoxSteeleFor a big (ish) business, it's probably already entered into the system by the time the tech even sees it, unfortunately.
A guy I worked with several years ago had the same issue. Took me all of 2 minutes to get it working for him.
That's nothing. When I built my first AMD build I didn't know they didn't have integrated GPUs. I drove 2 hours to my buddy's place to get him to troubleshoot for me just for him to be like "Where's your video card?". Every rig I'd built until that point had been Intel so I was used to not installing my graphics card right away to make sure it would post without it.
My lesson was that the screws securing the mobo to the case were more than just structural. Similar trip to the shop followed by the tech taking 2 seconds to ask me where the missing standoff screw posts were. Lucky for me he didn't charge me - only cost me a little chagrin, time, and gas. I, too, learned a bit about RTFM and being more methodical :)
I remember starting my research when I went to build my first PC.
At first I was like, "Wow, GPUs are expensive I'd hate to screw putting that in."
My brother: "Wait until you put your CPU in the socket."
Me: "Oh... oh... no..."
I was almost crying the first time I had to relatch the socket. I was sure I did it wrong and killed it. No, had a DOA mobo. Got it returned got another one, CPU worked a treat.
I swear to God those engineers designed it to use the most destressing amount of tension possible.
Based on my extensive knowledge on the subject matter, I believe a cat was at least partially responsible for this.
Good point. We'll look for cat hair next time.
Was it the same cat that kicked my crazy old TV back when it was brand new and almost breaked it? 🤣
@@guily6669 A friend of mine's cat pissed on his tv during the 1990 world cup final final and blew it up.
@@harislade6676 Was the cat okay?
@@darkbooger I'm reading "it" as the cat.
In 30+ years of working with computers, I have only ever installed a CPU incorrectly once and fried it. It was a 486 Socket 3(?) CPU. The ceramic shield melted and I never made that mistake again. I've never installed a LGA CPU "sideways". That took talent, and not the good kind.
Also... holy hell, Steve, hitting us with the Rockwell Retro Encabulator... OMG you truly are Tech Jesus.
Happened to me as well. I used to build computers for my family and friends when I was young. I put a 478 socket CPU into the socket rotated by 90 degrees, didn't notice, and hard pressed the stock cooler on it. It made two more holes into the socket on one side, by pressing the cpu pins through the plastic. Nothing happened luckily, when I found out the issue and placed the cpu correctly, it worked fine. I called this board "the socket 480" later on
Hehe, the first grade in secondary vocational education for becoming an IT-person (never worked in it by the way) was coming from building your own computer.
A LOT of people installed their CPU's wrong, cracking the PCB/substrate. They didn't even get to the power-on stage.
There were also quite a lot of people who managed to install their memory banks the wrong way, with their motherboard even IN the case appearing visibly bent.
The people who only did that last thing didn´t suffer problems by the way: they had to reverse the banks and they worked normally.
But the absolute scariest/most shocking defects I have witnessed was the result of insulation on datacables being shaved off and contacting the chassis where the grid-seperation of the power supply caused a MASSIVE short.
In one case a user's internal PC speaker (the little beep-thing) had it's positive wire come off the speaker and hit the chassis. It became scorching hot and melted the insulation, blowing out the smoke from the melting insulation out through the case fan.
The second case of smoke was a clam-shell Dell computer with some beautiful cable routing. But it was an older, cheaper case, with really sharp edges. And upon closing the shell, the floppy drive cable pin 1 strand got stuck between the chassis which cut straight through the insulation.
This pin 1 strand got so hot that the insulation didn't melt, but turned into carbon. It blew out a huuuuge amount of smoke through the case fan. The person working on it stepped back in total fear and someone else jumped up towards the table from the back to pull the plug.
The floppy drive controller was toast on that machine, we used a new cable but it never worked again. The machine otherwise was fine though.
Glad my dad always told me about observing the orientation (he was a system administrator in the 80's, 90's and into the 2000's)
Add a AMD Duron to that list... Was switching out the cooler for a new one, but forgot to switch the PSU off / pull the power plug. Do not remember if that PSU (at that time) had a manual power switch. System booted, not sure what triggered it, and i scrambled to stop the boot. But ... remember that missing cooler (there was no overheat protection on a CPU during those days) aaaaand, it fried itself during that short boot cycle. "He's dead, Jim" ... rip.
That was a expensive error. 25 years later, my CPU destruction counter still stands at 1/100's. You quickly learn your lesson from a stupid mistake like that.
Same experience of 30+ years, i fried a PIII when i didn't ground myself. But i had several repairs of inproper installed CPU's. Those discolourations are know by myself to some extend. Those LGA Sockets are not idiot proof. Especially when you make a Aliexpress/Ebay CPU Upgrade you can start polishing the Pads on the CPU, as most of those CPU's are from dead machines, retested and then sold. Seat them carefully and "rattle" them carefully in the socket is my way to seat them properly.
I had one situation were this "ratteling" prevented me as i felt a solid "click" and then the CPU was correctly seated and worked. That was as someone which had already mantained and worked on literally thousands of CPU before and is the "get to guy" for problematic cases.
Mate in 30+ Years lets see.
Ive cracked dies
Cracked substrates
Melted Pins clean off the CPU
Set them litterally on fire.
