You should do a full PC with only fixed parts. You can call it the necrobuild. It would be interesting to see how far you can get with fixed components.
I unironically want this to become a series. I'd watch the hell out of it because it just lists all fixable and unfixable problems that could happen due to user error. So it's profitable and educational.
I actually did the same thing a couple years ago. Plot twist though, I ordered an "open box" perfectly working motherboard off of ebay. They sent one with mashed pins (It was bad, not like one or two, like half the socket) So i sent them a picture and they were like "Here's your money back, just keep it" soooo I spent literally 6 hours, well into the night, realigning the pins one by one until they were all in neat rows again, managing not breaking a single pin. The PC posted at like 3 am that morning. And it's the motherboard I'm still running right now
Seriously, more content like this. Repairing systems is what caused my life-long interest in computing... still brings me joy when I can bring something back from being bricked to fully functional.
It really warms my heart to see Linus having that much genuine fun with every successful fix. I can relate. I have the same feeling when i repair something.
@@bryangillis1839 I was thinking that whilst watching. First the RUclips community strike and now this video on repairing motherboards, he will be happy.
The amount of easily fixable stuff people throw away is crazy. At least these were offered for resale, but when I lived in a suburban town outside 2 cities I would always drive around and find stuff I could fix, or that was perfectly fine.... Especially lawn and garden equipment, or "old" computer monitors. My 4k monitor was a roadside pick I almost drove by because I didn't need more monitors, but it was an HP 4k display.... Only 60hz, but can't complain. I also found retro computers, a color laser printer, and one of my favorites is an older Dell monitor with a ton of inputs, even analog video, and it can split multiple inputs on the screen at once. Great for messing with old computers and not having to swap out monitors.
to be honest, this is my favorite LTT video from 2024 so far. I was pretty emotionally invested into the socket repair as it brings back memories of my broken am3+ and am4 pins.
I broke a pin on a 8350 dropped it into the socket and added a small wire to contact the pad and it worked for 5 years no problems. I gifted the system away after using it for 5 years but as far as I know it's probably still alive today.
Ikrrr, it reminds me of my first desktop motherboard, i bent like 3 or 4 pins, but i am so broke that i NEEDED it to work, because I didn't have another one neither money to buy a new one, so i went in the adventure of unbending pins and i did it! I shared the same joy as Linus on the video, I know exactly how this feeling is, of being sure something you did wasn't going to work, but actually it works just fine. It's honestly one of the most recompensating feeling ever!!
Fyi, bent pins also might manifest as missing PCIe lanes. For example, your system POSTs, all RAM is there but your GPU works at x8 or x1 speeds. If you are repairing boards with bent pins, have a look at hwinfo and confirm that all PCIe lanes are present, including the ones for nvme, pch, Ethernet controllers, etc. Else, you might be celebrating too early :)
While true that's much less of an issue in general! You can just run it degraded (often there's little to no performance penalty) or in a different slot. Definitely a win in a way! Could also manifest as missing onboard audio, or USB, or something stupid like that. And plenty of pins aren't used at all or are just ground!
Absolutely, have a Z690 D4 board that refuses to run decent ram speeds after repair on otherwise verified hardware on another exact mainboard. Some also have gpu compatibility issues and only post with 1 out of 5 gpu's tried
@@gtijason7853 Sounds like you should run that test, then compare with the pin map to find out which aren't working; then, you can try to work on those.
@@davidgoodnow269 Problem is I use my hardware as test benches and after repair they continue developing problems with every cpu and cooler swap. Repairs like this are great if you are going to run it as a daily but the pressure put on the the socket and surrounding area from exchanging hardware makes it more of a headache than its worth
As a seller of dead electronics, I'm not surprised you were able to repair eight motherboards, especially newer models. We generally don't test them thoroughly unless they're worth $400+ because diagnosing motherboard issues is time-consuming and varied. Most are sold untested for buyers to fix. RAM sticks are usually tested in pairs, and if they don't boot, we assume they're dead, even though often only one stick is faulty. CPUs are mostly tested, but if found dead, they're often discarded. As for graphics cards, we typically test 30 & 40 series, while AMD’s 6700XT and above also get tested. Monitors are always tested, even with broken screens, as stripping their internals can be more profitable than selling them whole. Congratulations on successfully repairing those motherboards!
@@MiGujack3 We rarely receive 3050, so most of the ones we do get end up on our test bench for stability testing, they tend to be more stable compared to the RX 6000 series. Also we receive far fewer graphics cards than motherboard about 70% of our stock consists of motherboards.
@@aldierygonzalez7249 If a monitor has a broken screen, you can salvage parts like the motherboard, power supply, cables, and stand. Selling these separately can attract buyers like repair shops or DIY enthusiasts looking for specific parts. While it might take longer to sell everything, it’s likely to yield a higher overall value and will take up less storage space.
I just want to say I really respect you guys for making content like this. It would be so easy to make content on popular or clickbaity topics, but youre getting into subjects that can really inspire people to see tech differently and change how people interface with tech. Keep up the good work guys!
Yeah especially "ram slot not working" like those pins are easiest fix AF. Like sure I'll buy three "broken untested" mobos for $150 and a sub-$100 camera microscope instead of a $300 brand new motherboard and hope I make some or all of it back selling the fixed ones! 😁 Though the biggest caveat when flipping on eBay is that you need to be sure your profit margin is 50% or more to cover the 15% selling fee that is applied on shipping and taxes as well 😒🤞
Until this video was posted now every MOBO reseller thinks their broken board is worth 2x now lol (just joking but it does happen a lot with these kinds of videos highlight a certain niche)
@@devonwilliams2423 Yh they did the same with Optiplexs and HP computer for awhile after that $79 PC video or the one from like last about a laptop on the main channel (this one) that drove the laptops price up by $300. Time for people who repair these to be priced out of the market for 3 months
Mind you, I've had boot capable motherboards that cause all kinds of issues and don't run stable. Just because it makes it to Windows doesn't mean it's flawless and diagnosing those kinds of 'randomly appearing' errors can be a real pain in the ass.
I think there's a point where motherboards get more expensive again because they break faster than CPUs and once they're no longer in production, people eventually start being willing to shell out good money to keep their retro PCs or industrial control systems running...
WTF that microscope is only 60?????? I need that asap! btw this is one of the best videos on this channel. It has everything, little bit of gambling, little bit of frustration, a lot of joy, alex and the *aforementioned* price of that microscope thing.
All the R&D into phone cameras has made pretty great low end digital microscopes real cheap. If all you need is the 10-100x magnification range which is plenty for assisting hand work, there are a bunch of options in the $30-$60 range. They're just a cheap camera with a crappy zoom lens on them that either have a USB output or a cheap LCD display. The image quality isn't great compared to a "good" microscope, but that doesn't matter for small but macroscopic objects.
I'm going with the crowd here...THIS video was the best thing I've seen tech wise this year. This video has everything...Tech, Repair, Cost Analysis, Love for DIY, Green initiative to cut down on mindless spending and throwing away hardware. Right to Repair...and the last one SHEER Excitement from FIXING it... That was 12/10 solid , you inspired me to try my luck out and get a few mobo's and see if I can bring them back to life.
As someone who works in trash collection in the US, it is insane the amount of things that people just throw in dumpsters. This video doesn't surprise me
I have heard stories of people who go around the dumpsters just after college students move out of their dorms, apparently the amount of fully functional stuff that is thrown out just so the student didn’t need to take it home for the summer or store it is crazy.
It doesn't surprise me with motherboards specifically tbh. Anytime someone attempts to build a system, the first thing that usually gets blamed is the motherboard. Can't figure out the source of the issue... probably the motherboard! I've helped friends build several systems and motherboards were the number 1 returned item. Heck once a friend had a board past return date they thought was busted, I saw them buy another then resticker the busted board with the working board's serial number and return it as nonworking. I had to shake my head at them for doing that.
My uncle used to do e-waste for his area. I got a TV, 2 ps3s (they were just thrown away after migrating to ps4 caused error screens. I have a shelf of original wiis from him, too. All kinds of other stuff, too.
I repaired a handfull of board from various generations and socket types (115X, 20XX, 3647, 4677,...), and had some conclusions and observations on it. - Few tips to bent the pin a bit better : -Use a 0.6-0.8mm sewing pin with the back pressed in a wine cork (easier to handle and doesnt slides). -Always have the pin rest on a part of the socket to prevent hand shakings, slips, or unwanted movements. It also allows better precision and a good strengh management. -Understand the shape of a pin : it comes from the PCB at a ~75ish °, then has an elbow puting it at around 20° horizontaly, and then has a tip shaped like a bulge that slides on the pad of the cpu . Very basic and not really reliable ASCII diagrams of a pin in its hole ! : Sideview : _____________/°\
I bought all the parts for a nice custom PC for my little cousin. Since he's old enough now to go to college I figured I'd do something epic. Sent him a LTT video for assembly as well. He installed the AMD CPU wrong and bent many pins, I sat down and bent them back in to place but I broke two. I took an old school Intel CPU, harvested two pins, and simply dropped them in to the correct spot on the motherboard socket. Put the CPU over top, and the friggin thing WORKED!
