I have snagged a few boards in the past where a pin or two was slightly bent out of whack and were easy enough to fix using a jeweler's scope and super sharp tweezers meant for SMD work.
The other day I got in a Asrock Z97 board exactly like another I had easily fixed for barely over shipping (came with the original box, manual, and CD, fatal1ty sticker which is why I bothered). The socket was way messed up. At first, I was just going to keep the box and call it a day, but I decided to see what could be done. Took a while to untangle the pins that were still intact, there were 2 that were broke off entirely. I stuck in my test Pentium LGA 1150 CPU (one I use for testing suspect boards that I won't cry if it gets blown) and some random junk DDR3 stick and connected it to my test monitor using built in DVI port and it actually worked.
Normally I would think a couple missing pins and a few straightened ones that might be slightly off or not making the best contact would mean DOA board but I probably got luck and the missing pins were just grounds? I then assumed some of the other bits probably didn't work like PCIE slots, NVME, all RAM sockets, etc. but one by one I installed components and they seemed to work at the correct speeds even loading W10 on the system which was stable.
Working on stuff like this makes me want to run out and buy a 100x or better microscope before I go blind.
The other day I got in a Asrock Z97 board exactly like another I had easily fixed for barely over shipping (came with the original box, manual, and CD, fatal1ty sticker which is why I bothered). The socket was way messed up. At first, I was just going to keep the box and call it a day, but I decided to see what could be done. Took a while to untangle the pins that were still intact, there were 2 that were broke off entirely. I stuck in my test Pentium LGA 1150 CPU (one I use for testing suspect boards that I won't cry if it gets blown) and some random junk DDR3 stick and connected it to my test monitor using built in DVI port and it actually worked.
Normally I would think a couple missing pins and a few straightened ones that might be slightly off or not making the best contact would mean DOA board but I probably got luck and the missing pins were just grounds? I then assumed some of the other bits probably didn't work like PCIE slots, NVME, all RAM sockets, etc. but one by one I installed components and they seemed to work at the correct speeds even loading W10 on the system which was stable.
Working on stuff like this makes me want to run out and buy a 100x or better microscope before I go blind.