When i was 8 according to mum and dad i wanted to see if a CPU could work underwater with no heatsync, so i threw it in the bath damn near blew the house up
Killed with Voltage
Killed with Current (always fun)
Shorted Pins together to disable protections
Drilled holes in CPU's to disable something
And i was an equal opertunitys killer, i killed Celerons, P1, P2, P3, TONS of P4's, AMD Bartons (blew up about 20 of them), FX, I3, i7, I9s, Xeons, Opterons, ARM (Always hillarious)
Well the main issue is letting out the magic smoke in the first place! Every tech savvy geek knows you need to keep the magic smoke inside or your computer stops working!
It's why you have to apply lots of silicon sealant between the CPU and the socket, it helps stop the smoke from leaking out
Hmmm I thought it was Omnimechs that you couldn't let the magic smoke out of... Interesting.
Wow a genius 👏 😍 👌 🙌
Hmm. That explains a lot. I thought you were supposed to let the Magic Smoke out. Like letting the genie out of the lamp so you can get your three wishes.
@@Lurch-Botyes but after building the PC not before or during it unless your a pro like me and just lose screws along the way
damn, MSI and AMD has dedicated agents just monitoring steve's team.
Steve and his team are top tier.
A dark night in the city. Steve is being cornered in a dark alley by two shady looking guys, one from AMD and the other from MSI while he desperatley holds the motherboard and CPU in his shaking arms. "Now now, be smart. Just give us the package and nobody's gonna get hurt, capisce?"
They sure have eyes on the relevant subreddits, so when GN shows up, they'll know.
Possibly but this subject is a joke. Most likely blown up intentionally
boss, steve just bought a burned MOBO and CPU from reddit.
*boss starts sweating*
The reddit thread pretty much came to the same conclusion. He literally crunched it into the socket, which is insane to think he applied that much pressure using the little lever lol.
Those levers always make horrible crunching sounds for me but cpus been fine. I installed it first time thought pins were gone after the noise took it out saw they were fine and reinstalled it. This was an AM4 socket 5600 and my first time installing a cpu lol.
Considering the lever is a force multiplier, and it's metal vs plastic, it's not surprising at all. From my experience with various sockets, it can be quite nerve racking how much force can be required to properly secure these mechanisms. Same goes for how much pressure some CPU coolers require, older intel stock coolers are particularly sketchy.. Any one of us could make this same mistake
@@Ben-Rogue
I remember the first time i built a pc. The amount of force required for not just the CPU but also RAM is definitely nerve wracking if you don't know any better.
Strong boi
it's clear the guy doesn't do much thinking to begin with, look at his comment history lmao
Called it! It was the turbo encabulator the whole time!
Are you sure? Did you check the flux capacitor first?
How did you do the Hyperlink??
Really? You’re gonna pull that one bro? My hands hurt! Side note, my uncle was included on that spoof back in the day at Chrysler 😂 he told me they had fun fucking cars up and finding out how the POS fails 😂 he worked at the proving grounds.
If you're not careful, they don't reduce side-fumbling as much as you expect
I'm pretty sure it was the linear actuometer that failed. If all else fails, don't forget to check the flux capacitor.
Nice in depth investigation, the socket damage is clear enough for me to have a clear idea of what or who caused the issue but your deeper investigation on pin damage and scorched pin alignment leaves no space for doubts. Great work
I am a metrology engineer in a materials testing industry. Steve I show your videos to manufacturers of our testing equipment. Thanks your integrity indirectly helps our roads. So feel good about that. One of those manufacturers are based in raleigh.
How can u be contacted for guidance and advices?
How is a machine that tests "materials" and building a pc the same?
The tell em you should get a payrise just for that xD
@djashjonesfor one, gn does deep microscope inspections to study how materials deformed, either on receipt or after a (somewhat) well-defined load.
@@dead-claudia I understand using a microscope for inspections but I must of missed the bit on using a loadcell on a cpu cooler.
Good for you for keeping an open mind. After all it didn't look like it was intentional damage. And also from the photos, one couldn't say that the socket wasn't damaged prior to installation.
And thanks to that you found out about 2 different socket manufacturers. With honestly a bit worrying issue on foxconn one that the ILM/SAM might damage the part beneath it, with "just" the pressure of closing it. Especially repeatedly.
After all it didn't look like it was intentional damage. It clearly looked like intentional damage from the mangled socket.
@@dragonproductions236 You mean that this person wanted to damage their mobo and CPU?
@@jannegrey User error is intentional damage.
You pouring gas into your diesel car will damage the engine, it's not a manufacturing/design fault.
@@dragonproductions236it's called an accident.
@dragonproductions236 you know what intention means right?
This brings back memories of kids in the tech lab in high school installing 486 CPUs backwards and blowing them and/or the motherboard up.
Eeeh. In my personal experience they could actually survive being installed 90 degrees off. Or maybe it was 386. There was even a bit of smoke, but it actually did post, boot and work after installing it correctly. On an unrelated note we also had an IDE cable that would only work when both drives were plugged in. Or, rather, not drives, you could just plug it with an empty socket torn off the drive motherboard, that was enough.
@@infine-8222You sure that was IDE and not the other one where you need a termination plug?
@@bland9876 SCSI is the acronym you're not remembering.
@@infine-8222 In my experience, most of the time the CPUs just died and never worked again.
...Except for that *one* time.
One day, there was a guy a few bench spaces down working on a 486 something. he had walked away after the machine wouldn't boot, when suddenly there was a violent explosion. Fortunately the case was on its side. Pieces of the CPU had been ejected into the spray foam and insulation in the ceiling.
After we all got up off the floor, we went over to check the system out. It had the smell of electronics death and a hole in the board under the socket.