I’m looking to build my first PC for sound production/creation works, watching your channel has been a great precursor step in understanding what needs to be protected, treated with finesse and care, etc. I would say it’s pretty obvious that all of the components that go into a functioning rig deserve their due respect as far as handling, but a video like this also makes those of us who are new to the building process that much more aware of critically sensitive areas and things to look out for as you receive components for your build in… what a cool piece of info you guys have shared here, it’s got value beyond what you might have intended!
It's kinda mindblowing. Alex is like, it's KINDA the opposite of what you'd think, and I'm yelling, that's the exact opposite of what you'd logically think!
@@vitalino1981 you could, to help make the copper reform/meld crystals... but I believe that temperature is well passed the melting point of that plastic socket, and the fiberglass the board is made from. So it wouldn't work as needed. Copper: 1084°C (1983°F)
I bought an ASUS ROG X670E-F that was on eBay for $150AUD roughly 6 months after launch. At the time, they were retailing for $800AUD. The seller said it was untested, but I could see from the pictures that the pins all seemed fine. Was very wary about it, but decided to gamble anyway. It arrived in its original box with all accessories, but with no socket cover, so I thought it would definitely need some work, but I still couldn't see anything wrong in the pins. I then noticed that all the factory plastic peels were still on it. The only visible thing I could notice was that the entire board was bent/bowed slightly. I did no work to it, bought a 7800X3D and 32GB RAM to slap into it, built it, and it worked and still works today without any intervention. The best deal I've ever gotten.
i built a pc for my son in 2017, using ltt videos. First one I ever built. Dropped the cpu and board onto the floor and bent a lot of pins. i was able to fix it and it has been working for over 7 years now. Thank you for all of your videos and time LTT!
People are very consumerist. My sibling decided to get a new laptop since the headphone jack and 1 speaker wasn't working. I decided to take it once they got their new one and saw that the PCB on the right side had broken one of its mounting clips leading to a headphone jack that had sunk too far into the laptop chassis and a disconnected speaker cable. Wedged a filler piece between that PCB and the battery and it's now working perfectly. Ended up donating my old one to a small charity operation in Africa so at least there was that.
You never know... I opened a laptop to try and fix a stuck keyboard key signal and the whole keyboard and trackpad was dead after that. Either I assisted the ribbon cable's already in progress self-destruction, or I just fucked up.
It's so weird seeing people be so condescending to people who just don't know how to do anything or choose to get a brand new item instead of having a possibly jank item instead. Not only that, but all the examples I've seen people prop up to be condescending to are in reference to boards/laptops that were NOT TRASHED, just given or sold to people who want to recycle it (repair or use it for parts). Lot of needless soapbox standing and honestly its pretty distasteful. I have a pair of headphones with something wrong with the input for the cable (detachable cable) and I just bought a new pair because the old one was a good 8 years old, I wanted something with higher quality, and I don't have the knowledge and probably also the tools to repair it (if its even possible in the first place).
so true. my brother spent 700 dollars on a new 4k TV because he thought the "internet chip" broke when it reality his WIFI router just assigned a static IP to it for no reason and it just had IP conflicting issues for some reason lol
@@banguseater ahh the tech inepts who just assume they understand technology by using common sense. Internet dont work. internet thingamajig broke. Need new device i guess. Im guessing if he just called his isp theyd tell the router is misconfigured. Slap your bros ass for me say it was by a random youtube commenter.
This was a lot of fun actually. Don't want to call anything out but the vibe of a small team-esque repair adventure for the sake of fixing "broken" stuff is a lot of fun and I was invested in it without knowing anything about the specifics of fixing stuff. Great job.
I got an ASUS Crosshair VI Extreme with a Ryzen 9 5950x off ebay for $50. I bought it to repair another board I had. The guy said it just died. I got it and flashed the bios and it works perfectly. Like +$1k for me 🤣
@@vitalino1981risky gambling? Guy bought a board to repair a board, not really a gamble he needed parts and bought a for parts board. He ended up with a working board. Like a reverse gamble. Like winning a lottery he didn’t sign up for. A risk negative gamble
@MycaeWitchofHyphae i meant not the oc case, but the linuses vid. Unfortunately, there is plenty of people, who knows exactly whats wrong, and try to mask it like something minor, while selling with no complains no return policy. I did some of this, in my younger days, and it requires more of psychological skill, to determine, whether seller is lying or not.
I've done this. Replacing pins that are fully missing is the fun part. Get a bit of solder on the bottom of the new pin, shove it in, heat up the pin with some current for a very short time and good to go! Worst case, just replace the socket. Not as bad as it seems to reflow a socket. It's glued too though. :) This video is entertaining, but not a tutorial, lol.
I was going to suggest what they did on the last board, if they didn't manage to fix it I had a fair share of boards with "dumb bios" that had a couple of diagnostic leds just on, or even some flashing back and forth in loops between CPU and RAM I always fixed it with a simple BIOS update and/or CMOS
As with many other commenters, I would fully support a series that includes fixing parts as a primary part of it. I get that someone is going to say “but we have showed how to do XYZ before, so why show it again?” but I think as informative and educational it could be, repeating the same repair on different parts (even if the same model) would be perfectly acceptable sometimes. There’s a lot of potential, and I again, I am all for it.
I did this with a 4th gen intel board back in like 2016. saw the board for $15 on ebay (free shipping, and the dude spent $19 on shipping) had about 10 bent pins and I even broke one off entirely. saw that there is a good chance that some pins don't do anything or they could be extra ground pins and wouldn't ya know it after about 2+ hrs of carefully bending with ONLY a flashlight magnify glass and threading needle, it booted..... got some BSOD's when the GPU was in the top PCI slot, but moved it down to the bottom and was a flawless gaming rig.
watching this gave me a great old feeling of watching my favorite sport team just have a perfect and dominating playoff game and i couldnt be happier, what a great video this is so cool
Several years ago, back in the Haswell days, I accidentally bent pins in my Z97 motherboard. I ordered a "new" replacement Asrock board for cheap. It got in with bent pins and dust on the IO shield. I took pictures, ebay refunded and said to keep the board. I took the board into my shop I worked in at the time, told the boss basically: here is an MSI z97 and an Asrock z97 with bent pins ( that still cost $100-120 new at that time) I told him if he fixed both, he could keep 1 and I would take the other his choice. 5-10min of work, earned him a $80-100 used value board. I took my Asrock home, hooked it back up. everything was gold. Today I might attempt that repair myself with a scope, but at the time my boss had all the equipment to do it mostly right. Today a cheap camera scope is worth it to have for a tech even just to examine hardware.
You gotta do another one of these. I worked in a lab during undergrad with high voltage custom pcbs for aircraft generators. One of the tests we accidentally vaporized a couple of the traces. Like we saw a bright flash, killed the test, looked at the board, and chunks of copper were just gone. Spent a few days jumping with wires until it finally worked (there was not budget nor time to get the boards manufactured again). One of the most gratifying tech projects I've worked on.
I have been buying open box motherboards from my local Microcenter for several upgrade cycles. Always a good deal, as much as 50% off, and if it doesn’t work, I don’t repair it, I return it and get another one. Microcenter does not allow open box items to be returned as long as they work. But if it’s DOA, you as a consumer can absolutely return it.
Folks, today is the day you want to list your broken motherboard for a high price, as there surely will be someone who will buy it in the next few hours
Glad i figured this out 6 months ago and bought a msi Tomahawk with bent pens on the cheap and now I'm using that same motherboard to write this reply on
It's always great to see a techical person who ended up in a management role come back to a technical job and be able to do it. No one is more excited than a manager when they discussed they can still do his former technical role.
I love this style of knowledge and reward. Ive been studying in my free time how to identify different curcuits and chips, and knowing how to dismantle them, but after 2.2mil people have watched this video i can only assume the ebay broken board market is depleted and competitive
@@3nertia or how stress fractures form. (I know its as a result of the brittleness work hardening brings but you can work-harden something and not have it fail, the bending while hardening also promotes micro fractures which lead to the breaks)
Not just motherboards. Recently I was purchasing server parts. Found someone selling 2x Seagate 12TB x18 on eBay. "Untested" £100 each. I could clearly see the date of manufacture on the drives. Knowing Seagate go from manufacturing date for warranty not invoice brought em, sure enough broken but shipped them off to Seagate and 4 days later got 2 brand new Seagate 12TB x18s for £100 each. 24TB of storage for £200. Beat that!!!
