pretty much everyone and their dog has a side hustle these days, and dog walking or Uber driving might work for some people, but I'm better with tech than I am with organisms. What's a socially awkward penguin to do? Hang on, I've got it. There's all this broken tech all over sites like eBay and Craigslist. Maybe I could fix it up and flip it for profit. Man, where to start? I mean, I used to be pretty good at fixing pins, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to buy some four parts AM4 processors that don't look too far gone. We're going to set a timer, fix them, and find out how much we can pay ourselves to do this kind of work with minimal tools. H, how about this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one? Well, I mean, they're not here yet, but while we wait, how about we do the Segway to our sponsor MSI? It's autumn, and leaves aren't the only thing that's falling; it's prices too. MSI's fall-ready

Halls sale is here to help you save on your next laptop, gaming handheld, and more. Check out the sale using our link in the video description. Before we could try to fix anything, something already went wrong. We ordered a total of six CPUs, but as you can see, I'm holding only five. Thankfully, the one that didn't show up was canceled and refunded by the seller, so we haven't lost any money, at least not yet. Let's give everybody their assignments. I've never unbent CPU pins before, but I think I'm a good candidate for this because I'm a fairly handy guy. I'm a fairly DIY guy. Like, I've ran out of kitchen before. I can do things, but I've never done this. It's been a while since I've done this, but I have repaired pins on older CPUs before and CPU sockets and motherboards, so I've got some experience at least, just not super recent. I have fixed bent pins. Oh, all right. That's about as far as I've gotten. I've never soldered pins. My

experience level is pretty low, but of the probably I'd say 10 to 30 CPUs that I fixed over the years, I have above a 90% success rate. All right, so I get a 50700 x, and how many problem pins are there. Okay, first thing I'll say is these are really small. I could like naked eye this, but it would be a lot harder. I'm grateful for this thing. This is actually a good way to check. As you can see, they're all orderly, and you can see gaps between each row. So if there's anything that's walked over, you would see it fill that gap. The only bent pins are on the corners over here and over here. This is a game changer, having it on this thing. There they are, Three Amigos. This microscope is so sweet. This is going to make it so much easier. Oh, there's more B pins than I thought on this corner. I thought it was one, but it's four, maybe even six. Two things I'm worried about with this task is number one, I don't know how many times

you can bend it this way and that before it just snaps right off. Number two, I don't know if these are solid gold or just plated, and I worry that if I were to grab it with like a plier, that I would strip off a coating, and then it would no longer function as it's supposed to do. You know the answer to these questions? I do not. I'm still out of four confidence, but I don't know if I can do it in an hour, but maybe I can do it in 10 minutes. I really don't know. I'm going to start with a spudger and the microscope, and let's go. Oh my God, the spudger is like wider than the gap between Rose. I may not be able to use this tool. Okay, I might use a razor blade instead. Okay, the other thing I don't know is how straight do they need to be. What's the margin for error? Looking at the socket, each pin has a hole, so if it's off a bit, it should just get snapped into place.

that's the theory. Not snapped in the bad way, snapped in the good way. You don't want to have to force it, but like it's got a tiny bit of give at least. Almost looks like I'm done here, but then when you turn it this way, you're like, Oh yeah, those I need a helping hand. So 'cause I can, I use my nose just the focus. Okay, so I previously was working on these ones and now I'm going to go over to this one. So this is a mechanical pencil and the tip is a hollow cylinder. And apparently, you can actually fit the pins in that hollow cylinder and then just manipulate them that way. I think I can give that a shot 'cause I love the idea of just being able to use a tool you might have lying around the house. I got her on there now. The question is, will I give, have enough feedback to like know what's happening? That looks really straight up and down. We'll pull it off. Did we get, make progress? Oh yeah, not bad. It's not perfect yet. That one is still

wonky that one right on the corner. I'm digging this Pencil Trick, but I don't know if I can get these ones 'cause they're so leaned over. They're touching the neighbor. Yeah, I don't think this pencil is going to work for this application. All right, where's my trusty razor blade? This is like when Luke just uses the force instead of that tracking system. I think I'm pretty good here, guys. Going into this, I thought the definition of bent pin was like really leaned over, and now I'm realizing it might just be like a little leaned over, and that is worrisome. Aha, oh, she's in. All right, let's send it. Let's go 21 and A2 minutes. CPU information: AMD Ryzen 5700 X 8-core processor. Plof, that's the win condition. You see plof, you win. Cent is running fine. All the numbers are within expectations, so I'd say we're done. We made the money. I hope the other guys are doing at least this well, but