We thought he may have done something dumb like put a firecracker under the CPU, but there was no residue. I think we came to the conclusion that the cheap chineseium power supply failed and just sent rectified mains to everything and it went downhill after that.
@@bland9876 It was definitely IDE, not SCSI. It was consumer tier PCs, SCSI is for more expensive toys. I've only seen SCSI much later, at work like maybe twice. Just the cable itself was faulty in a funny way. Probably extensive wear in the plugs area.
This is exactly why I dislike the flat pad cpu style, the sea of pins into holes made damn sure you couldn't rotate out incorrectly and much harder to misalign in the first place -_-
I still haven't received my 9800X3D due to the abysmally poor availability in my country. Seeing someone on Reddit light $1000 worth of components on fire was... very painful.
Still waiting too.
Only good thing is that it was a pre-paid preorder for around MSRP.
They upped the price by like 150 Euro already.
When did you ordered? I'm also waiting my 9800x3d for a month now.
Only painful if you was ignorant enough not to purchase it with a credit card so you don't have insurance.
Same had mine pre ordered was supposed to get it by Christmas ordered through a PC building company a tray version instead boxed. them being upset having payed for these cpus they supposedly got a meeting with someone at amd around January 8th? Hopefully will come soon
Statement I got:
Happy Holidays and New Years from Thank you so much for being patient with us and we hope your holiday season has been going well! We are sorry in regards to any delay in communication, as we have been swamped with getting as many systems out for the holidays as possible to fulfill as many folks holiday season and information has been fairly limited even though we ask every few days for an update. We had most of our staff off for Christmas Day and Boxing Day so we are going through our messages now and responding to everyone as we are getting our holiday shipments out. We understand this delay may have affected your ability to do the same with your own PCs and from the bottom of our hearts we sincerely apologize for that (we have been affected by this as well as we have over a dozen of systems missing 9800X3D/7800X3D that we cannot complete, just waiting on CPUs to arrive). We were expecting our stock of 9800X3D (both box and tray) to arrive by Christmas Day, but as it is obvious at this stage that has not happened. We understand that is frustrating for you as it is frustrating for us as well as we get half hearted responses from distribution telling us much larger companies are still waiting on much larger orders and AMD has many of their key folks out during the holidays. To address this issue in a manner that cannot be ignored, we have taken the liberty of securing a meeting with AMD at CES on January 8th in person to both discuss the issues we have encountered with supply constrains (for product we have already paid for) with a higher level executive and *hopefully* securing our allocation for 9900X3D and 9950X3D to make sure those units ship on time (we expect large demand for the 9950X3D when it launches, and we do not want a repeat of this situation ever again). AMD has not been responded to our other emails and meeting requests for an earlier meeting, most likely because they know this is an issue across the whole industry and that key folks are out of the office during the holidays. As a precaution we have closed preorders on 9800X3D until we get concrete information.
This is some pretty damn high quality tech journalism. They saw a potential issue, researched TF out of it, and came to a very logical and well thought out theory that it was improperly installed. AND NOW more people are aware of the issue and hopefully this prevents OTHER Users from unintentionally nuking their own systems. Kudos! I haven't been watching much lately but this video was REALLY good!
let's be honest - it won't. whoever is likely to make such a mistake is someone who is trying to build a pc without sufficient experience and such a vid will just spook them, but unlikely to help them. unless it spooks them to delegate the installation to actual professionals.
@@Zekses I'm about to tell you something shocking. People are capable of learning! Normal people at least. Human ability is quite magical, right?
@@indeedinteresting2156 I am about to tell you something shocking: people are usually learning on their own mistakes best. Someone who'd interpret the way to put a cpu into socket incorrectly, will not automagically gain an ability to interpret the instructions / get a feel for when things are going wrong just because they know there were precendents.
@@Zekses
"People are [usually] learning from their mistakes"
- That is true, but misleading. People can learn from their mistakes while also being able to learn from videos like this one just like what the OP said that YOU rebuked, stating that this video will only "spook them."
"Someone who'd interpret the way to put a CPU into socket incorrectly will not magically gain an ability to interpret instructions..."
- What? No. People are not as dumb as you think, especially normal people which is the average cognitive performance. Where did you get this conclusion, from the internet? 🤦
@@indeedinteresting2156 it's one thing to know on paper how to do something. it doesn't prevent you from making a mistake by omission. like. let's say there's a certain rule of thumb to feel if the cpu is slipping into the socket corrrectly, or rule of thumb to know how to not mess up once it did. it's also very easy to "interpret" instructions instead of rading them. any kind of stuff can happen and these parts are waaaaay too expensive to risk. you can also very easily apply thermal paste in some incorrect way. or, god forbid spill it while applying. Will everyone make a mistake? No ofc not. But I'd venture a guess that a person who is willing to install by oneself and make a mistake as the one who burned their cpu in this vid would be just as likely to do it exactly the same if they watched a vid like that prior.
The Foxconn / Lotes socket stuff was massively interesting. They also appear to be using quite different plastics as the graining is different.
Lotes seems to be of a larger grain to my eye, theoretically that would make the Foxconn plastic denser but the Lotes plastic has much more defined edges. Some basic hardness testing would be interesting!
Probably also to do with the length of the glass fiber filler in the plastic
The labeled CPU pads over the damage was a sick graphic! Love these videos.
I'm glad it turned out to be user error. And I want to commend you for the way you laid this out. You stuck to the facts and treated the guy fairly, while also showing that it was his error and not AMD or something like that. I worry this will become more frequent as these pin connections get more complex, but I don't have any good answers on how to make that better.
Probably tighter socket tolerances. Keying along more than one edge.
