The Unbelievable Success of Our Motherboard Repair Venture

We set out to test the reliability of eight LGA 1700 motherboards that we had purchased on eBay, and what happened next was nothing short of astonishing. As we worked through each board, our skepticism grew, wondering if statistical probability would finally get its due. "I feel like we're due for a failure," I said to my colleague Alex, but it seems that fate had other plans.

The first board we attempted to repair was the one that proved to be the most elusive. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't seem to get it to boot up properly. It was as if the BIOS had lost its way, and no amount of tinkering could restore it to health. But then, something unexpected happened. As I was straightening out a crucial component, the board suddenly sprang to life, with the CPU and RAM lights glowing brightly on the motherboard's Dam display. "Bios flash worked," I exclaimed in amazement, having seen this happen only once before. My colleague's jaw dropped in unison, as we both realized that our luck had finally turned.

The room was abuzz with excitement as we went back to the real camera and continued our work. The rest of the boards followed suit, each one miraculously coming to life under our skilled hands. It was as if they were eager to prove their worth, and we were happy to oblige. As the repairs progressed, it became clear that these motherboards were indeed a bargain, with eight out of eight working perfectly after a total investment of $352. The real kicker was that some of these boards would qualify for "refurbished" or "recertified" status on the second-hand market, which only added to their allure.

The Repair Process Was Not Without Its Challenges

Rebuilding and repairing electronic components is an art that requires patience, persistence, and a healthy dose of skepticism. We knew that this was a high-risk endeavor, but we were determined to push our luck and see what would happen. Each board presented its own unique challenges, from faulty BIOSes to dodgy power supplies. But with every successful repair, our confidence grew, and our trust in the eBay suppliers was rekindled.

The Fixit Tools We Used Were Top-Notch

As we worked on these repairs, we had access to a top-notch toolset courtesy of our sponsor, iFixit. Their new Fix Hub power series is an all-in-one solution that offers everything we needed and more. The portable soldering station was particularly useful for its portability and long-lasting battery life. And the 100-watt smart soldering iron was a game-changer, charging quickly and adjusting to different tip temperatures with ease.

The Verdict: A Resounding Success

In the end, our gamble paid off in spectacular fashion. Eight out of eight motherboards were repaired successfully, and we're left wondering what might have happened if they hadn't worked so well. The real takeaway from this experiment was the realization that even when it seems like statistical probability is against us, a little bit of luck can go a long way. And for those who enjoy a good gamble, the world of second-hand electronics can be a treasure trove of surprises.

Our Repair Process Was Not Without Its Humor

Throughout our repair journey, there were moments of levity that helped keep things in perspective. When Alex quipped, "This doesn't seem believable," I couldn't help but chuckle. It was as if we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, but instead, the boards kept on working. And when I joked about scripting this scenario into existence, my colleague dryly replied, "If you were scripting it, you'd have had us fail more." The banter only added to our enjoyment of the experience.

The Future of Motherboard Repair

So what does this mean for our future repair endeavors? We're excited to explore new avenues and see how these motherboards hold up in real-world use. Will they remain reliable and performant, or will they eventually succumb to the wear and tear of everyday life? Only time will tell. For now, we're just savoring the success of our experiment and enjoying the thrill of the gamble that paid off in a big way.

The Motherboard Repair Challenge: A Cautionary Tale

Looking back on this experience, it's hard not to feel a twinge of irony. These motherboards were initially bought as cautionary tales, examples of how statistical probability could sometimes get its due. But instead, we found ourselves on the receiving end of a series of miracles. It was as if the universe decided to smile upon us and reward our skepticism with a string of successes.

The Value of Second-Hand Electronics

Finally, this experience has taught us that second-hand electronics can be an incredible bargain. These motherboards would have normally cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars new, but instead, we were able to pick them up for a fraction of the price. The real takeaway is that with a little bit of luck and some top-notch repair tools, it's possible to turn these "bargains" into reliable workhorses.