who [Music] knows. All right, what do we got? It looks like a couple of rows are bent, but I think maybe I can get them all at the same time with like a razor or something. I like to stick it onto something a little more substantial to hold on to, just to make it easier. So, I've got some double-sided tape on a cork here. Probably better than a half dozen bent pins, but they're not very bent. This is almost like not bent enough. Like, I don't think I would have tried to sell this on eBay. I would have tried to fix it. I'm pretty happy with that, to be honest. I think that's pretty good. I think this is a broken ship that someone just kind of creatively bent, 'cause I would have tried to fix that myself. All right, here goes nothing. 3700X running 3600 MHz. Voltages are good. CPU looks good. Let's see if we Windows. Here we go. That guy again. Everything looks okay to me. Let's see a C bench. Yeah, not too

[Music] bad M. Let's take a look at your chip. Okay, this one. I probably the one labeled me three pins on the very corner. It seems. Oh, and I see maybe one that's bent in the bottom right corner by the triangle. So, three missing pins and a slightly bent pin. All right, but three pins all beside other on the edge there and like the most open edge, the corner. I'm probably. I. I think I'm. We'll find out. The confidence is jumping up. Yeah, jumping all over the place, right? Like, uh, all [Applause]. Right. I. I am not having fun. I think even if my life depended on this, I would die. I like genuinely would not be able to get this done. Ah. I. I think it's dust. Yeah, I think I got to call it. I'm sorry. No worries, man. You just give it a good try. I hear you need some help. Elijah had some trouble with uh soldering on some missing pins there. I have tons of soldering experience and working on small electronics, so I figured I might

be able to do something all right. So I'm going to give a shot. Uh, so yellow one to five, then how confident are you? Probably about a six. Okay, that's off. The confident. All right, take a look. All right, yeah, he mashed that one pretty good, eh? See, for me, it's not the getting them off part that's going to be difficult. It's the getting them back on part is going to be fun. First things first, probably try just straightening out the ones that are still there. Are you still at a six? Uh, steadily dropping down to a four. So glad this isn't like a for real these things, 'cause I would have been fired. No way. All done. All done. Got one. That's time. Heck. So how many more do you have to do? Uh, eight. Okay, that's not too bad, though. You think it's a viable side hustle? Not replacing pins, unbending them, sure, but if you're replacing them, there's no feasible way to make a dollar off this. All right, thank you. Now it's my turn. Oh, dude. Oh, there's

a bad one. I don't want any hints. I don't want to know how. Oh dude, there, oh there's two like that. Oh dang, those are both pretty mangled and there's a fair number of other ones with minor bends all along the edges here. What did they do to you, my poor boy? Check it out, just like the Scribe driver, but a mechanical pencil. That is awesome. Yeah, where do I get it? Uh, nowhere yet. Yeah, got them. Wait, you started already? Yeah, jeez Jordan. Hey, you were poking at pins before. Well, I was just, I was looking at it. I was looking at it. What I want to do is I want to really get under that pin and see if I can get it to slightly less bent over without ripping it off. If I rip it off, I'm going to have to put a new pin on it, which means I need a donor CPU and I need a lot more time. It's hard to get under this guy. Um, you can really see boys that this is the smallest Flathead in the iix.

kit and it's still kind of hard to get it under there. Wait, I figured out what they did. Oh, I think they put it into the socket the wrong way, Jordan. I wonder if they like had it the wrong, had it oriented the wrong way or something, dude. That totally done. Uh, I think I may have nailed it. And the thing is, it doesn't have to be completely straight, right? It just has to go in. That'll get in there. Hey, hey, hey, she's in now. Just because she's in the socket doesn't mean I want to fire up the board yet. I want to see if I like really mashed one down because if I fire it up while I've got a pin mash down, who knows what's going to happen, right? At least that way I get another shot at it. You only get one shot, one opportunity. Okay, okay, I'm ready. It's my, okay, so it took me 15 minutes. Ryzen 5 3500. How much I pay for this thing? 30 bucks. 30 bucks. 30 bucks, dude. 15 minutes.

