Anyone know how to straighten pins on a P4 with BENT pins ?

[Phil]

Yeah - I know. Buy another. But its to help a friend out. The offending
article is from my old comp, and while I had a problem with a HD dying, the
insides were so clustered I had to take out the CPU. Only the fan was glued
to it which led to pins being bent which led to me trying to straighten them
which made more bent etc etc. So I bought a new board and AMD cpu and new
memory.
Then a friend who has no money (or very little) had major problems, and I
thought if I could get that p4 straightened up, an excellent motherboard and
512mb of memory is there to help.
Only - HOW ? Can anyone help ? The pins are so bloody tiny although I have
good eyesight, I couldnt manage to do all the pins. Besides which I dont
have the tools. Its a good cpu thats the annoying thing, and it could help a
really good lad out too.

 

[John]

Yeah - I know. Buy another. But its to help a friend out. The offending
article is from my old comp, and while I had a problem with a HD dying, the
insides were so clustered I had to take out the CPU. Only the fan was glued
to it which led to pins being bent which led to me trying to straighten them
which made more bent etc etc. So I bought a new board and AMD cpu and new
memory.
Then a friend who has no money (or very little) had major problems, and I
thought if I could get that p4 straightened up, an excellent motherboard and
512mb of memory is there to help.
Only - HOW ? Can anyone help ? The pins are so bloody tiny although I have
good eyesight, I couldnt manage to do all the pins. Besides which I dont
have the tools. Its a good cpu thats the annoying thing, and it could help a
really good lad out too.

Ive done it on a cpu and HD . A friend had mashed both and different
times bending the pins back. I usually do it with a flat screw
driver. Try to get the smallest one you can to fit in the space. Then
I very gently and slowly bend the pins up from the bottom. Once its
up and still not straight I get another screw driver while the pin is
resting on the other one and mash it against it to make it generally
straight. You do it over and over. Then all the pins will be more or
less straight. The nightmare of course is you bend it up too fast or
hard and it breaks off , then forget about it. But Ive never had that
happen. The other nightmare is , all the pins will generally be kind
of straight but still a bit off since no ones perfect. You have to be
very careful when you try to plug them in making sure ALL the pins
line up to the holes or of course you end up with bent pins again and
the more you bend them the greater chance its going to break off.

 

[Phil]

Ive done it on a cpu and HD . A friend had mashed both and different
times bending the pins back. I usually do it with a flat screw
driver. Try to get the smallest one you can to fit in the space. Then
I very gently and slowly bend the pins up from the bottom. Once its
up and still not straight I get another screw driver while the pin is
resting on the other one and mash it against it to make it generally
straight. You do it over and over. Then all the pins will be more or
less straight. The nightmare of course is you bend it up too fast or
hard and it breaks off , then forget about it. But Ive never had that
happen. The other nightmare is , all the pins will generally be kind
of straight but still a bit off since no ones perfect. You have to be
very careful when you try to plug them in making sure ALL the pins
line up to the holes or of course you end up with bent pins again and
the more you bend them the greater chance its going to break off.

I doubted there would be a quick fix, of course - but it's pretty much what
I have been doing, (and failing !)

 

[kony]

Yeah - I know. Buy another. But its to help a friend out. The offending
article is from my old comp, and while I had a problem with a HD dying, the
insides were so clustered I had to take out the CPU. Only the fan was glued
to it which led to pins being bent which led to me trying to straighten them
which made more bent etc etc. So I bought a new board and AMD cpu and new
memory.
Then a friend who has no money (or very little) had major problems, and I
thought if I could get that p4 straightened up, an excellent motherboard and
512mb of memory is there to help.
Only - HOW ? Can anyone help ? The pins are so bloody tiny although I have
good eyesight, I couldnt manage to do all the pins. Besides which I dont
have the tools. Its a good cpu thats the annoying thing, and it could help a
really good lad out too.

IMO, the easiest way is to use a thin-leaded mechanical
pencil, with the lead removed, above a strong desk lamp and
magnifying lens. It may not be perfect but it may not be a
good idea to try to get the pins *perfect* either, bending
them only as much and as many times as needed to get them
"straight enough", as they can and will break off if bent
too much.