Processors

[asturr13]

Build: 

AMD RYZEN 5 3600 CPU

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 

(x2) CORSAIR VENGEANCE LPX 16GB DDR4

CRUCIAL MX500 1TB SSD

ASUS GEFORCE RTX 2080 SUPER GPU

So today I wanted to clean out my pc from some dust accumulation (although it wasn’t anything too concerning). I removed my water cooler and then my cpu from the socket to air it out with compressed air. I began to place the cpu back in and some residual thermal paste on one of my fingers cause the cpu to slightly stick and as I removed my fingers it fell from the socket (I wasn’t thinking and should’ve just laid my tower case on its side). Three of the pins were slightly bent, but they still seemed to be standing fairly upward. I took very small needle-like tweezers and bent them back straight up as best I could then locked my cpu back in the slot on the mobo. Upon booting my pc back up the cpu ez debug led flashed a couple times and then went black (assuming that its initial boot up check was successful). However, the led remained red on my dram sticks, although I hadn’t even touched my dram sticks at this point. 

Could the bent pins (even though I attempted to straighten them back out) be causing my dram to not be able to be detected properly? 

I am looking for some guidance as to whether this somehow could be a dram issue or rather the bent pins. Mainly wondering whether this is going to lead me to have to replace the cpu, dram sticks, or perhaps the mobo as I may have potentially damaged the receiving cpu slot on the mobo after trying to fix the pins and reinsert the cpu. 

Thanks for any help/responses!

[elstaci]

Did you recheck the CPU to see if the bent pins were rebent when you installed the CPU back into the Motherboard socket?

Also check to make sure no thermal paste is inside the Motherboard's socket pin holes after you reinstalled the CPU again. I would use a magnifying glass to take a good close look at the pin holes in the motherboard.

If thermal paste contaminated one or more pin holes it could prevent the CPU pins from making contact with the motherboard thus giving you that error.

today's thermal paste is non-conductive unless you used Liquid Metal thermal paste. Since it is non-conductive any paste inside a motherboard's pin hole will prevent it from making electrical contact with the CPU pin.

Many Users, including myself, have unbent CPU pins without any damage to the CPU or its function.  But the best way to check is by installing the CPU in another motherboard to see if the same issue occurs or install a different CPU in your motherboard.

Since the only thing you worked with was the CPU and you mentioned you had thermal paste on the CPU from your fingers it seems to indicate that the problem is with the CPU or Motherboard Socket.