Guess people forgot the wiggle method of assuring the cpu is aligned in the socket
If it's an common user error, it's also an design error
@@lubricustheslippery5028Not necessarily. Installing a CPU is rather simple and it has been the exact same for literal DECADES.
If you build your first PC, watch a build guide. Everyone and their mum will tell you to align the triangle symbol on the CPU with the triangle symbol on the socket. After you put the CPU into the socket, wiggle it a little bit to make sure it really does sit in there securely. Again, the same for decades now and you can look up how to do it properly.
Do not get me wrong. User errors happen. When I helped my best friend build a PC recently, the fans of the AIO didn't turn on. Found the error quickly. I had connected the current cable for the pump but had forgotten the current cable for the fans. Easy fix. But shit happens to all of us. Doesn't mean the part is badly designed.
@@lubricustheslippery5028 its not common though. it just happens from time to time. doesnt make it that much better, but thats how things work from time to time. nobody is perfect and not every product can count everything in.
Whew. I saw the title without knowing about the reddit thread. I picked up a 9800X3D a couple of weeks ago and just ordered an MSI (X870E Carbon, not Tomahawk) motherboard, so you had me worried there for a minute. Glad to have seen this.
Be extra careful installing an AM5 CPU though.
Just be SUPER careful and precise with the CPU install
this is when journalism transcends into engineering. steve, i aspire to be like you.
Wow! Amazing analysis and finding out what happened. Thanks for making this video for us to learn from.
I really appreciate how in touch and empathetic Steve and the team are with this, I feel like it's quite easy sometimes to see someone do something wrong or make a mistake sometimes that might appear trivial to other people and to immediately scold or bash them. I really liked the emphasis on not having a go at the user, and for making a point to investigate this thoroughly and to use it educationally.
Big props for this video, I thought it was great!
Completely agreed. Unfortunately, I somehow don't think that all members of the Reddit community named "PC Master Race" will ever really have the maturity to act this way. Which is a shame, because as Steve pointed out, it could've been a good learning opportunity for everyone.
Yes, the empathy is nice and props to GN for the video, but personally what irks me the most about this is how the user didn't even contemplate he did something wrong, just goes and posts it and feeds into the conspiracy theory that somehow this could be either AMD or MSI's fault. This is something that could have been avoided by watching a 2 minute video of basic CPU installation. Inserting the CPU sideways and then slamming it into the board with the lever (probably required ridiculous amounts of force) is not just a mistake that can happen to everyone. At least I think most people don't try to power through hardware installation when keys exist precisely to avoid this happening. This is probably what would have happened if I asked my mother to install the CPU.
The dude looks into MSI forums after the incident to research the 00 code but doesn't have the same skills to just go on UA-cam and watch a basic AM5 installation that outlines all the keys on the socket and how to align the CPU? Just treats the components as if they are LEGO?
I'm not trying to be elitist but this was just disrespectful and totally careless installation, I'm pretty sure the user knew deep down he caused the damage and he basically got off scot-free with GN buying the damaged hardware back. Lucky for him but probably undeserved. Still great video though.
This reminds me of the time a friend ask me to look at his son's computer that he just put together and it wouldn't boot. After I attached the heat sink on the CPU, it and the CPU just fell out. Looking at how the CPU was aligned the triangles were not matching. Then when I looked at the CPU it had bent pins. I informed them of my findings and that the pins might be able to be bent back, but that might not work and might cause more damage, they asked me to do it. My first time bending pins back. After it posted and booted. I think the CPU was just dropped in the socket and the heat sink placed on top with no other things needed being done, but I was glad to have got it working for them.
you’re on their direct dial now 👍
Pullin those outa the fire ALWAYS feels good as a tech. Bad situation, coulda been a lot worse. GJ.
"sir, the treatment is experimental, there is no guarantee of her survival.."
"Do it, doc. I trust you. It's her only chance."
The remarkable thing is that an error of 1mm and an angle of 1° is enough to annihilate both the cpu and the motherboard. In the olden days the pins were further apart than that, and you could feel the cpu pins drop into the holes. If it went in level and you weren't heavy handed everything was good.
The modern pins and pads are so delicate by comparison and there's no natural alignment within their mechanism. Even tiny hand movements could damage the pins. The design with alternating power and ground pins rather adds to the short circuit risk. Exciting. Obviously there are the outer alignment notches, but clearly they are not fail safe.
A better idea would be longer solid alignment pins (or notches) that have to aligned and engaged with before the final lowering of the cpu. Then the cpu would be aligned mechanically before even meeting the tiny pins and well before the clamps are even touched. Reducing any alignment error below the critical level, which is probably only 1/4 of a pad, maybe less.
I have installed a server CPU (I do not remember which model, but it was recent and IIRC it was Intel, but I am not completely sure) where I had to first attach the CPU to the heatsink and then install the heatsink+cpu combo on the motherboard. It was less scary than installing a regular LGA CPU.
I am not a huge fan of pins in sockets. But that's the way the world went. So here we all are now. I load a CPU into those sockets like it's nitroglycerin. Very carefully.
@@Pentium100MHz i've seen that even back when intel had PGA still, socket 604 dl580 g4 or g5, you attach the cpu to the heatsink, which then aligns with pins before even touches the socket. would make even more sense for these lga sockets
@@VivianDoremy I have not really used Intel CPUs at that time, I used AMD. From the newer Intel CPUs I think the ones named after metals (xeon silver, xeon gold) do this. It was weird when I first saw the instructions, but then it looked better than the usual way of installing LGA CPU.
