A Reddit user brought to life the Ryzen 9 5900X with bent pins that he bought for $3

You never know when luck will come. The most recent example of this happened to bogertonn, a Reddit user. The user bought the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X processor for 3 dollars, which was returned as defective and had malfunctioning pins. However, with minor surgical interventions, the processor was brought back to life.

Ryzen 9 5900X bought for $3 works

In what could be described as the deal of the century, bogertonn found a Ryzen processor at one of the local stores selling returned Amazon products. This processor was none other than AMD’s previous generation flagship Ryzen 9 5900X, which has 12 cores and 24 threads. This processor actually had bent or even some missing pins, which in most cases meant a dead CPU. Bogertonn bought the Ryzen 9 5900X for just $3, which he intended to use as a keychain in the worst case scenario.

After some fine pin fixes it turned out that the CPU actually worked but the integrated audio didn’t. In the meantime, it should be noted that modern desktop CPUs have hundreds of spare pins and in some cases, even if a pin is missing, the processor will not fail. In this scenario, the missing pins were responsible for the Azalia HD audio part of the processor, which is not so important in terms of functionality.

On the other hand, pin processors have a very sensitive and fragile structure. Fixing bent pins does not always guarantee the processor will work. In some scenarios, pins may even fall as a result of interference. Bogertonn was lucky in every way. While it is a great success to successfully restore the pins, it is a great luck that it does not affect the functionality in the missing 2 VSS pins.

Meanwhile, unlike Intel or current Ryzen 7000 series processors, the Ryzen 5000 series and previous generation Ryzen processors use PGA-based packaging. So the pins are located on the processor. The processor pins of the current generation are located in the socket on the motherboard.