@Vanu-i4o aha! Yeah the mind does boggle as to why someone would even be selling those used! But there's plenty of em out there. Have brought used hgst drives for around the same price 10,000 power on hours but just a year or so old. Pretty much deployed and then retired after a year. Every company I've worked at has destroyed hard drives. So I find it odd that somewhere is deploying so many at the enterprise level and not! Must be storing something non sensitive
Thats cool, but be careful especially with Hard Drives, there was a story a while back about the FBI selling their old PC to some distributor, and some random guy buying one, which turns out to contain an illegal pornography server share (which the FBI used to catch pedophiles), guy almost went to jail for life if it wasnt for someone that took a loot at the computer and found out what was going on, really off chance for that happen, but I rather pay for new ones lol
The crazy thing is... is you run a small business/start up/small shop where you have a super limited budget but need powerful hardware and you have some time... this is actually a super valuable way to get some systems going... don't know if i would sell them since problems creep up... but to get yourself started that seems amazing
One could easily parley this into a custom pc build business. Buy broken/suspect high-end parts cheap, fix them, build a high-end pc from those parts, sell it for profit designated as-is or refurbished to avoid liability issues.
Fixing every one of those motherboards is crazy, I wouldn't have guessed half of them to be salvageable, it makes me want to try it some time down the line. I hope there aren't too many people saying you're shilling for eBay or lying about your success rate for clout. Delusional haters are quite annoying.
30:35 Note about what Linus says here: The iFixit soldering iron doesn't CHARGE through USB-C, it's POWERED through USB-C. There's not enough battery onboard to run it without being plugged into a power source.
This used to be my favourite hoby. And I didn't or don't have microscope but phone with good camera and zoom can do the trick. Even nowadays if I have way more budget to not worry about the price of mobo, I still can't help my urge to buy a broken one and fix it. It just feels so satisfying 😊
I built a PC back in like 2016 while I was stationed abroad and got a "new" mobo for my i7-6700K from Newegg with several broken pins. It would have taken weeks to get an RMA, so I spent like 2 hours of hand-shuddering tension fixing them one by one. That PC served me perfectly for 8 years until I gave it to my dad a year ago and it's still working flawlessly for him.
What works for me on the issue of having TIM in the socket is to spray IPA (as they did) but then use a very, very fine paint brush to gently brush away the softened TIM. Amazingly entertaining, at least for me. Well done! ❤
I recently got a faulty Asus ROG X570-e Gaming motherboard for $50 off ebay, it had liquid metal spilled all over it and was shorted out, Asus had already refused warranty replacement, i cleaned it within an inch of its life under a microscope so i didnt miss anything and its now working perfectly in my main system, to say i was stoked was an understatement, most expensive board ive ever owned.
Last year i started learning micro soldering and threw a post up on marketplace for non-working game consoles, so far in the past 6 months im up around $10k in just repaired ninteno switch units, if you have a steady hand and some problem solving skill its a pretty good side hustle, i will say that i also have a small graveyard of consoles that were beyond my ability to fix, but there are tons of dead consoles out there that only need a new hdmi or usb-c port that can be had for dirt cheap.
I think this is one of the best LTT videos of the last year. I love it. I learnt something, it surprised me, and it just felt real and down to earth. What a classic for the playlists.
My son stays with his mom 1400km away from me. Their house got struck by lightning and the surge went through the wifi router and fried his power supply and Ethernet port. We replaced his power supply and got a pcie Ethernet card and his pc was back up and running. Then a couple months later it just shut down while he was doing school work on it. Their pc technician checked it out and sent it to the online store where I bought the upgrade kit from. They said everything is dead. Motherboard cpu and ram. This is almost two months after it died. I told them to ship it back to myself. And within an hour I diagnosed that only his cpu was dead and that he had to run his ram in single channel. I bought a new cpu sorted it out and shipped it back to him and his been gaming ever since. All in all cost me just about $100. Amd components are really tough.
The worst thing for me with bent pins... is when the computer is working... but throws random blue screens because some random pin that does some obscure thing is bent and that only happens every once in a blue moon... troubleshooting and fixing that is why i have barely any hair left... or bad genetics who knows
@@someoneelse5005 damn kinda wish i would've been smart enough for that joke but i guess with every hair that fell out some braincells were lost as well
You'd be surprised how many people remove the USB prematurely during the "do not remove" period when flashing a bios. This is why you should always have a USB ready to go, even if you don't need to upgrade your bios.
Ty for this as I just bought a new AM5 set up and my Motherboard had a bent pin that didn't let me run more than one stick of ram. Because of this I managed to fix it and get my system up and running on my own without an RMA.
To be fair, he did say it's not likely this would happen normally and there could be unfixable issues, he just said it in a very round about way where you kind of need to read between the lines. If they're dumb enough not to pay attention to that and actually do some research on the subject before spending a significant amount of money, then I don't feel sorry for them. :)
Yeah, most cases are not just bent pins, but a blown up cap or mosfet or whatever from crappy PSU, dropping the screwdriver or whatever. I just had a look at my local second hand app and ebay and it's mostly weird working mobos that even if posting, won't work well at all. Then a bunch of ones that don't post or give any life signal. I even bought one mobo in the past that just didn't work, and was sold as working, so yeah, having a team looking for mobos with bent pins and other easy fixes will make for a good video, but a kid spending his hard earned 80 bucks (because they won't bee 50 bucks anymore after this video), and having a brick, won't make for a good build.
Fixing CPU pins is slow but rather simple. Replacing one with one from a scrap board super fun. Company I used to work for had me fixing bent pins and then sell the boards as brand new still in fully built units for L3, Lockheed, etc. Super shady but the money was good, for a time.
Bought a ASUS 690 prime-a for a refurbed price, previous bent pins and I’ve been using it for about a year now and it’s been a perfect! People need to do this more!
*_O Canada! Where pines and maples grow. Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow._* Edit: Ah drat! I tried to escape the awkward situation with the Canada song but then I thought of the lyrics. 😭
I recently got a "smart ear pick" literally a tiny macro camera with light and an interchangeable tip, that you use for cleaning your ear while looking at a wifi stream of the video. It might be perfect for fixing bent pins!
One of the nicest episodes I have seen for a long time on this channel! The pure enthusiasm from Linus and Alex comes very naturally. Seems they really had fun making this one. I very much enjoyed watching. Thank you!
Man, two platforms ago during my first entire build, I was trying to seat my heatsink and I didn't realize when I pulled the heatsink back up to seat it better, the paste made the CPU come out. Then I went to clamp the heat sink down, it didn't want to clamp so I forced it a bit. Then I pulled it back again and that's when I realized I had bent like 1/3rd of the pins on my brand new $350 CPU. I was SICK to my stomach. I sat there for 2 hours with a little flathead screwdriver made for repairing glasses straightening out pins, but I used that CPU from 2012 to 2019 with zero issues lol
This is by far one of the coolest videos you all have done this year and I enjoy most of the content. This could easily become a continuing series if you all workshop it. Something around tech trash, consumerist tendencies to just replace than repair, etc. Super informative, super interesting, and if it causes a small portion of your audience to try a little harder on a repair, it'd save so much technology from seeing the landfill. Awesome, awesome video!
Depends on the repair. Physical idiot damage like this is either easy or impossible. Other types of failures with these crazy multi-layered boards would need some state-of-the-art PCB surgery or worse.
If it's a component level problem like a bad VRM or something then you do need fancier tools and skills/knowledge. But searching specifically for boards with bent pins is a pretty solid tech tip especially if they have a close up photo of the socket.
28:36 I can relate to that feeling. When the near impossible suddenly becomes possible. Especially when your troubleshooting something. It can be an intoxicating feeling that gives you a boost of motivation to continue on. ❤
FANTASTIC to see you rebuilding, recycling and rep[airing. Society needs to give you and people like you far more credit! I think that if we recycled all plastics, and tires we could halve the cost of road seal! Too many people think "New" is important!
This just goes to show that it's always worth a shot.. It also applies to all sorts of things, many people often give up too easy because it just seems too complicated or it's easier just to toss something and get a replacement. I've personally gotten all sorts of things from power tools to cars that people just discarded when the repair was actually very simple...
