i5 11gen 13 inch. bought new cpu fan heatsink assemb. plugged it in upside down, bent pins on female socket MB. Do I have to buy a new MB w/CPU?
Can you get a good picture of the pins?
They’re small & you’d have to be careful, but others have straightened pins before.
If you try it, go slow. You do not want to overbend a pin to where you have to now bend it back the other way. That can be how one breaks pins off, as repeated bending back and forth causes metal fatigue.
Thank you, I will try this tomorrow. I’m not sure I’ll be able to, but it’s worth a try.
Before you attempt it, if you go into the BIOS you should find an option to make the mainboard disconnect itself from the battery. After you’re done, plugging in the laptop’s charger will reset that & have it reconnect to the battery.
The fan connector isn’t so easy to see into or reach into to bend the pins. I’d suggest some things to give yourself the best chance at success. It looks like removing the SSD might open up your line of sight better.
With the angle you need to look into the connector, perhaps it would be good to prop up the laptop in a way to provide access without having to hold it. I’d maybe want to have the screen open to 90°, the back of the screen / lid flat on a table with the body of the laptop pointing at the ceiling. Finding a large stable object to place next to it that the body can lean against. Then I think you may be able to lean over and look down into the connector, if the SSD is removed.
Finding a good tool to reach in and bend up the pins would be important. Thin, pointed, fairly strong. Perhaps a pair of metal tweezers. If you or anyone in your house doesn’t have ones that seem small & pointy enough, you can often find them in stores near makeup and beauty supplies, since they’re used for things like eyebrow shaping by plucking hairs.
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Happened to me awhile back.
What helped me were using the phone’s camera, zoomed in, with good flash light, plugged the phone with a monitor (Samsung Dex). That’s the visual. And this and this.
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Good idea. I forgot mobile phones can sometimes be used as a webcam. I think I seen android apps that let you use one as a usb webcam. Not sure about iphone.
Also forgot about amazon’s fast shipping. Yeah, if you’re in a location where that works, real precision tweezers like that are what you really need. Much, much better. Often using a suitable tool is the difference between impossible and fairly easy. If you can get real precision tweezers I’d say don’t even try other random tweezers.
Thanks for all the advice. After 2 hours of pin surgery, I managed to get them straight enough for the connector. Now I don’t have to buy another MainB. 5 second mistake…ah well
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Glad to hear you got it working.