How to save your AMD Phenom 960T CPU with a broken pin

So I bought this Phenon II X4 Black Edition and put it into my MSI K9A2+ mobo. Then I bought a Noctua SE fan and all was going well. Until I discovered that the Promise RAID controller on the card did not work and the advertised 1Gbit ethernet port is actually just 100Mbps, that is.

Since the retailers (komplett.no) are complete jerks I  had to buy a new motherboard.

So then I bougth the excellent Gigabyte 990FXA UD7 board, in which that new 960T actually fits if you have BIOS v7 on the Gigabyte board installed.

When the new board arrived, the old MSI mobo wasn't even cold before I started to pull out the *heavy* Noctua fan long before the cooling paste had changed to 'cold state' and at the same time the Noctua fan kind of had a disagreement with Newton. And WHOOPS I ripped the 960T straight out of the socket. A lot of the pins were bent but I did not see any broken pins. So far. BTW, this pocket knife is perfect and widely available to use for CPU pin straigthening. First run it sharp edge up, then sharp edge down along 'bent lanes' of pins:

Better than MacGyvers pocket knife!

I put the 960T into the UD7 board. No post, just a mystical hex value 0x88 on the mobo POST indicator (pretty fancy!). After some Googling, I figured out that code means dead CPU. So a pin must have broken.

I had already put my old Athlon X2 back in the MSI board as as backup computer and it worked. I then disassembled it, shook the mobo over some pieces of newpaper and wouldn't you know, a pin from the 960T had been in there at the same time as the Athlon X2 was running fine!

So the next project was of course to get the 960T working again in the old mobo.

Here's the AM2+ socket, and I circled in red which hole it is that corresponds to the CPU.

Here's a blurry (sorry) picture of the location of the broken pin (it's the opposite of the triangle-mark side)

And here is the CPU pin, which still is not in the socket slot. How come ?!

 I lost that 960T pin about 6-7 times and I could not find it when I had finally figured out a way to securely insert the pin into the AM2+ socket. So I gave up an said to myself, well I do have a an old Pentium 3 1.4Ghz lying around, I'll just snap off a pin and use that instead!

Poor Pentium III got it's pin cut off :(

Then after a lot of Benny Hilling around that night, my old computer finally posted!

My 960T finally posted! YAY!

 And that's the story of how a Pentium III saved a Phenom II X4 960T. If anyone needs any tips for doing this, I can safely say I have the know-how now!

Tech: PC building and casemod

PC mechanix

Useful Things you can do to your box:

* Add silencing isolation. Havent done that yet.
* Add special silent PSU fan(s) Not done that either!
* Install a control panel for adjusting fan speeds:

* Add water cooling to the CPU. Water near my CPU? Nope.

* Install heatsinks on RAM and hardisks. Here's my RAM heatsink:

* Generally install as many fans as you can.

 That was my twin top 120mm fans, a rear blue led 120mm fan and lastly an 80mm fan (should have been 140) green led fan on the bottom, and a red led 120mm fan in the front.


Cool but maybe not Useful Things you can do to your box:

* Install neonlight everwhere (bulbs mounted on transparent CPU heaksinks are awesome)
* Use neon-wire in ie. your keyboard
* Make own fan-grills
* Install glass doors/walls: This came standard on my CoolerMaster HAF 922 Tower. I rather prefer heat outtakes on the sides, but this tower has so many outtakes that the glass wall is worth it!

Alice 2 - Madnesss Returns Crossfire + PhysX achieved!

Here's how to do it! This will essentially hook your NVidia PhysX capable card up with your CrossFire system. and plugged it in.

Updated: Some new numbers, new info.
Updated: Batman: Arkham Asylum works, though there are no patchable dll's. It just works! GPU-Z confirmed about 22% GPU load in the beginning of the game.

You will need:

Windows 7 (Preferably 64bit)
Alice 2: Madness Returns installed
PhysX capable card, I took an old PNY GeForce 8800GT 512MB. Do not attach any monitor cabble.

PhysX_9.11.0621_SystemSoftware.msi
FluidMark (to confirm your setup)
Old GeForce drivers: 285.79-desktop-win7-winvista-64bit-international-beta.exe

NVIDIA GeForce driver 256 Hybrid PhysX mod [x86/x64] v1.05ff by Liandri / THETA

1. Install GeForce drivers. Do custom installation, and uncheck PhysX. We are using a the latest version that actually work wich is 9.11.0621.
2. Install PhysX 9.11.0621
3. Install FluidMark (I was using 1.4.0)
4. Run Hybrid-PhysX-mod-1.05ff.exe
5. Run nvsvc-set-Manual.cmd (as Administrator)
6. Run PhysX-HwSelection-set-GPU.cmd (as Administrator)
7. Take (now patched) C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common\PhysXDevice.dll and copy to Fluidmark folder
8. Run FluidMark and observe the checkbox for GPU PhysX has been unlocked. Check it, and run standard 1080 test and snicker. FluidMark will not utilize CrossFire, but Alice 2 will!
9. Copy the same file to replace (remember to backup!) C:\Program Files (x86)\EA Games\Alice Madness Returns\Alice2\Binaries\Win32 . Unfortunately, Alice 2 is not 64bit.
10. Run game! 

And I have two 6770 GDDR5's in CrossFire as well; Also I have unlocked 60 fps rate, and it seems to be stable around 60!

CPU-Z  logs about 53% 96 load on card 1 and 35% 76% load on card two.
I am running Phenom X4 @ 3000 w/default TurboCore 3400, 4GB 1066 RAM

Warning: Something is occasionaly causing this setup to bluescreen the nVidia driver; I don't know if it's the Hybrid patch; the fact that I am using a beta driver or  if it's AMD's fault. When the system goes back online I seem to have lost CrossFire capability and I have to disable the nVidia screen (if any) and unplug it; restart, then reinstall Catalyst. Confirm that the AMD display is #1 and primary display. Re-enable CrossFire, run Hybrid patch and scripts; good to go again. At this stage it is OK to plug in and use the nVidia display. (Nice to put CPU/GPU and other system monitors here and see that everything runs smoothly; this is pulling a good 400 watts on the PSU as well as stressing your entire rig..)

Game played in full HD with everything maxed. Also everything on card half maxed quality-wise. This will add a little more spice to the graphics! Especially fluids, clothing and particles.

 GPU-Z confirms it: (thats a PNY GeForce 8800GT 512MB)

GPU Load [%] Memory Controller Load [%] (Dedicated) [MB] (Dynamic) [MB]
          0                               0                              0                                0  
          0                               0                              0                                0  
          0                               0                              0                                0  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
          0                               0                             32                               13  
This goes on for a while, then:
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          0                               0                             96                               77  
          4                               0                             96                               77  
          4                               0                             96                               77  
          2                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                             96                               77  
          6                               0                            108                               77  
         16                               1                            108                               77  
         17                               0                            108                               77  
         14                               0                            108                               77  
         15                               0                            108                               77  
         23                               2                            108                               77  
         24                               2                            108                               77  
         23                               2                            108                               77  
         24                               2                            108                               77  
         22                               2                            108                               77  
         18                               1                            108                               77  
         18                               1                            108                               77  
         19                               1                            108                               77  
         19                               1                            108                               77  


And it goes on like this, up to 63 if I remember correctly, may have been more! I was enthusiastic about running Crysis 1 or 2 with this hack, but Crytek seems to use the PhysX software in CPU mode! I tried, but GPU-Z delivars no numbers.

Next project is hacking Batman: Arkhan City!