The World of Second-Hand Electronics Is Full of Surprises

In conclusion, our motherboard repair venture was an adventure unlike any other. It reminded us that even when statistical probability seems against us, a little bit of luck can go a long way. The world of second-hand electronics is full of surprises, and we're excited to see what other treasures we might uncover in the future.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en$500 how am I supposed to build a PC on a budget when the part you plug the actual good stuff in the flipping motherboard costs as much as my entire first computer wait I've got one idea you see the motherboard is one of the easiest parts to accidentally break when you're building a PC meaning many people have broken them and eBay is flooded with cheap broken boards that are just begging lius please fix me but can they be fixed to find out we bought one then we bought another one then we bought six more oh my goodness and the best part is as far as we can tell fixing most of these motherboards should be an easy path to savings you did not tell me that today was going to be this challenging let's go and the top snapped off just like this easy segue to our sponsor I fix it this just announced their fix Hub power series lineup which includes a portable soldering station a soldering toolkit and a 100 wat smart soldering iron go check it out at the link in the video description in the old days the most delicate part of a computer was the little pins on the bottom of the CPU if you so much has looked at those things sideways they could end up sideway ways the good thing about CPU pins though was that they were relatively easy to repair and in fact we've done a couple videos in the past on how you can fix everything from broken to outright removed ones unfortunately that's not going to help you that much if you have a modern system because both AMD and Intel have moved the pins from the CPU where they're their liability to the motherboard where they are someone else's liability and in the process they've made them even more fragile you so much as get a little bit of hair caught on one of these and pull it with the force of a mosquito's Wings taking off and your motherboard goes from wicked fast gaming to Wicked brick and there's all kinds of ways that this can accidentally happen leave your motherboard sitting out without the little plastic socket cover you're probably going to end up with a bent pin see a little bit of dust in there and go to pick it out you guessed it bent pin I've personally bent pins on a number of occasions yep me too too do we have that one on camera when you dropped the CPU in the socket as you were trying to put it in no that one wasn't repairable anyway I've also bent them back many times and ended up with a perfectly working motherboard the question then is can I apply those skills to a socket that was Bent by somebody else starting with this azrock z690 extreme Wi-Fi 6E you're actually going to notice there's going to be a pattern in the boards we're trying to fix we mostly tried to Target higher end ones because those are the ones that are the most worth putting in our time in order to fix the story for this guy is that he's a customer return that was untested and untested is actually a good thing in this case even though we can't necessarily believe that because eBay sellers can lie if it is truly untested that means that no one else has taken a crack at it potentially causing further damage it also means that there's a better chance that it can be repaired because if someone already tried and it's still dead well let's see what wasn't worth them bothering to test oh well there's something those two pins look bent but very fixable but the one I'm actually more worried about is this spot right here that looks like it could be a missing or broken off pin out right and those are a lot harder to deal with without specialty tools oh look at that you can barely even tell now dude Alex find me the pins that were bent oh are we not recording here oh oh we missed it all right well well they were there you saw them in the Pro Blends now they're not there yep that's not the one that I was most worried about though the one I'm most worried about is the one that looks more like it's missing in this corner I can't even see it I might need a bit of a different angle here uh-oh oh there it is oh we're just oh that's bad news the way these are made up there's kind of like a spring portion on the bottom and then there's another one that goes the other way way and then there's like a ball like a little contact pad on the bottom that touches the bottom of the CPU if that breaks off your only hope is to kind of force the spring portion up so that that contacts the pad on the bottom of the CPU with that said some of these pins are extra ground connections or unused pins that might have been for testing purposes or reserved for future functionality and aren't needed now we could painstakingly look up exactly what that pin does but now that we fixed the other two the faster way to deal with this would probably be to just throw a CPU in here and see if it works I don't know if I'm going to do that though I think I'm going to I think I'm going to go for gold it looks like there's just one of them that is little busted here I found a diagram of what does what on LGA 1700 oh brilliant we're five in from the very bottom it's a ground pin maybe maybe that's what we think there might be one more here at the edge ah oh wow yeah this guy got