You should be able to feel the CPU locate properly in the plastic perimeter of the LGA socket as well. I mean sure accidents happen but also 1mm offset as suggested by the video is kinda a LOT. It has also happened to many people to install a PGA CPU improperly and bend the pins, these sorts of accidents were never anything out of the ordinary. Most classic sockets pin pitch was 1.27 (370 478 754 939 AM2 etc) and AM4 was 1.0mm
Steve has a deep passion for this industry, and it's so satisfying to see his investigations and testing process to determine what is/went wrong.
I remember seeing this thread after I ordered my chip but a while before it arrived because of backorder delay, and it helped me to be extra extra careful with installation as I'd never done a build on this style of socket before. Absolutely agree with you that investigating it was still worthwhile for user education!
There's nothing wrong with being careful.
Smart move not roasting the guy. The next person won't be hesitating over fears of being clowned on.
If he reads this, I nearly fried by first build by forgetting motherboard standoffs.
That phenom 965 was the most expensive thing i had ever bought at the time. Not a good feeling.
I remember that same feeling with an Intel Core2 Quad Q9650!
Maybe roast the guy a little bit for fucking up his PC and going straight to reddit to blame the components
My first PC was around the time the first x64 processors and 1TB drives were commercially viable. I spent a lot. I didn't use stand offs. I shorted a lot of stuff. 😑
Heh, I remember looking into a build that wouldn't start at all but all the parts were tested separately and working fine. Turned out that the (very cheap) case had those raised nipples pressed into the motherboard tray instead of regular screw-in standoffs, and the top part of those was just wide enough to contact some of the solder points on the bottom side. Fortunately those aren't very common, but it's something to keep in mind.
I remember building a PC for a friend, and he got the components and started building it and when I got there they had the motherboard in the case without the standoffs. Lucky I got there before they tried it.
The way I see it, it's like Ikea furniture, you're not smart if you think you can ignore the manuals. It's smart to just follow the manuals because you can make mistakes, some steps might not be obvious when needed, and you might just miss something less obvious.
i think it was Buildzoid whose video about this incident i previously watched and he came to the same conclusion after analyzing the pictures. good to have multiple qualified and congruent opinions on this now
It was Buildzoid. The video is titled 'HOW NOT TO BREAK YOUR 9800X3D'. That was about 6 weeks ago.
Back in the day when I was doing my CompTIA A+ we were looking at memory DIMMS. The trainer pointed out that the DIMMS are keyed and you can't install them incorrectly. Unless, he told us, the installer uses brute force and ignorance. He said any keying can be ignored with this method, and it sometimes is.
This is the first time I've directly seen the result of the brute force and ignorance install making it to power on. I'll hand it to the user for allowing us to have this educational and entertaining investigation! I hope he paid attention to keying with his replacement hardware!
maybe they forgot to add thermal paste between the cpu and motherboard socket? easily forgotten tbh.
DON'T DO THAT
I... I understand it now! Thank you. I will soon ascend.
@@GamersNexusno thermal paste, got it. Would water be better?
@@GamersNexus yeah, better add some liquid metal for better thermal conductivity. Top tier CPUs are pretty hot nowadays, regular thermal paste just doesn't cut it anymore
Thank you for that awesome advice, I'll start doing this from now on. Should I also apply thermal paste to the fan blades of my GPU to encourage heat transfer between the airflow that flows through them? I figured I'd also start putting thermal paste in my USB ports to ensure that I don't overheat devices attached.
It would have been nice to see how the user had installed it improperly by giving us the "incorrectly installed" shot vs what it should have looked like.
When I put CPUs in I always put my finger on it and give it a little jiggle to make sure it's central and secure in the slot before closing the bracket
exactly. new users didnt really learn what NOT to do from this video.
@@Nebbia_affaraccimiei you can pretty much picture it by the deformations of the socket... The cpu was sitting partially on top of the sockets cpu orientation tab, and then the latch was forcibly closed, crushing that locator tab with the CPU.
It's ham fisted levels of installation, or even a case of trying to install the CPU while the motherboard was already in the case and vertical.
Total amateur incompetence, as if they never even watched a PC build basics video.
@@Nebbia_affaraccimiei New users should at the very least have learned that IF IT DOES NOT FIT, DO NOT CONTINUE.
Yeah this , i dont get it how they installed it wrong without noticing
@@Nebbia_affaraccimiei he didn't show it but he did mention this.
The thought that the user went out and bought a 14900k cuz they thought the amd was defective makes me chuckle...
I had a feeling it was user error. Thanks Steve!
Did the childish low IQ username give it away?
same! something about his reddit account just didn't fill me with confidence.
I love these forensic-style failure inspections and I don't even know why! Thank you for doing these!
A guy ahead of me in line did something similar. Microcenter replaced everything.
Wow! Lucky guy.
didn't deserve it.
@@Wil3vlbc9gvk604 hence why lucky
@@Wil3vlbc9gvk604 Don't be so hard on people, especially new builders. That's how you turn them away from the hobby and push them to buy a prebuilt that runs at 1.3ghz below spec.
@@iamdarkyoshi He kinda didn't because he went straight to blaming AMD and MSI. It happened twice was obvious it was user error.
This is why I love you guys and bought a shirt earlier this year. I know NO ONE out there that is either willing or able to go through all of this to find out what happened.
This is invaluable information for ANY OEM or user level system builder. 💪
11:42 Power Toys has a ruler that measures pixels (Win + Ctrl + Shift + M). Poor Jeremy...