Thing is, you're comparing the price of these components to MSRP. You should compare the price of these boards to the prices of similar boards in used, but working condition, which is not that far from what you paid for them. A lot of the times the prices of the broken parts is 20-50% (let's say 3rd) of the used, but working ones. In my area, it's around 40-50%. This is a lot like "expectation vs reality" where you got lucky in this particular scenario while many people might not get as lucky, or in the worst case scenario, completely unlucky. I'm saying this cause the video comes off as "this is what you should do too". I've given similar advice to people in the past and the reality is that they're not you, they're not me, and they could not fix 90-100% of the hardware that they've purchased like this (and they were really clear with their feedback that they weren't satisfied). So, to the people that are willing to buy broken parts: Be careful what you buy. You might not get as lucky.
Nearly all of these boards are current gen though, so comparing to MSRP is totally valid IMO. If you were trying to build a new system with current hardware, sure you can look at used for deals, or go further to broken/untested and perhaps get lucky and use the saved cash for a nicer component elsewhere in the system. If you're buying used, you likely won't have a warranty for the part, but if you bought it broken/untested and manage to fix it, then who cares about a warranty because you bought it for next to nothing anyway.
and they tested them for like an hour at best, once they start breaking 1 month in with random freezes this whole situation of getting hw cheap seems like a terrible idea...
@@cera03 It always depends. My first motherboard was a used Z97 board and the listing showed it in perfect shape and when I got it, it had bent CPU pins. I fixed it and used it for 3 years with two different CPUs (4790 and then 4790k) and now a family member uses it daily for games and it’s flawless.
Why wouldn't you just use electronic spray cleaner to clean off all the residual thermal paste? Hold the board upside down over a bucket or some towels (in a well ventilated area of course) and go to town with the spray. Confirm the areas have no bridging of any residue and you should be golden.
I think this also shows that Linus has so much experience with this kind of thing that he can just fix stuff most of the time that other average tech experts might not be able to do as consistently or with such ease.
I think that has more to do with his willingness to "take a risk" then his experience. Most "experts" fall back on their ego and stop taking risks because as you take risks you gain the knowledge of what (in the past) didn't work, however, the paradox is that "experts" become useless as their knowledge doesn't include new tech or changes in the areas they are experts of if they stop taking risks.
The people selling broken items on ebay are rarely experts in whatever they're selling. It's either an item they got in a box of other items that they're flipping quickly as is for quick money and no time investment or something the seller broke themselves because they didn't know what they were doing.
once ii got a mobo with pins bent, I looked up what were the pins and i saw the 4 dead ones were GND. Since they are redundant with others i just cut them off low and it's working very nicely. Just remember to do this with only low power CPUs as you are putting more electrical current in the others pins
Want to buy a Microsoft Pixelsense 1.0, works and everything is intact. My friends dad purchased it brand new. I have had it since he passed away. It is impressive all the work they put into it
28:26 I had the very rare "BIOS Flash fixes dead MoBo" before, it was because of exeptionally bad shipping and the shakes and impact disconnected and connected the CMOS battery in short succession so that the BIOS was in a weird in between error State of cleared and not cleared. No one believed me xD
Society of total consumption led to this. People tend to get rid of slightly broken things because they just buy new one - instead of thinking a bit, and working a bit with hands. Thanks for showing this! :) And hi from GVA!
@@rawhide_kobayashi there's one guy here in comments that did it with magnifying glass. I'd at least try. Also there was one board that just needed BIOS update.
@@Drakari Linus is in Canada. :) But anyways, it's whole world mostly. There are people willing to fix - but vast majority just doesn't care. Especially in the situation when manufacturers make non-repairable glued bricks lately.
@@formatBCE It's not that they don't care. A lot of people are absolutely terrified and unwilling to open up anything or try to fix even a simple thing even if there's nothing to lose if they break it further.
Linus raised a good point on being wasteful instead of trying to fix them…but it’s still really good these are being sold. I imagine a lot of people, if they cannot return the boards, will just throw them out. Props for taking the effort to sell and ship. Everybody wins!
You should do a full PC with only fixed parts. You can call it the necrobuild. It would be interesting to see how far you can get with fixed components.
raise it to the top!
@@svenweyers3916Let’s upvote this one!!
Yes please.
Ooooh the Necrobuild, love it
Perfect for halloween
I unironically want this to become a series. I'd watch the hell out of it because it just lists all fixable and unfixable problems that could happen due to user error. So it's profitable and educational.
@@muffindealer9576 they could then donate those Boards to people in need (or maybe schools?)
@@christiankreuzbergerNeat idea in principle, but tbh making the occasional fundraiser seems more time-efficient and useful to the recipients...
yeah that would be interesting
@@Marc42 Or selling the boards yourself and using the Net profit to either donate or buy full educational systems for schools
Recommend Joey Does Tech, but he mostly does XBOX/PS5/Nintendo Switch repairs.
I actually did the same thing a couple years ago. Plot twist though, I ordered an "open box" perfectly working motherboard off of ebay. They sent one with mashed pins (It was bad, not like one or two, like half the socket)
So i sent them a picture and they were like "Here's your money back, just keep it"
soooo I spent literally 6 hours, well into the night, realigning the pins one by one until they were all in neat rows again, managing not breaking a single pin.
The PC posted at like 3 am that morning. And it's the motherboard I'm still running right now
How much did you pay for that one?
Steady hands McGee over here. Absolute legend. Good shit man!
Now that's a movie!
@@CentreMetre well as he got a refund i guess free?
Oooohh so the motherboard that Dennis destroyed that one time
Seriously, more content like this. Repairing systems is what caused my life-long interest in computing... still brings me joy when I can bring something back from being bricked to fully functional.
If it aint fried, it aint bricked.
When I was a Computer Tech, we called mechanics with cars "Gearheads" and we called outselves "Chip Jockeys" lol woot
Have fun tinkering/fixing!
Can you repair mine lmao
Same reason i got obsessed with watching odd tinkering videos lol. so cool!.
same. it was fun, turned into tech support jobs, but there was no money in it. i would have been seriously poor now if i stuck with IT, lol.
It really warms my heart to see Linus having that much genuine fun with every successful fix. I can relate. I have the same feeling when i repair something.
@@fiffiflauschi I love when a comment is so perfect no one has any further comment and just likes it
@@twosquidsdo you not see the irony in what you just did?
@@SaberShirou clearly they did not
@@SaberShirou well, he wasnt replying about the original comment so, there's nit really any irony in it
well, to some extent. it can be seriously costly. most would salvage any value through ebay, and buy a new board.
Thank you for saving 8 motherboards from the landfill and showing us the importance of Right to repair.
@@bryangillis1839 I was thinking that whilst watching. First the RUclips community strike and now this video on repairing motherboards, he will be happy.
Such a great moral to this story!
@@nukez88 i think right to repair has a different meaning. The previous owners could already repair them, just didn’t want to.
Soon all these wonderful motherboards will find their way home to innocent LTT employees
The amount of easily fixable stuff people throw away is crazy.
At least these were offered for resale, but when I lived in a suburban town outside 2 cities I would always drive around and find stuff I could fix, or that was perfectly fine.... Especially lawn and garden equipment, or "old" computer monitors.
My 4k monitor was a roadside pick I almost drove by because I didn't need more monitors, but it was an HP 4k display.... Only 60hz, but can't complain.
I also found retro computers, a color laser printer, and one of my favorites is an older Dell monitor with a ton of inputs, even analog video, and it can split multiple inputs on the screen at once. Great for messing with old computers and not having to swap out monitors.
to be honest, this is my favorite LTT video from 2024 so far. I was pretty emotionally invested into the socket repair as it brings back memories of my broken am3+ and am4 pins.
100% Agreed.
I broke a pin on a 8350 dropped it into the socket and added a small wire to contact the pad and it worked for 5 years no problems. I gifted the system away after using it for 5 years but as far as I know it's probably still alive today.
Ikrrr, it reminds me of my first desktop motherboard, i bent like 3 or 4 pins, but i am so broke that i NEEDED it to work, because I didn't have another one neither money to buy a new one, so i went in the adventure of unbending pins and i did it! I shared the same joy as Linus on the video, I know exactly how this feeling is, of being sure something you did wasn't going to work, but actually it works just fine. It's honestly one of the most recompensating feeling ever!!
I was having similar thoughts. I wonder if this will be one of their best performing videos of this year?
Same
My old LTT is back. This is what I love to watch. Thanks guys.
Even if they resold the boards for only 1/2 the price they're still making $770 for less than half a day's work. That's solid.
Fyi, bent pins also might manifest as missing PCIe lanes. For example, your system POSTs, all RAM is there but your GPU works at x8 or x1 speeds. If you are repairing boards with bent pins, have a look at hwinfo and confirm that all PCIe lanes are present, including the ones for nvme, pch, Ethernet controllers, etc. Else, you might be celebrating too early :)
While true that's much less of an issue in general! You can just run it degraded (often there's little to no performance penalty) or in a different slot. Definitely a win in a way!
Could also manifest as missing onboard audio, or USB, or something stupid like that. And plenty of pins aren't used at all or are just ground!