mangul have you tried to fix any of these yet Alex no it's an adventure day we have so many and they were all so cheap that even if we only get like two we win like did you tell them how much this motherboard cost us I don't think I did do you know how much this motherboard cost us I don't think I do0 $30 30 bucks and all I have to do is this yeah and then you have $170 savings dude I'm totally going to get this one and the top snapped off I think I might have that in position enough so what we're looking at right here is this little nubbin at the end of this it just needs to touch where this pad does on the in between these two see that so as long as we can bring it up high enough we should have contact is it ideal no but it wasn't ideal when doofus mcpy here did whatever he did to his socket that's not my fault I think the bigger question we should be asking is why is this motherboard bent oh wow which CPU did you choose uh it's a 12 700k that way we don't need to worry about if it needs a new bios or anything like that we're just going to throw some goop on approximately where the die is cuz it's not like we're going to be gaming on them we're just testing for basic functionality then AMD coolers are great for this because they just kind of go on there and then we're good to go I think I figured out why the motherboards bent whoever it is dropped it that does not necessarily preclude it working though let's give it a shot I think NZXT asked us to use this power supply this is their new C1500 it's 80 plus Platinum obviously can do up to 1,500 watts and given what nvidia's 50 Series cards are rumored to be sucking back that may be more necessary than you'd think anyway what let's flip her on this is by no means a guarantee yet though CPU dram are both illuminated we can try another memory slot it's possible that one of the pins that is bent is a pin that's needed for the operation of that memory slot so let's go ahead and give this another shot here shall we I don't think this is doing anything right now sure doesn't seem like it it doesn't mean we're cooked but it does mean that our time might be better spent making some notes and moving on to another board for now now for our next victim this is an MSI Pro z690 a WiFi we paid 35 bucks for it and it's worth over 200 new if we can get it working the seller claims this is an Amazon return and that it is UN tested this has clearly been installed and it looks like it's been installed more than once to me the other thing that stands out to me is there is thermal paste on this thing everywhere fingerprints oh you do not even know the half of it oh it's in the socket it's all over the ilm buddy I don't have any genius ideas for how to remove that I mean theoretically if it's non-conductive and non-capacitive it shouldn't really matter this was my idea just give her a rinse down why would you not do this over the sink it's fine n it's good it's good did that work at all honestly I don't think so remember we only need the top to be clean that'll do while we wait for that to dry let's take a look at victim number three this one we did not get from eBay oh where did we get this one we got this from we broke it next up we've got a proart z690 Creator Wi-Fi very expensive board which makes this one's origin all the more troubling to me oh Alex yeah who did this I was told who made this system mhm I don't need to be a Arc right now now something I am wondering is if anyone has actually tried to just fire this thing up see if it works that was my question as well cuz a lot of the times people will be like oh it doesn't work but if we just put the ram in the other slots maybe it's fine there's a little tooth here so if I could bend that back into shape maybe I could put it back in and that would at least hold the pins in Place Alex you did not not tell me that today was going to be this challenging In fairness that first one I did not look at close enough and not realize it would be that challenging mhm as you can see these pins right here are kind of in the right spot so as long as they have enough spring in them there you go see those are in the right spot but these guys have popped out so the top of the pin should be sticking through this little hole so what I want to do is I want to take my pin bend them down and push them over so they go into the right spot here oh did that go in yes sick hey there you go all right what are my odds I think it's solid 50/50 the good news is so far the MSRP of these three boards is $870 and we have only spent 155 this light is green I need to see more than a green light though the lights say it's booted I know it's not a KF is it I don't think so I didn't think so either that would mean it doesn't have onboard video do we want to just put a GPU in it by all accounts it's working other than that it isn't working get on there buddy this one needs to work cuz it makes our Math Workout so well if we can get this $470 motherboard going we can claim some nonsense in the title for sure it does is this a 24 gig memory stick I really hope it is yes oh good let's go for bonus points I want to try this memory slot so I lifted up this little piece of metal here lifted it up squeezed it back together then slid it back down so that's what's holding the slot together now that was what was broken out before so in theory I will be able to just put a memory stick into it and it'll just work that was God messaging says he's on my side today let's go no way will it run it at full speed if we want to try running at full