You can also just use Paint and check the coordinates in pixels in the lower left corner.
This is likely a joke, every image editor an many viewers have this feature...
Maybe they did use software to measure it first, but due to their integrity felt it was better to double-check manually to avoid a miscount on the software part
They couldn't throw shade at pick-n-place machines and then have another machine count their pixels for them. It just be hypocritical.
The ability to smell one individual pin to verify that it too "smells" is just phenomenal 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I actually saw this post just before building my first PC. I was looking around about the 9800X3D after grabbing one shortly after launch, and built my PC shortly after reading the post.
It was my first PC I built myself with 0 help and the entire time I was thinking about that reddit post, as it definitely seemed from the comments that most people thought it was user error. That post made me take extra extra careful caution in setting up my PC. I'm glad I saw it. It's possible it would have been fine, but I like to think that post being in the back of my mind definitely made me take extra care when building my PC.
Regardless of whose fault it is, it is a good informational piece to others that will help them. Kind of like the AIO placement videos you did prior. Sure it’s common sense sometimes but the more you know, you know.
It's good practice for GN too, preparing them for real cases
Everyone has to _learn_ the "common sense" at some point
You don't get born knowing not to put the radiator at the bottom of the case lol
@@ThylineTheGay you do however get physics in school. Grown people making AIO placing mistakes have slept through elementary physics.
I remember this post. Cool to see the damage analysis.
It was fun to work on!
@GamersNexus I do think it's odd that each socket manufacturer apparently has different specifications for the retention bracket. I would think AMD would dictate the spec of the entire thing instead of just the CPU slot.
the level you guys took this investigation is phenomenal. Always enjoy these vids. I am planning on doing a refresh on my system next year so knowing these things will def help out! Thank you!
Company's honoring warranties/returns out of fear of Steve and GN getting the parts is an epic win for the community!
Thanks Steve! back to you
Warranty does not cover improper installation
@@GreySectoid Warranty only covers what the company thinks it can/cant get away with. You can install a part perfectly and if the company thinks it can reneg, it will. If health insurance companies can get away with it where people die, motherboard manufacturers can get away with it when users just need to buy another mobo.
@@masmullin And MSI is definitely a company to do that.
@@charlie7mason None of the mainboard companies are that much better about it. Particularly hilarious is Gigabyte where factory warranty repair might take half a year and make it worse than it was and hazardous to use. Your only recourse is to buy from a seller that knows how to kick their nuts when the company is being garbage.
@@masmullin Fully agree, I had warranties declined due to "user dropping the laptop" and after I disassembled it I found a burn mark on the motherboard exactly matching one of the heatpipes and a melted capacitor (on one laptop) and melted port (on another) right next to the burn mark. Don't know what is more crazy, the fact that companies get away with it, or the fact that the same thing happened to me twice.
Just one word , integrity. You guys are always on the level and always trying to inform . All while keeping your video format tight , precise , articulate and not letting the companies pay sway your opinion . Keep it up team !
Excellent forensic work, guys!
I made PCBs for a number of years and used the AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) machines that you spoke of. When you speculated that the AOI missed the alignment of the socket on the board, I laughed and immediately thought that there's no way. The system can and does detect the smallest deviations and will immediately flag them for review by the person at the end of the line. If for some reason it didn't flag it for review, it wouldn't flag any others with the same defect for review either, which would have resulted in a whole batch of defective motherboards burning up on people.They are also usually tested in-house before shipping, so it would have malfunctioned at that time and not at the end-user as seen here. Not to say that escapes don't happen, but it would be extremely unlikely in this case.
My next thought was to inspect the alignment of the processor within the socket and inspect the contact area of the pins and the processor. The next thing I know, that's exactly what you're doing! With that said, based on the evidence presented, I agree with your conclusions. This was human error. A expensive mistake.
Keep up the great work!
You guys are the CSI of PC Issues. Really appreciate the work you do!
that microscope pixel count is too legit. this is the best technology investigation channel!
6:15 on top of the fact, GN is legit OG gamer component journalism but... are also here to provide entertainment. Thanks Steve!
Thanks to Steve & Gamers Nexus for the detailed look! I feel better knowing the problem was an installation flaw and not a manufacturing or design defect. I hope we all know how small and fragile these parts are. In the future; I hope the person who put this together takes the care required to avoid this assembly issue. Once again, thanks to Steve and the excellent reporting from Gamers Nexus! You guys are the best and have earned our trust with this kind of reporting!!! Well done.
Really appreciate the quality of journalism and attention to detail demonstrated throughout this investigation. Really impressive work all around. I like that you brought attention to the different sockets, I found that interesting.
great analysis as usual! super interesting to see what happens in this situation, and the way you illustrated the pin layout made it super easy to understand.
As buildzoid put so well regarding this particular user’s situation, "you can avoid $800 worth of damage by simply not being an idiot"
Judging by the username that is a tall order.
Buildzoid sometimes forget that he started out as a clueless noob too. We all do. And I bet that Buildzoid has fried more hardware than most. Granted, he knows when he is poking around the dangerous bits, but he too finds the limits the hard way.
I find that a dangerous attitude for the hobby. Insulting everyone that wants to give it a try will lead to people not even trying. Aside from losing the next generation of enthusiast, we will have a world were only overpriced pre-builts are sold.
@@kcgunesq Exactly.
