Hi folks

Just to start - I’m not an engineer, just enthusiast in basic overclocking etc.

Earlier this year i purchased a pre built system on eBay, and the seller had modded an Asus Maximus Ranger viii (Z170) to accept an i9-9900k (I can see the chip has been shorted on AB35/AC35).

I’ve decided to roll forward the mobo to a Z390 Aorus (beefier VRM). The CPU dropped in and worked fine and I’ve been running the system for a few days with good temps (both VRM and Core).

Wanted to check if there’s any long term instability risk due to the connected pads on the CPU, or whether it should be relatively smooth sailing?

Thanks

There is no problem with those pads being connected, they tell the motherboard that the CPU socket is occupied.

The only risk is if the previous owner connected the wrong pads (unlikely) or if the material they used migrated to touch/short other pads.

What material did they use to make the connection?

Thanks for the response. It looks like a copper conductive pen has been used, and there’s good coverage between the two pads (he’s used numerous lines of the pen between them). I imagine the risk of any long term flaking is very low for copper pen, but not familiar with its properties....

Just to add the chip worked flawlessly for 3nmontgd on the z170 mobo and has now been working for a week on my z390, so in terms of the pins he’s shorted the correct ones.

@Regulator86 The copper should be safe, if you're worried you could always buy a solvent contact cleaner to remove it.

If it's all working personally I would leave it.

Thanks @chinobino, appreciate the response - I was thinking of buying a new I9! Will keep using it as-is, I did note that various people (Luumi including) have done follow up videos 1+ year after the original mod (although his was on the Z170 still), so I agree with what you're saying in that it's very low risk if any at all.

Hi folks, just to follow up. Upgraded my case to a Lian-Li Lancool 2 yesterday so took the opportunity to unseat the chip and clear out the material. Used some Asaka TIM cleaning fluid to get it off (it was actually some sort of copper tape). Everythings running smooth now, just done a non AVX P95 run for an hour @ 4.8 ghz / medium LLC / 1.275 set Vcore and it's running smooth.

Thanks for the help.

@Regulator86 Glad to hear it came off clean, thanks for reporting back.