speed we should put in crappier Ram that's fair okay let's save that as a bonus objective either way we are one for three now now that we know that this works do you want deploy to one of our internal workstations also that who made it Elijah I'm going to go get that one that was drying off odds on this one uh oh the power switch pins are bent I think 47% odds really yeah who let's go no I optim hey hey hey hey hey hey how we doing hey hey oh hey how you doing oh this is great dude dude I can't believe that just spraying a bunch of isopropyl on it worked even though that was my only plan clean it Huck it to dry motherboard boots up easy hold on hold on hold on I want to see I want to see dual Channel operation I want to see dual Channel operation here oh I'm stoked right now I got to say I would always read eBay listings assuming untested meant I tested it and it doesn't work and I don't want to be on the hook for it that's what I always assumed so I've never really gotten into this stuff oh like in that GPU one I flicked a bio switch on one of them and it started working like people actually don't test them that's crazy like we are one for three no one for two of the eBay ones and we're two for three overall and so far we've only spent like an hour and a half on this and we only have a bunch of way worse ones 's coming well show me that dual Channel operation yeah buddy as far as we can tell fixed motherboard actually working now to be clear there can be issues that can crop up random instability just because it posts doesn't mean that this is a fully functioning motherboard and we'd want to give it a fuller Suite of testing before we say 100% if it works also it is worth noting that this board even though it was 210 $1 new you can get a refurbished one for 90 bucks oh which makes our $35 that we spent on it not as good but still still good 35 bucks still good yep still very good next up we've got a prime z690 M plus D4 which we got for 60 bucks but retails for 260 why is it so much I don't know also the listing said no turbo bent pins bent pins affect the cpu's ability to Turbo boost maybe can confirm definitely bent pins I made it worse oh I accidentally bent it too much the opposite way now I got to go back yeah you want to avoid doing that as much as possible because the more that you bend the pins the more likely it is that they are going to break these are made out of copper which is really good for cold working which means that it actually gets stronger the more that you bend it which is kind of not what you would expect but here we've got the PIN and I've drawn roughly what the grain structure would look like inside of it basically when your metal cools down it just kind of randomly decides where it's going to grow crystals and it looks something like that as you bend it little cracks are going to form something like that and some of these crystals are going to move against each other but as you do that more and more and more the chances that one of these cracks terminates in one of the other cracks that you've already made is better so it gets stronger but you do too many of them all over the place and it's gone the good news is I think I got that one back in position nice the bad news is that I think there's more ooh it's just hard to hold steady enough that might be good enough oh man this one too jeez buddy I think this one's going to work oh hey Dash I don't know what's going to happen here but what I do know is that we're going for bonus marks on this one oh oh we are right into Windows folks I'm feeling really good there we go okay what's this CPU supposed to Turbo to 12 700k up to 5 GHz okay I want to see one of my cores turboing up to 5 GHz then I don't think it's going to go that high but I mean they're at 4.5 that's not base clock is it no that's way higher than base clock but ALS also just not really a clock speed that makes sense how's our package power 32 watts that seems really low it's only for one core though you know what before we do anything more this is a 2-year-old bios I think an update is probably in order yeah let's get you the other ASRock z690 extreme and see if that one works cool can confirm bent pins lots of bent pins I can't even see this one in the microscope there's some junk in there so that's not actually a bent pin that's just some junk I think I'm getting better at this just doing a few boards today what's a microscope like this worth like 100 bucks 70 not bad oh that's a bad one that's bad this one right here oh yeah oh nailed that one oh what was that like 5 minutes it's way less than the time it takes to update a bios that's for sure nice hey this bios has flashed though let's find out if this one turbos before we try that one then what was it last time it was 4.5 right yep 4.9 heck yeah let's go wo all right turbo Works let's do a multi-core bench and see what happens there you go bunch of them at 4.7 4.8 yeah oh dude this is a this is a working great turboing working motherboard sweet what do we pay for it 60 bucks 60 bucks if I'm calling this one fixed y dude our stats at the end of this are going to look sick if we can keep this up dude it just worked just worked oh my God this is sick I don't even know what to tell you other than this didn't post before right it was completely not working like you saw those pins oh yeah I guess that's true sick okay one thing that I would like to check though just because two of them slots work doesn't necessarily mean they all work those two working pretty good indicator that's true