People used to argue with me that AM4 was awful because PGA is too easy to destroy and that LGA is vastly better b/c it prevents that kind of mistake. I would say that the same carelessness that would result in a destroyed AM4 CPU will easily destroy the LGA version as well.
this was useful info, props to the guy with TDS to sell you guys the damaged parts. I didn't know it was even possible to close the lid if the CPU wasn't seated down fully. This is just a good reminder to double check that all corners and sides of your CPU are inside the socket walls before clamping down.
I saw this, everyone was saying Steve was about to get scammed because it was 100% user error, not knowing how to put the square in the square hole is pretty bad
Next time he should go to the Zoo... they have some monkeys there that can put a square in the square hole ...
This dude was so lucky you guys do this.. bailed him out of his own mistake. Cool Video though!
"we're gonna need a damage report"
Wendell: SHE CANNAE TAKE N'MORE, CAPTAIN!
Hard on star board ye scrawny lads!
Because of the courteous attitude and investigative aspect of this video, I think this is my favorite video you guys have made Steve!
This is also why I photograph ALL new parts, before putting together a system. Never know when that 5 seconds of taking a photo, and 3 mb of storage space on a HDD/SSD will save you from a trouble-some support ticket argument, or heaven forbid, a lengthy and costly lawsuit...
Very good idea
excellent advice. It only takes a second to do. Same is true before taking stuff apart so you have a reference for reinstalling properly.
Watching you avoid saying the username was the best part.
21:01 I learned good information... never install CPU if, cabinet in vertical position.
Amazing detail on the investigation. I learned a lot. Thank you.
when the magic smoke appears, it means that the machine spirit died
well you see, each computer component has a specific amount of smoke in them, if you let it go - the component will not work anymore.
I had magic smoke from an ASUS ARGB controller. It was a mostly harmless failure other than the trauma to my heart and psyche. All of it still works except that pathetic little controller.
scary stuff I heard you can get jail time for certain mecha spirit homicides
Sometimes you can have a partial smoke release and it still works
User error makes sense with thousands of installations/variations, coupled with someone that thinks they know better (classic reddit)
its amazing how something as simple as installing a CPU people still manage to fuck up lol
This isn't even the worst. The worst I know of is intel lga mobo and am3 amd cpu. @@TylerSL92
@@TylerSL92Some people just aren't meant to build their own PC, the socket is designed so that if you put the cpu on it's place, it will slide down to it's correct position due to gravity, unless you install it vertically, which isn't the correct way to do it.
Wait, then how am I supposed to mount my pentium 2?
Ive built quite a few PCS and done upgrades but man i still look at the manuals and just quick online help for new/old used parts. ya never know that one time your forget a step on a simple thing like a cooler bracket.
This reminds me of a neighbor of mine, that was saved from his fuckup by another fuckup. 1st time attempting a PC build, his PC wouldn't turn on at all. Not that it wouldn't boot, it simply wouldn't turn the power supply on at all. Turns out he had connected the power button cable wrong, which saved him, since he had also the motherboard EPS 12v with a GPU 8 pin inserted (dead short), some badly inserted RAM and... an AM4 CPU 90° from it's correct position.
It had some pins bent, one completely ripped off (thankfully it was just one of the 3 DisplayPort connections, that was unused on that case), one pin that had no matching hole...made a hole for itself. That wasn't fun but got it working thankfully, with much care managed to bend the pins all back, other than one that snapped before even attempting this. Much cheaper than it could have been.
Holy crap, it's amazing how rough people can be with such delicate components.
I've seen RAM inserted backwards and forced to latch, that's about it. The force was so great that the stick shot out of the board when I undid the latch.
@@volvo09 OH...
Damn that's impressive on it's own as well, I can imagine the motherboard being in a pain inducing bow shape when it was inserted.
Just *_loved_* this episode. Thanks. One note: I'm concerned that the lines you saw had a variance of roughly .3 degrees between only 4 rows and weren't much closer to deadon parallel. I believe you mentioned something akin to not knowing the rotation point. But regardless of rotation point, I can't see how the lines would be diverging from each other. Even in the case of a compound angle (a z-axis tip because of the crushed plastic guide you showed), the intersection of the CPU plane with the with the board plane would result in parallel contact points. On angle, sure, but I can't quite see how they wouldn't be parallel.
IOW, seeing them all off by 1.1° makes sense. Seeing them vary.......not so much.
Perhaps it's because of a cascading crush of varying amounts, but that seems sketchy.
Magic Smoke. Wow. There's something I haven't smelled since 1986. Edit: Nevermind. There used to be a toy you could buy that was a tube of stuff you could rub between your fingers and produce Magic Smoke. That's what I was thinking of, rather than an electrical fire.
I wish I could say the same
phosphorus?
That sounds very much like white phosphorus lol
I bought a "new" asus b550 itx board like a year ago on ebay. I hooked it up on a test setup and something immediately popped... got the smoke.
@@JustinAlexanderBell I had to look it up. Actually it was phosphorus in a tube. You can apparently make it by lighting the strike pad from a box of matches on fire, with the strike pad facing down, which puts some of the phosphorus from the pad onto the surface of whatever you burned it on. You can rub that stuff between your fingers for the same effect.
"And also, it smells bad!"
"thanks, Steve"
Oh man I've been looking forward to this. Lots of controversy on the original post!
What controversy? The alignment tabs were MASHED. Has common sense left the building along with Elvis?