I was thinking that!
Absolutely, have a Z690 D4 board that refuses to run decent ram speeds after repair on otherwise verified hardware on another exact mainboard. Some also have gpu compatibility issues and only post with 1 out of 5 gpu's tried
@@gtijason7853 Sounds like you should run that test, then compare with the pin map to find out which aren't working; then, you can try to work on those.
@@davidgoodnow269 Problem is I use my hardware as test benches and after repair they continue developing problems with every cpu and cooler swap. Repairs like this are great if you are going to run it as a daily but the pressure put on the the socket and surrounding area from exchanging hardware makes it more of a headache than its worth
As a seller of dead electronics, I'm not surprised you were able to repair eight motherboards, especially newer models. We generally don't test them thoroughly unless they're worth $400+ because diagnosing motherboard issues is time-consuming and varied. Most are sold untested for buyers to fix.
RAM sticks are usually tested in pairs, and if they don't boot, we assume they're dead, even though often only one stick is faulty. CPUs are mostly tested, but if found dead, they're often discarded. As for graphics cards, we typically test 30 & 40 series, while AMD’s 6700XT and above also get tested. Monitors are always tested, even with broken screens, as stripping their internals can be more profitable than selling them whole.
Congratulations on successfully repairing those motherboards!
So you test a 3050 and not a 6600 or 6600XT? Wasteful.
@@MiGujack3 We rarely receive 3050, so most of the ones we do get end up on our test bench for stability testing, they tend to be more stable compared to the RX 6000 series. Also we receive far fewer graphics cards than motherboard about 70% of our stock consists of motherboards.
dang
Wait what can you use from monitors with broken screens? Asking for a friend…
@@aldierygonzalez7249 If a monitor has a broken screen, you can salvage parts like the motherboard, power supply, cables, and stand. Selling these separately can attract buyers like repair shops or DIY enthusiasts looking for specific parts. While it might take longer to sell everything, it’s likely to yield a higher overall value and will take up less storage space.
I just want to say I really respect you guys for making content like this. It would be so easy to make content on popular or clickbaity topics, but youre getting into subjects that can really inspire people to see tech differently and change how people interface with tech. Keep up the good work guys!
@@clarkogle3067 they do both tho
Linus got so much dopamine from repairing those boards that I felt it all the way in japan 😂
What I hear in my head:
Don't pay for a $90 refurbished one, buy a $50 microscope and never buy a new motherboard ever again.
I am with you on that thought lol
Yeah especially "ram slot not working" like those pins are easiest fix AF.
Like sure I'll buy three "broken untested" mobos for $150 and a sub-$100 camera microscope instead of a $300 brand new motherboard and hope I make some or all of it back selling the fixed ones! 😁
Though the biggest caveat when flipping on eBay is that you need to be sure your profit margin is 50% or more to cover the 15% selling fee that is applied on shipping and taxes as well 😒🤞
Until this video was posted now every MOBO reseller thinks their broken board is worth 2x now lol (just joking but it does happen a lot with these kinds of videos highlight a certain niche)
@@devonwilliams2423 Yh they did the same with Optiplexs and HP computer for awhile after that $79 PC video or the one from like last about a laptop on the main channel (this one) that drove the laptops price up by $300.
Time for people who repair these to be priced out of the market for 3 months
Mind you, I've had boot capable motherboards that cause all kinds of issues and don't run stable. Just because it makes it to Windows doesn't mean it's flawless and diagnosing those kinds of 'randomly appearing' errors can be a real pain in the ass.
Easy, just buy it 10 years after launch!
@@JeffGeerling hi jeff!!
wait 15 years more then sell them as antiques:)
geerling
unless it is a sought after model like the SR2 or something
I think there's a point where motherboards get more expensive again because they break faster than CPUs and once they're no longer in production, people eventually start being willing to shell out good money to keep their retro PCs or industrial control systems running...
WTF that microscope is only 60?????? I need that asap!
btw this is one of the best videos on this channel. It has everything, little bit of gambling, little bit of frustration, a lot of joy, alex and the *aforementioned* price of that microscope thing.
These things are pretty neat but it needs a lot more light.
Aforementioned, not "before mentioned". Cheers.
@@nitePhyyre fixed 👍
Where can I find a microscope like that
All the R&D into phone cameras has made pretty great low end digital microscopes real cheap. If all you need is the 10-100x magnification range which is plenty for assisting hand work, there are a bunch of options in the $30-$60 range. They're just a cheap camera with a crappy zoom lens on them that either have a USB output or a cheap LCD display. The image quality isn't great compared to a "good" microscope, but that doesn't matter for small but macroscopic objects.
I'm going with the crowd here...THIS video was the best thing I've seen tech wise this year.
This video has everything...Tech, Repair, Cost Analysis, Love for DIY, Green initiative to cut down on mindless spending and throwing away hardware. Right to Repair...and the last one SHEER Excitement from FIXING it...
That was 12/10 solid , you inspired me to try my luck out and get a few mobo's and see if I can bring them back to life.
As someone who works in trash collection in the US, it is insane the amount of things that people just throw in dumpsters. This video doesn't surprise me
I have heard stories of people who go around the dumpsters just after college students move out of their dorms, apparently the amount of fully functional stuff that is thrown out just so the student didn’t need to take it home for the summer or store it is crazy.
Dumpster diving can be a lucrative sport if you know where to look
It doesn't surprise me with motherboards specifically tbh. Anytime someone attempts to build a system, the first thing that usually gets blamed is the motherboard. Can't figure out the source of the issue... probably the motherboard! I've helped friends build several systems and motherboards were the number 1 returned item. Heck once a friend had a board past return date they thought was busted, I saw them buy another then resticker the busted board with the working board's serial number and return it as nonworking. I had to shake my head at them for doing that.
My uncle used to do e-waste for his area. I got a TV, 2 ps3s (they were just thrown away after migrating to ps4 caused error screens.
I have a shelf of original wiis from him, too.
All kinds of other stuff, too.
I repaired a handfull of board from various generations and socket types (115X, 20XX, 3647, 4677,...), and had some conclusions and observations on it.
-
Few tips to bent the pin a bit better :
-Use a 0.6-0.8mm sewing pin with the back pressed in a wine cork (easier to handle and doesnt slides).
-Always have the pin rest on a part of the socket to prevent hand shakings, slips, or unwanted movements. It also allows better precision and a good strengh management.
-Understand the shape of a pin : it comes from the PCB at a ~75ish °, then has an elbow puting it at around 20° horizontaly, and then has a tip shaped like a bulge that slides on the pad of the cpu .
Very basic and not really reliable ASCII diagrams of a pin in its hole ! :
Sideview :
_____________/°\
Great write up and amazing ASCII diagrams
damn you're insane
No one is reading all this bruh😂
Pretty good ASCII work there.
Dude this is soo great. 🔥 you are insane!!
I bought all the parts for a nice custom PC for my little cousin. Since he's old enough now to go to college I figured I'd do something epic. Sent him a LTT video for assembly as well. He installed the AMD CPU wrong and bent many pins, I sat down and bent them back in to place but I broke two. I took an old school Intel CPU, harvested two pins, and simply dropped them in to the correct spot on the motherboard socket. Put the CPU over top, and the friggin thing WORKED!
now that is what you call a repair
We have a word for that here on Brazil: gambiarra.
You mastered it 😂
@@dlib89does it sort of mean jerryrig or Mickey mousing something together?
Now you just need to make sure the PC is never moved or bumped in any way that could end up moving those pins.
@@GameTimeWhy kinda like that
I’m looking to build my first PC for sound production/creation works, watching your channel has been a great precursor step in understanding what needs to be protected, treated with finesse and care, etc. I would say it’s pretty obvious that all of the components that go into a functioning rig deserve their due respect as far as handling, but a video like this also makes those of us who are new to the building process that much more aware of critically sensitive areas and things to look out for as you receive components for your build in… what a cool piece of info you guys have shared here, it’s got value beyond what you might have intended!
Material science lesson at 14:41 is exactly why this channels good, do more of that.
All I kept seeing was a veiny … nvm.
It's kinda mindblowing. Alex is like, it's KINDA the opposite of what you'd think, and I'm yelling, that's the exact opposite of what you'd logically think!
Can you preheat it? To make it less brittle
@@vitalino1981 you could, to help make the copper reform/meld crystals... but I believe that temperature is well passed the melting point of that plastic socket, and the fiberglass the board is made from. So it wouldn't work as needed.
Copper: 1084°C (1983°F)
@@vitalino1981 Yep, that's called annealing. Copper anneals at 200-400c so honestly probably viable with a soldering iron.
