Yes the processor was removed and damage can be observed to the pins on the motherboard-end / socket.
My son removed small shards of metal from in here and then we discussed possibly getting the motherboard fixed by someone.
Ok. It can happen. The small shards of metal, well, I don't know what that could be other than pieces from broken-off pins. It would be very good to see photos of the damage, which you perhaps managed to take? I have seen hundreds of photos of sockets with bent pins in them and can give you an estimation about the severity of the damage. Some bent pins you can fix yourself.
HOWEVER, he put everything back together and booted up the computer (after installing the latest BIOS update) - giving A2 and B2 a try with the the RAM - and it works!!!!! He couldn't believe it!!!!! I was laughing......
That's not unheard of. When the pin was only bent ever so slightly that it didn't contact the pad under the CPU before, and gets another relief and then pressure again from the CPU re-seat, it can then be positioned to where it barely touches the contact pad again. If you read my
Guide: Fixing bent pins in the CPU socket, at the very end of the guide, I show an example where the tip of a pin broke off, I bent the remaining stub at a higher angle, and this managed to get the RAM working again in the proper A2/B2 slots.
You may advise that this outcome is still dodgy and I might be sitting on a time-bomb. I am investigating if someone can fix the motherboard for me. I would hate to just buy a new one.
To say anything more concrete, I would have to see photos of the socket damage. It's good that it works with the RAM in the proper slots now, and usually, once the CPU is mounted in the socket, the affected pins won't suddenly get out of position again. The socket retention mechanism applies a considerable force onto the CPU, pressing it onto the pins, so it's not common for anything to change one day. It's much more common, as you observed, that it changes when you take off the CPU and then install it again, because any bent pins then have a chance to slightly move again, as they go through an unload-load cycle, so to speak.
So, there's two possibilities for you now: If you didn't take photos of the socket before, and want me or others to give an estimate about the situation, you would have to take off the CPU again and take those photos. But it's possible that the next time you install the CPU, the issue re-appears. Bent pins are unpredictable. So in that case, it might be better to attempt to fix the bent pins, the important ones at least.
Second possibility, you leave it like it is now. If it's really just the one pin that took out the A2 slot (not unusual BTW, one pin is always enough to cause a problem like this), then it's probably not gonna suddenly move under the CPU again one day. So if you're positive that the other bent pins are not important, and with the slot-A2-related pin obviously managing to get contact now, you could run it like this indefinitely. Don't buy a new board over one relevant bent pin.