Controversy? Clearly this was a delusional Redditor, which is no big surprise. Classic case of an emotionally immature person incapable of dealing with making a significant error. Either that, or posturing to try and scam a warranty replacement. I've seen it time and time again on Reddit, it just usually isn't this extreme and doesn't get multi-platform coverage. This is just what you get when you have numerous You Tubers convincing every idiot out there that 'building a PC is easy!". That is a big lie. So is the concept of 'future proofing'. As someone who came of age during the dawn of 3D gaming, I can guarantee that your 4090 or 9800X3D is not going to last as long as you think before it is obsolete. Things like Pascal or AM4 are anomalies in the history of PC gaming.
If it doesn't support PCIe 6.0 or Direct X 13, it is going to be done before this decade is finished. We are clearly entering a period of rapid development in tech. Frankly, I didn't think it would even take 5 years of 8 core CPUs being common. Now they are mandatory. Future games will have to fully make use of multicore CPUs to achieve the graphical performance the component manufacturers and developers are colluding to produce. GPUs will rapidly evolve in the next few years. And, by the end of the decade, a gaming PC will definitely need a NPU and probably also a QPU in order to run the latest games. That's what DX 13 will be all about. Incorporating AI and basic quantum computing into gaming. And fully path traced rendering.
As for whether you even want to play the latest AAA games in 4 or 5 years, that's another matter. Because of the focus on graphics, gameplay has taken a backseat. Not much innovation happening there so, over the next few years, we'll get those photorealistic graphics, but at the cost of not having games you actually enjoy playing.
@@advil000 redditards lack common sense so yes
@@advil000 You expect Redditors to have common sense???
This happens to the best of us. I'm a software/hardware engineer & I was doing a service of some systems I run as dedicated servers. I took out a i5 8600k CPU to give it a clean & new paste, put it back in & as I was closing the bracket, it felt like more resistance, I pushed a little more & then I heard the crunch. I put the CPU in the wrong way & disfigured the CPU. I’ve been doing this for over 25 years & the amount of system builds & services in that time is staggering & I think I can count on 1 hand how many times this has happened. So, I sympathise with the user who did this & no shame should be put on him. It can happen to anyone, a momentary lapse of concentration can lead to disaster. This is why I double check everything, but these being my own machines, I didn’t.
We live & we learn, the main thing is, we learn from it!
I honestly feel like the manufacturers need to do a bit better job of designing the socket notches and the latch. AM5 takes a surprising amount of force compared to AM4, I can definitely see if a user accidentally bumped the cpu during the process and ended up crushing both the mobo and the cpu in the process because "the surprisingly high force for the latch is expected".
Either make it so that the cpu recesses into the socket only one way with no possibility for movement, or make it require less force so the user stops if it takes too much force
Thats an excellent point
I prefer the recessed part. If you build a PC once every 5 years then you wont have a reference to know if the force is already too much or its ok.
No. Judging from the damage at the bottom plastic notch , looks to me like, the end-user is trying to install the CPU when the motherboard is standing vertically.
@@fleurdewin7958 Yep, I'd bet you were correct on this.
How about just opening your eyes and making sure the cpu sits correctly?
Only need to look at the picture of the socket for 10 seconds to be able to see the guy made a mistake when inserting the CPU.
Probably didn't place it correctly and closed the lid by heavy force as shown by the bent plastic notches.
Absolute nothingburger
Thanks, Steve.
his stupid name is the perfect match, only someone who cant even seat their CPU correctly into the socket, would create such a name
What kind of moron installs a CPU with the tower vertical??? Always have it laid down flat horizontally, common sense.
Judging from the morons name... and being "team blue"! I'm not shocked at all.
Cost aside I think it would have been super cool if you tried to recreate the mistake and compared the results
the humility to allow others to see your missteps allows everyone to learn and grow.
thankfully these guys got to the poster before some of these snarky losers in the comments could. a lot more people just learned valuable lessons that way.
"Yo Boss, Lisa, check this out. Steve from GN just bought some fried PCMR sourced 9800 X3D chip"
Lisa: "I am not ready to be hearing boss music this early in the morning"
I've always told people, be very careful. CPU's should go into the socket very easily, you shouldn't have to use any force whatsoever, and everything should line up perfectly. This applies to both PGA and LGA, though PGA is obsolete and a lot more prone to improper installation.
I feel like LGA invites improper installation much more readily, personally. This specific type of cockeyed installation isn't possible, at least.
Do people not double check the lil marking on the board and cpu?
I've always kind of hated when the pins are on the motherboard. I've done two Intel builds for family members and both times I felt like I was going to break something even though it was perfectly fine.
@Eepy-Rose No lie, I've always suspected Intel moved to LGA because it meant a broken pin was a motherboard manufacturer's problem instead of a CPU manufacturer's problem. Eliminated damaged pin warranty claims overnight.
Installation in PGA is a breeze. Trying to switch coolers with them is not. I yanked my 2700X right out of the socket even though I thoroughly heat soaked it before trying to remove the old cooler. Had a couple of fun hours with isopropanol and dental floss, and finally a heat gun to soften the paste to get the old cooler off, and then a couple of nerve wracking minutes with a credit card to straighten the bent pins. Not fun. Glad they switched to LGA for AM5.
as soon as u showed the guide pin i instantly knew the cause that user needs glasses
You guys just saved probably a combined million dollars of research time, downtime, engineering time, and administration time from MSI and AMD. Good job, guys. Your journalism is second to none. I mean it.
4:40 I respect the heck outta that logic
19:18 “A computer mystery”
Man your team is something serious, Steve........ Happy New Year to you all.
This was really interesting to see! Thank you for sharing the findings and for helping the user out!
Right on.
Forgot marshmallows
come on for god sake for that guide tab to be crushed like that who ever built it must of needed help pushing the cpu locking arm in place