I bought an ASUS ROG X670E-F that was on eBay for $150AUD roughly 6 months after launch. At the time, they were retailing for $800AUD. The seller said it was untested, but I could see from the pictures that the pins all seemed fine. Was very wary about it, but decided to gamble anyway.
It arrived in its original box with all accessories, but with no socket cover, so I thought it would definitely need some work, but I still couldn't see anything wrong in the pins. I then noticed that all the factory plastic peels were still on it. The only visible thing I could notice was that the entire board was bent/bowed slightly. I did no work to it, bought a 7800X3D and 32GB RAM to slap into it, built it, and it worked and still works today without any intervention. The best deal I've ever gotten.
What a gamble! Congrats on the find haha
Instructions unclear I now have 500 broken motherboards at my house
open up a store for refurbished motherboards 😆
instruction unclear, I now have 500 pinup pictures of mothers being bored.
@@mickleman52lmfaoooo
But how much are they worth MSRP$?
@@mickleman52oh my!
this is one of the best videos i've seen in the year, this is absolutely amazing
i wouldnt have a problem with trying to repair hardware given to me for free, but i'd never go out of my way to buy it. the risk is too high.
Linus Stat:
CPU Socket Fixer [Tier: God Level]
This skill can only be acquired after dropping [999999+1] PC parts
i built a pc for my son in 2017, using ltt videos. First one I ever built. Dropped the cpu and board onto the floor and bent a lot of pins. i was able to fix it and it has been working for over 7 years now. Thank you for all of your videos and time LTT!
I think you may have learned a little too well from Linus 😂
People are very consumerist. My sibling decided to get a new laptop since the headphone jack and 1 speaker wasn't working. I decided to take it once they got their new one and saw that the PCB on the right side had broken one of its mounting clips leading to a headphone jack that had sunk too far into the laptop chassis and a disconnected speaker cable. Wedged a filler piece between that PCB and the battery and it's now working perfectly.
Ended up donating my old one to a small charity operation in Africa so at least there was that.
I fix things so I've got more money to buy new stuff
You never know... I opened a laptop to try and fix a stuck keyboard key signal and the whole keyboard and trackpad was dead after that. Either I assisted the ribbon cable's already in progress self-destruction, or I just fucked up.
It's so weird seeing people be so condescending to people who just don't know how to do anything or choose to get a brand new item instead of having a possibly jank item instead. Not only that, but all the examples I've seen people prop up to be condescending to are in reference to boards/laptops that were NOT TRASHED, just given or sold to people who want to recycle it (repair or use it for parts). Lot of needless soapbox standing and honestly its pretty distasteful.
I have a pair of headphones with something wrong with the input for the cable (detachable cable) and I just bought a new pair because the old one was a good 8 years old, I wanted something with higher quality, and I don't have the knowledge and probably also the tools to repair it (if its even possible in the first place).
so true. my brother spent 700 dollars on a new 4k TV because he thought the "internet chip" broke when it reality his WIFI router just assigned a static IP to it for no reason and it just had IP conflicting issues for some reason lol
@@banguseater ahh the tech inepts who just assume they understand technology by using common sense. Internet dont work. internet thingamajig broke. Need new device i guess. Im guessing if he just called his isp theyd tell the router is misconfigured. Slap your bros ass for me say it was by a random youtube commenter.
I love it when you can see how Linus is enjoying this video.
Just brings back good old memories of the house videos
This was a lot of fun actually. Don't want to call anything out but the vibe of a small team-esque repair adventure for the sake of fixing "broken" stuff is a lot of fun and I was invested in it without knowing anything about the specifics of fixing stuff. Great job.
Next scrapyard wars rule. 1 component has to be repaired
This is an excellent idea. 💡
I'm promoting you from cook to Master Chef!
10/10 would watch a bid war just find out its just fucked .... lol
I got an ASUS Crosshair VI Extreme with a Ryzen 9 5950x off ebay for $50. I bought it to repair another board I had. The guy said it just died. I got it and flashed the bios and it works perfectly. Like +$1k for me 🤣
fine good for you
You were lucky, buddy. You can sell for much more and use that money for am5 platform
Risky gambling
@@vitalino1981risky gambling? Guy bought a board to repair a board, not really a gamble he needed parts and bought a for parts board.
He ended up with a working board. Like a reverse gamble. Like winning a lottery he didn’t sign up for.
A risk negative gamble
@MycaeWitchofHyphae i meant not the oc case, but the linuses vid. Unfortunately, there is plenty of people, who knows exactly whats wrong, and try to mask it like something minor, while selling with no complains no return policy.
I did some of this, in my younger days, and it requires more of psychological skill, to determine, whether seller is lying or not.
I've done this. Replacing pins that are fully missing is the fun part.
Get a bit of solder on the bottom of the new pin, shove it in, heat up the pin with some current for a very short time and good to go!
Worst case, just replace the socket. Not as bad as it seems to reflow a socket. It's glued too though. :)
This video is entertaining, but not a tutorial, lol.
27:21 Linus was having so much fun he is dissapointed there aren't more boards lol
28:38 lmao that genuine amazement
The foreshadowing in the shot placement and music was perfect at the end. lol
I was going to suggest what they did on the last board, if they didn't manage to fix it
I had a fair share of boards with "dumb bios" that had a couple of diagnostic leds just on, or even some flashing back and forth in loops between CPU and RAM
I always fixed it with a simple BIOS update and/or CMOS
@@thunderarch5951 Nice!
You actively look for those or you run a repair shop or something?
As with many other commenters, I would fully support a series that includes fixing parts as a primary part of it.
I get that someone is going to say “but we have showed how to do XYZ before, so why show it again?” but I think as informative and educational it could be, repeating the same repair on different parts (even if the same model) would be perfectly acceptable sometimes. There’s a lot of potential, and I again, I am all for it.
I did this with a 4th gen intel board back in like 2016. saw the board for $15 on ebay (free shipping, and the dude spent $19 on shipping) had about 10 bent pins and I even broke one off entirely. saw that there is a good chance that some pins don't do anything or they could be extra ground pins and wouldn't ya know it after about 2+ hrs of carefully bending with ONLY a flashlight magnify glass and threading needle, it booted..... got some BSOD's when the GPU was in the top PCI slot, but moved it down to the bottom and was a flawless gaming rig.
@@GigawattGarage smart move checking the other pci slots
so the dude got 15$ and spent 19 on shipping ? what ?
This has to be the greatest W I have seen all year. Must have been a colossal dopamine rush
@@stratos59 bro paid $4 just to get it out of his sight lmao
@@stratos59 yeah idk… it only came from one state over. I think he went to the post office instead of using eBay shipping. His loss.
watching this gave me a great old feeling of watching my favorite sport team just have a perfect and dominating playoff game and i couldnt be happier, what a great video this is so cool
Several years ago, back in the Haswell days, I accidentally bent pins in my Z97 motherboard. I ordered a "new" replacement Asrock board for cheap. It got in with bent pins and dust on the IO shield. I took pictures, ebay refunded and said to keep the board. I took the board into my shop I worked in at the time, told the boss basically: here is an MSI z97 and an Asrock z97 with bent pins ( that still cost $100-120 new at that time) I told him if he fixed both, he could keep 1 and I would take the other his choice. 5-10min of work, earned him a $80-100 used value board. I took my Asrock home, hooked it back up. everything was gold. Today I might attempt that repair myself with a scope, but at the time my boss had all the equipment to do it mostly right. Today a cheap camera scope is worth it to have for a tech even just to examine hardware.
You gotta do another one of these. I worked in a lab during undergrad with high voltage custom pcbs for aircraft generators. One of the tests we accidentally vaporized a couple of the traces. Like we saw a bright flash, killed the test, looked at the board, and chunks of copper were just gone. Spent a few days jumping with wires until it finally worked (there was not budget nor time to get the boards manufactured again). One of the most gratifying tech projects I've worked on.
18:16 "The greatest technician that's ever lived" 🙂
I get that reference
Same
Salem Techsperts
Did i hears collab?
A good reference
I have been buying open box motherboards from my local Microcenter for several upgrade cycles. Always a good deal, as much as 50% off, and if it doesn’t work, I don’t repair it, I return it and get another one. Microcenter does not allow open box items to be returned as long as they work. But if it’s DOA, you as a consumer can absolutely return it.