and those are the main ones that matter because as soon as you populate all four slots you're going to be giving up some speed but I'd be curious to see if all of them work on this board okay so Alex will work on that while I crack open this supposedly nothing wrong with it z790 udac do you happen to remember what we paid for this bad boy we paid $66 and I looked at it and apparently the listing says that two Ram slots don't work okay which would normally indicate either a problem with the pins in the socket that connect to the ram slots or a problem with the ram slots both of which are things we've tackled today and also if two of the ram slots just plain work are you willing to give up two Ram slots to just like save 170 bucks or whatever I would you would be saving $133 still yeah that CPU went to 5.3 gigahertz almost immediately oh and it's really hot now I'm actually gonna stop yeah I don't have a proper cooler on this one Alex but she works yeah it works great that moment when you repair five motherboards and cook a CPU that'll wipe out your savings pretty quick dude I got to back you up on this one I do not see a problem feel like we need to get this on the bench oh no way dude it's into windows dude just skipped the BIOS dude did they have a bad CPU and just thought it was the motherboard and sold it or maybe they had like a 14th gen and it has an older bios this was supposed to be the curveball where it was like it looks fine why is it broken it's just not broken I've heard of this I mean you said when we bought all the video cards one of them just you hit a bio switch and it just worked yeah user error I mean if user error can break the pins and you you bend the ram slot then user error can just have no idea how to put a computer together clearly yeah the BIOS is from uh July of 2023 so I wonder if they just bought a 14th gen popped it in here it didn't work and they just didn't know how to troubleshoot it and then nobody checked it when it was returned 14900 K launch October 17th yep that's probably what happened $200 MSRP got it for 66 bucks not bad I think repairing motherboards from eBay is my new career like seriously I'm making some of the best money I've made in a while doing this this is great dude okay if I didn't have to film any of this I've only spent like a couple hours fixing boards today and I've made hundreds of dollars the only one that didn't work was 15 bucks speaking of which let's look at some other ones that might not work all right let's do it I can't believe how much fun I'm having today do you want to see one that's not so fun I would love to this one is $210 normally we paid 56 I think I found the problem so the listing for this one says the board looks perfect seems just untested this one might be super easy this socket is mangled dude it is possible that it was fine when they sent it it was shipped without a socket cover so it might have just got completely mangled in shipping I blame the seller at that point you can't ship a motherboard without a socket cover also it's covered in thermal goop right there there's supposed to be a thing and that one oh my goodness they're bent backward there's no way that happened in shipping seller's a liar seller's a liar dude there's also this dude the only way they could be more of a lying seller is if they were a dishonest below floor below ground house basement what a lying seller uh uh dude I think I just got one of them see the pins are really small but the pads on the bottom of the CPU are not that small so as long as you can nail that pad space and not hit the one next to it then you're good my success rate today is cray cray dude I think I just nailed this one I don't want to give you guys unrealistic expectations our rate of success today is very high and I wouldn't expect to have the same but we also have shown with a sample size of far more than one that this is a thing that you can do and potentially succeed at as much fun as I'm having it also makes me sad that people just discard stuff like did anyone even try to fix these boards if they had they'd still have them and they'd still be working just seems wasteful okay what do we pay for this one and what's it worth again this is uh z790 PG lightning we paid $56 and it is worth 210 keyboard keyboard did something wait for it dude holy crap let's go no way dude I genuinely did not think that one was coming back that was supposed to be our example of sometimes B pins can be too much but it turns out it getting dropped can be too much besides that you never know and professional shops can do full socket Replacements just because we don't have those capabilities in our makeshift table tennis table lab here doesn't mean that anything is necessarily too far gone when it goes to socket repairs it's generally only worth it to do those kinds of repairs on a very premium board though because otherwise you're going to spend more than the value of the board in order to fix it she's running pretty hot I didn't even put fresh thermal compound on it but it's very clear that this system is working all 32 gigs of RAM are showing up it works brother damn how far ahead are we today in total we paid $352 so far we have fixed $1,550 worth of motherboards that's like 250 bucks an hour it's actually crazy yeah mind you that's brand new pricing that he's comparing against and these realistically are reworked boards now but even if we had to give a significant discount on them you know for our small computer repair shop or Facebook Marketplace Builder business