Folks, today is the day you want to list your broken motherboard for a high price, as there surely will be someone who will buy it in the next few hours
om
without having checked, 1000 people have taken down their listings and re-listed them for $100+
Glad i figured this out 6 months ago and bought a msi Tomahawk with bent pens on the cheap and now I'm using that same motherboard to write this reply on
IKR, maddening... "for parts" half the price of new or more :/
wait a few weeks and it'll be back to normal
It's always great to see a techical person who ended up in a management role come back to a technical job and be able to do it. No one is more excited than a manager when they discussed they can still do his former technical role.
bro this has been one of the best LTT videos in a long time, kudos guys
I love this style of knowledge and reward. Ive been studying in my free time how to identify different curcuits and chips, and knowing how to dismantle them, but after 2.2mil people have watched this video i can only assume the ebay broken board market is depleted and competitive
Alex explaining the annealing process is exactly what this video needed
Always be sure to heat your pins to 500C for 3-4min under an argon shield after bending them to return to the factory grain structure! -AC
😂😂
You mean work hardening?
@@3nertia or how stress fractures form. (I know its as a result of the brittleness work hardening brings but you can work-harden something and not have it fail, the bending while hardening also promotes micro fractures which lead to the breaks)
@@dzzope Yes, you can work-harden something and not have it fail and that extra process is called 'annealing' lol
Not just motherboards. Recently I was purchasing server parts. Found someone selling 2x Seagate 12TB x18 on eBay. "Untested" £100 each. I could clearly see the date of manufacture on the drives.
Knowing Seagate go from manufacturing date for warranty not invoice brought em, sure enough broken but shipped them off to Seagate and 4 days later got 2 brand new Seagate 12TB x18s for £100 each. 24TB of storage for £200. Beat that!!!
@Vanu-i4o aha! Yeah the mind does boggle as to why someone would even be selling those used! But there's plenty of em out there. Have brought used hgst drives for around the same price 10,000 power on hours but just a year or so old. Pretty much deployed and then retired after a year.
Every company I've worked at has destroyed hard drives. So I find it odd that somewhere is deploying so many at the enterprise level and not! Must be storing something non sensitive
Thats cool, but be careful especially with Hard Drives, there was a story a while back about the FBI selling their old PC to some distributor, and some random guy buying one, which turns out to contain an illegal pornography server share (which the FBI used to catch pedophiles), guy almost went to jail for life if it wasnt for someone that took a loot at the computer and found out what was going on, really off chance for that happen, but I rather pay for new ones lol
@Vanu-i4o brandnewsentence holy shit
The crazy thing is... is you run a small business/start up/small shop where you have a super limited budget but need powerful hardware and you have some time... this is actually a super valuable way to get some systems going... don't know if i would sell them since problems creep up... but to get yourself started that seems amazing
One could easily parley this into a custom pc build business. Buy broken/suspect high-end parts cheap, fix them, build a high-end pc from those parts, sell it for profit designated as-is or refurbished to avoid liability issues.
Fixing every one of those motherboards is crazy, I wouldn't have guessed half of them to be salvageable, it makes me want to try it some time down the line.
I hope there aren't too many people saying you're shilling for eBay or lying about your success rate for clout. Delusional haters are quite annoying.
I am honestly astounded with this video. Motherboard repair isn’t something I’ve thought about or seen people do, but you’ve made it look interesting.
30:35 Note about what Linus says here: The iFixit soldering iron doesn't CHARGE through USB-C, it's POWERED through USB-C. There's not enough battery onboard to run it without being plugged into a power source.
12:14 we all knew subconsciously that Elijah did it 😂
I didn't get it. He meant Elijah broke the motherboard? Or that elijah made the script?
@@brunogarcia3502 I am pretty sure he said Elijah broke the board
Actually when he said he wasnt going to narc. I thought that meant he did it
Agreed.. I said it as a joke, way before it was revealed. 🤦🤦
This used to be my favourite hoby. And I didn't or don't have microscope but phone with good camera and zoom can do the trick.
Even nowadays if I have way more budget to not worry about the price of mobo, I still can't help my urge to buy a broken one and fix it. It just feels so satisfying 😊
I built a PC back in like 2016 while I was stationed abroad and got a "new" mobo for my i7-6700K from Newegg with several broken pins. It would have taken weeks to get an RMA, so I spent like 2 hours of hand-shuddering tension fixing them one by one.
That PC served me perfectly for 8 years until I gave it to my dad a year ago and it's still working flawlessly for him.
Alex: I'm not a narc.
Also Alex: Elijah did this.
🤣
@@christiansmith2022 at least he waited till the motherboard posted to say it lol
Well in his defence he didn't narc until it came to life.
Oh, Elijah, not again... Dude is about to bankrupt LMG if he keeps this up 😂
What works for me on the issue of having TIM in the socket is to spray IPA (as they did) but then use a very, very fine paint brush to gently brush away the softened TIM.
Amazingly entertaining, at least for me. Well done! ❤
Yeah, and repeat the process to (slowly) dissolve the TIM. All while hoping that it's non conductive.
I recently got a faulty Asus ROG X570-e Gaming motherboard for $50 off ebay, it had liquid metal spilled all over it and was shorted out, Asus had already refused warranty replacement, i cleaned it within an inch of its life under a microscope so i didnt miss anything and its now working perfectly in my main system, to say i was stoked was an understatement, most expensive board ive ever owned.
Linus, this video was an absolute blast! I had such a great time watching it. Thanks for all the awesome content! ❤️
Last year i started learning micro soldering and threw a post up on marketplace for non-working game consoles, so far in the past 6 months im up around $10k in just repaired ninteno switch units, if you have a steady hand and some problem solving skill its a pretty good side hustle, i will say that i also have a small graveyard of consoles that were beyond my ability to fix, but there are tons of dead consoles out there that only need a new hdmi or usb-c port that can be had for dirt cheap.
Good idea man, thanks 🙏🏾
I think this is one of the best LTT videos of the last year. I love it. I learnt something, it surprised me, and it just felt real and down to earth. What a classic for the playlists.
I legit had so much fun just watching you guys get excited. I could not imagine how fun it was for you.
My son stays with his mom 1400km away from me. Their house got struck by lightning and the surge went through the wifi router and fried his power supply and Ethernet port. We replaced his power supply and got a pcie Ethernet card and his pc was back up and running. Then a couple months later it just shut down while he was doing school work on it. Their pc technician checked it out and sent it to the online store where I bought the upgrade kit from. They said everything is dead. Motherboard cpu and ram. This is almost two months after it died. I told them to ship it back to myself. And within an hour I diagnosed that only his cpu was dead and that he had to run his ram in single channel. I bought a new cpu sorted it out and shipped it back to him and his been gaming ever since. All in all cost me just about $100. Amd components are really tough.
A Dad doin' Dad stuff. Good show!!!!!
The worst thing for me with bent pins... is when the computer is working... but throws random blue screens because some random pin that does some obscure thing is bent and that only happens every once in a blue moon... troubleshooting and fixing that is why i have barely any hair left... or bad genetics who knows
Or too much testosterone.
you mean every once in a blue screen right
@@someoneelse5005 damn kinda wish i would've been smart enough for that joke but i guess with every hair that fell out some braincells were lost as well
You'd be surprised how many people remove the USB prematurely during the "do not remove" period when flashing a bios. This is why you should always have a USB ready to go, even if you don't need to upgrade your bios.
Ty for this as I just bought a new AM5 set up and my Motherboard had a bent pin that didn't let me run more than one stick of ram. Because of this I managed to fix it and get my system up and running on my own without an RMA.
Guess which prices are going to increase suddenly.
Now guess how many people are going to get screwed thinking it will go just like this video.
Life lessons lol
To be fair, he did say it's not likely this would happen normally and there could be unfixable issues, he just said it in a very round about way where you kind of need to read between the lines. If they're dumb enough not to pay attention to that and actually do some research on the subject before spending a significant amount of money, then I don't feel sorry for them. :)
Yeah, most cases are not just bent pins, but a blown up cap or mosfet or whatever from crappy PSU, dropping the screwdriver or whatever. I just had a look at my local second hand app and ebay and it's mostly weird working mobos that even if posting, won't work well at all. Then a bunch of ones that don't post or give any life signal. I even bought one mobo in the past that just didn't work, and was sold as working, so yeah, having a team looking for mobos with bent pins and other easy fixes will make for a good video, but a kid spending his hard earned 80 bucks (because they won't bee 50 bucks anymore after this video), and having a brick, won't make for a good build.
This kind of sentiment is so toxic and unhealthy, it's genuinely depressing how upvoted this is.
@@MalikenVonSonnestay mad 😂😂
What a great and satisfying video. And the set is so old LTT
i did this! When i was looking for a good quality motherboard i bought a z790 taichi and it has worked perfectly ever since i fixed it!
Fixing CPU pins is slow but rather simple. Replacing one with one from a scrap board super fun.
Company I used to work for had me fixing bent pins and then sell the boards as brand new still in fully built units for L3, Lockheed, etc. Super shady but the money was good, for a time.
For those who are looking for it 17:14 is where they show the microscope
had to come back to his video since was shopping for one for my office, thank you for the time stamp
not all heros wear capes
What a legend, thank you!
Bought a ASUS 690 prime-a for a refurbed price, previous bent pins and I’ve been using it for about a year now and it’s been a perfect! People need to do this more!
23:32 i know that feeling. got it when i fixed my car. you have a lot of passion for what you do linus. thanks for making these videos :D
I'd like to point out that the quality of LTT content is top notch these days. This was a fantastic idea, and well executed.
14:56 Bro that's not a Pin, that looks like a specific bodypart of a horse 😂
Adding veins with another color didn't help at all
😂
Straight from Vaush collection.
*_O Canada! Where pines and maples grow. Great prairies spread and lordly rivers flow._*
Edit: Ah drat! I tried to escape the awkward situation with the Canada song but then I thought of the lyrics. 😭
**Mr. Hands has entered the chat**
I recently got a "smart ear pick" literally a tiny macro camera with light and an interchangeable tip, that you use for cleaning your ear while looking at a wifi stream of the video. It might be perfect for fixing bent pins!
One of the nicest episodes I have seen for a long time on this channel! The pure enthusiasm from Linus and Alex comes very naturally. Seems they really had fun making this one. I very much enjoyed watching. Thank you!
Man, two platforms ago during my first entire build, I was trying to seat my heatsink and I didn't realize when I pulled the heatsink back up to seat it better, the paste made the CPU come out. Then I went to clamp the heat sink down, it didn't want to clamp so I forced it a bit. Then I pulled it back again and that's when I realized I had bent like 1/3rd of the pins on my brand new $350 CPU. I was SICK to my stomach. I sat there for 2 hours with a little flathead screwdriver made for repairing glasses straightening out pins, but I used that CPU from 2012 to 2019 with zero issues lol
This is by far one of the coolest videos you all have done this year and I enjoy most of the content. This could easily become a continuing series if you all workshop it. Something around tech trash, consumerist tendencies to just replace than repair, etc. Super informative, super interesting, and if it causes a small portion of your audience to try a little harder on a repair, it'd save so much technology from seeing the landfill. Awesome, awesome video!
i thought that to repair a motherboard you would need a NASA workstation, they are literally working on a ping pong table.
Yeah but with a nice high end MB testing rig. A sweet gotta have for any hobbyist 😉.
Depends on the repair. Physical idiot damage like this is either easy or impossible. Other types of failures with these crazy multi-layered boards would need some state-of-the-art PCB surgery or worse.
That tells you what NASA use, too :)
If it's a component level problem like a bad VRM or something then you do need fancier tools and skills/knowledge. But searching specifically for boards with bent pins is a pretty solid tech tip especially if they have a close up photo of the socket.
Nope even just a $100 dollar soldering station a $60 dollar scope and some long tweezers to pull off parts go watch gpu repairs i use all this
28:36 I can relate to that feeling. When the near impossible suddenly becomes possible. Especially when your troubleshooting something. It can be an intoxicating feeling that gives you a boost of motivation to continue on. ❤
FANTASTIC to see you rebuilding, recycling and rep[airing. Society needs to give you and people like you far more credit!
I think that if we recycled all plastics, and tires we could halve the cost of road seal!
Too many people think "New" is important!
I've used automotive electrical contact cleaner to get thermal paste out of sockets. It usually dissolves it pretty well and dries quickly.
Contact cleaner is like magic.
100% IPA is not as good as 50/50 mix with water. Also why didn't Linus just use a dishwasher like he has before? 😅
This just goes to show that it's always worth a shot.. It also applies to all sorts of things, many people often give up too easy because it just seems too complicated or it's easier just to toss something and get a replacement. I've personally gotten all sorts of things from power tools to cars that people just discarded when the repair was actually very simple...
Thing is, you're comparing the price of these components to MSRP. You should compare the price of these boards to the prices of similar boards in used, but working condition, which is not that far from what you paid for them. A lot of the times the prices of the broken parts is 20-50% (let's say 3rd) of the used, but working ones. In my area, it's around 40-50%.
This is a lot like "expectation vs reality" where you got lucky in this particular scenario while many people might not get as lucky, or in the worst case scenario, completely unlucky.
I'm saying this cause the video comes off as "this is what you should do too". I've given similar advice to people in the past and the reality is that they're not you, they're not me, and they could not fix 90-100% of the hardware that they've purchased like this (and they were really clear with their feedback that they weren't satisfied).
So, to the people that are willing to buy broken parts: Be careful what you buy. You might not get as lucky.
Nearly all of these boards are current gen though, so comparing to MSRP is totally valid IMO. If you were trying to build a new system with current hardware, sure you can look at used for deals, or go further to broken/untested and perhaps get lucky and use the saved cash for a nicer component elsewhere in the system. If you're buying used, you likely won't have a warranty for the part, but if you bought it broken/untested and manage to fix it, then who cares about a warranty because you bought it for next to nothing anyway.
and they tested them for like an hour at best, once they start breaking 1 month in with random freezes this whole situation of getting hw cheap seems like a terrible idea...
@@cera03 It always depends. My first motherboard was a used Z97 board and the listing showed it in perfect shape and when I got it, it had bent CPU pins. I fixed it and used it for 3 years with two different CPUs (4790 and then 4790k) and now a family member uses it daily for games and it’s flawless.
I've never built a PC, but this was the most exciting PC video I've ever watched. Excited for getting on to my 1st build even more now
The same thing works with $500 Honda Civics... just need to unbend th... no wait that doesn't work.
Alternative Title: Fixing motherboards Linus secretly broke
*linus secretly dropped
@@vnc.tthats not a srcret...
This video has old ltt vibes. One of the best video of the channel.
Love it so much.
One of my favorite LTT videos, the vibes are amazing and you’re helping every day people save money!
23:57 linus showing how he can defeat all odds and can get a motherboard fixed
Best video from LTT in a long while (and I've watched every single video since like 2014)
dame thats like 3 vids😂🤌
Why wouldn't you just use electronic spray cleaner to clean off all the residual thermal paste? Hold the board upside down over a bucket or some towels (in a well ventilated area of course) and go to town with the spray. Confirm the areas have no bridging of any residue and you should be golden.
28:56 you scared me
How?
I think this also shows that Linus has so much experience with this kind of thing that he can just fix stuff most of the time that other average tech experts might not be able to do as consistently or with such ease.
I think that has more to do with his willingness to "take a risk" then his experience. Most "experts" fall back on their ego and stop taking risks because as you take risks you gain the knowledge of what (in the past) didn't work, however, the paradox is that "experts" become useless as their knowledge doesn't include new tech or changes in the areas they are experts of if they stop taking risks.
The people selling broken items on ebay are rarely experts in whatever they're selling. It's either an item they got in a box of other items that they're flipping quickly as is for quick money and no time investment or something the seller broke themselves because they didn't know what they were doing.
once ii got a mobo with pins bent, I looked up what were the pins and i saw the 4 dead ones were GND. Since they are redundant with others i just cut them off low and it's working very nicely. Just remember to do this with only low power CPUs as you are putting more electrical current in the others pins
Good advice. 👍
Want to buy a Microsoft Pixelsense 1.0, works and everything is intact. My friends dad purchased it brand new. I have had it since he passed away. It is impressive all the work they put into it
0:48 for once I was hoping one of these would fall down and someone say 'it was broken anyways we are not losing out on much'
28:26 I had the very rare "BIOS Flash fixes dead MoBo" before, it was because of exeptionally bad shipping and the shakes and impact disconnected and connected the CMOS battery in short succession so that the BIOS was in a weird in between error State of cleared and not cleared. No one believed me xD
Society of total consumption led to this. People tend to get rid of slightly broken things because they just buy new one - instead of thinking a bit, and working a bit with hands.
Thanks for showing this! :) And hi from GVA!
Only in USA
It's really not so easy to do if you don't have a digital microscope on hand, and experience, though...
@@rawhide_kobayashi there's one guy here in comments that did it with magnifying glass. I'd at least try.
Also there was one board that just needed BIOS update.
@@Drakari Linus is in Canada. :)
But anyways, it's whole world mostly. There are people willing to fix - but vast majority just doesn't care. Especially in the situation when manufacturers make non-repairable glued bricks lately.
@@formatBCE It's not that they don't care. A lot of people are absolutely terrified and unwilling to open up anything or try to fix even a simple thing even if there's nothing to lose if they break it further.
Linus raised a good point on being wasteful instead of trying to fix them…but it’s still really good these are being sold. I imagine a lot of people, if they cannot return the boards, will just throw them out. Props for taking the effort to sell and ship. Everybody wins!
2:30 Gary's reply 😂
@@Albatross-365 Classic Gary. Back then he still work on Asus and now he is the head of the labs.