we're doing pretty good or if you're just a normal person you can just get a $250 motherboard for 30 especially if you're a hobbyist and you already have you know some fine tools and a microscope or something like that or you could borrow one from school or whatever yeah next up we've got a throwback x299 back when Intel had a high-end desktop platform I don't see anything wrong with it though which is tripping me out a little bit here yeah this one's very strange the listing says that it is broken and the CPU slot has bent pins MH I do not see any bent pins just going to look for any like scratched traces on the back or anything like that I'm surprised we didn't get more of that like people accidentally installing an extra standoff and scratching traces stuff like that it's pretty common or at least it used to be and can be a royal pain in the butt to repair if you can do it at all cuz you basically have to put these little tiny traces back together with a little bit of wire it's beyond my capabilities can we just throw a CPU in and see what happens yes we do what are the odds this one just works I think it's low I think it's low I I've seen a lot of these boards die in the field this is not how statistical probability works but I feel like we're due for a failure you know what the hell unal why does this work unreal what did we pay for this we paid $50 for it we paid 50 bucks for this board $500 motherboard what just happened we have fixed $2,046 worth of motherboards we paid $350 to and what's crazy about this is Alex and I were talking about this before these older Intel platforms the CPUs are dirt cheap because the motherboards tend to fail before the CPUs do how ironic you could build a system around this thing for like nothing these days this one was supposed to be a cautionary tail okay how many more boards are left no that's it that's it we have repaired seven of eight okay I want to go back to that first one for bonus I want that one now there's no way there's no way I want it I could not have scripted this better like if I was scripting this I would have had us fail more yeah exactly cuz this doesn't seem believable guys we bought these boards on eBay except the one this makes no sense okay so this is that first board and the only one that I have not been able to successfully boot today I'm straightening it because it's not long enough it's missing some of the material straightening it out and then I'm trying to get it to reach over I'm ready to try this one again this one doesn't make it I think I will forgive myself CPU and Dam lights are on but as I recall that was the same behavior we got last time I think this one might be hooped I have seen just bios Flash starts working before he is not wrong bios flash worked I'm just going to power cycle her I don't think this is going to work I don't think so either however I have seen situations where the BIOS has become unstable for some reason and like a really long seos clear like letting it sit for a week with the battery out or a bio oh my God I think it's going to work no way I was sitting here giving a lecture on how what there is absolutely no way this is going to happen but I have seen it bios flashback for the win I eight of eight that's great mate what the hell we didn't even break out the real camera cuz we didn't think this would work yeah this this is shot on Colin's iPhone dude why is it working we're going all the way to Windows boys holy crap there you go we're back to the real camera and we're back to our conclusion this is a perfectly working motherboard with all four sticks of ram XMP enabled on a bowed motherboard other than the little mangled Corner that doesn't seem to affect anything this just works what's our total Alex how' we do we bought $352 worth of motherboards and we have made if you go by MSRP $2,246 worth of motherboards work eight of eight I cannot believe it now on the secondhand Market these are obviously going to qualify as refered or uh recertified or whatever you want to call it so we're probably going to end up somewhere behind that number but it is still clear that with a little over $300 us out of our pocket Having Eight working LGA 1700 motherboards is an unbelievable bargain yep just like this span segue yeah that was a pretty bad one yeah to our sponsor I fix it you guys got to know who they are by now right replacement parts comprehensive guides high quality toolkits all of that good stuff but now there's more they just announced their fix Hub power series let's run through it real quick first is the 100 wat smart soldering iron it charges through USBC heats up in 5 seconds and you can even adjust the tip temperature using a handy web interface next we've got their portable soldering station a benchtop setup you can carry around with you that features USBC power delivery and boasts up to 8 hours of soldering time on a single charge finally for their most comprehensive package there's the soldering toolkit it's an all-in-one solution that comes with the power station soldering iron and a bunch of other useful tools like an iron cap mandible wire strippers and angled tweezers honestly there's so much stuff in the kit you'll have to check it out for yourself so head over to our Link in the description to learn more about iFixit new fix Hub power series if you guys enjoyed this video maybe you like the one where we repaired CPU pins and tried to see if it was a viable side hustle not as profitable as motherboards I'll say that much though spoil I can't believe it still\n"