I did it faster. Well, not the same CPU. The point is that aside from some overhead here, I can afford to pay myself 80 bucks an hour to fix this CPU. Dude, I'm feeling good. Challenge number two for Mr. Lus. I get a bonus CPU. He gets two 'cause neither of them is worth that much. That's why they call me the boner. Oh dear, 'cause I get a bonus CPU and bonus Tech tips. Okay, sorry, what are we talking about this time? I get a 3500X. This also seems like it's not in very bad shape. Wait, is this just fine? They said it's missing a pin. I couldn't find it. Now, occasionally, you're going to buy stuff that's for parts, and it's just going to be dead. Uh, okay, stop the clock. I think I'm ready to test this thing because I do not see a missing or bent pin on it. Well, she went in the socket easily. Yeah, nothing was bent on it before this fires up or doesn't. What's my potential profit here? Uh, 15, 20 bucks.

okay oh I just saw the keyboard light up. Holy crap, did we just get a forart CPU? That's just perfectly fine. No way, six-core processor, all six cores. There they freaking go, she's turbo in baby. Yep, and she seems like she's working just [Music] fine. Now what if I told you that actually is missing a pin. A missing pin doesn't necessarily mean a broken CPU though. Sometimes they have unused pins or ground pins that are extra FAL pins, if you will. Dude, I feel bad about missing it though. Naughty lus eyes are getting old man. Here, pop it out, we'll take a look, and there she is. Yep, how'd everybody do? So James took about 20 minutes. How'd yours go? Took me about 8 minutes, and I got it working fine. How about Elijah? Uh, Elijah had a bad time. Did we sabotage? Elijah has never soldered before, and he had one was missing three pins in the corner, and uh, it didn't go well. Justus ended up cleaning it up and getting one.

pin back onto it in the time allowed. It's been through something to watch for is sometimes you can get away with sticking a little piece of metal into the socket. That's as long as you can get a good contact here. I actually had a CPU that I put into my parent's system, an old Tri cor. I think it worked for about 10 years like that with a broken-off pin on the CPU, right? Yep. But with a little slightly overlong piece of metal in the socket so it would make contact. Should we try? I was thinking maybe if that's memory Channel B, maybe we could run it in single channel. That CPU I dropped, that Zeon back in the day where I dented the corner of it, it did still work. Yeah, just five of I believe six memory channels. No way, no way there could still be issues. Are all of those pins memory Channel B? I'll double check 'cause if they aren't, then it might still work. But maybe one of our PCI lanes is not functioning properly, right? Who knows.

that's all memory B dude. She's in Windows. She's in Windows, brother. I cannot believe that. Let's run the numbers. James should be able to sell this CPU for about $135, and we're not able to completely ignore the cost of our tools, but they are good for more than just unbending pins. So let's take away a couple of bucks from his profit for that. That leaves him with $64 of profit for just over 20 minutes of work, a rate of $179 an hour. Not too shabby, assuming he can keep that pace up. As for Team Elijah, he didn't have such a good time. After 2 hours, his 5800 X only works with a single memory channel. Now he might still be able to sell that, albeit at a reduced price, but he wouldn't be making even close to minimum wage. As for Jordan's 3700x, well, it doesn't have quite the profit potential of James or Elijah's chips, but he made up for it by being quick. He should be able to get

close to 40 bucks after expenses or around 285 an hour. Though there's no way that that's a sustainable pace. As for me, I spent about 16 minutes on my 3500 and really, I just used the Precision screwdriver. So, I should see about $19 of profit coming back, $71 an hour if you're playing along at home. As for the 3500x, well, I didn't spend any time fixing this one, and I could get 20 bucks of profit there too. And I'm only out the time it took to test it and ship it, not too bad. But is this a viable side hustle? Well, I think so, but there are some caveats. There is a lot of upfront risk. I'd say it's important to make sure that you are picking chips with good potential profit, picking ones where the seller clearly lays out what's wrong with them so you can claim something back if the issue is something else, and try to get chips with as few bent pins as possible so you're

not wasting a ton of time before you can get right to this segue to our sponsor, Rocket Money. Quick, how many streaming services are you paying for? Okay, now quick, how many of them do you actually use? If your answer isn't all of them, then Rocket Money can help. Their app rounds up all of your subscriptions and lets you cancel them in just a couple of taps. That's right, all your subscriptions, even the ones that you completely forgot were draining your bank account. Heck, they'll even cancel them for you so you can spend more time saving money. Using their budgeting feature, it can analyze your spending habits and categorize where your money is going. So when you get close to the cap that you set, Rocket Money will go, Hey dude, let's take it easy now, okay? Also, for those payments that you just can't get away from, like phone payments and such, Rocket Money can even negotiate those bills for you so you can save a buck or two. So join over 5 million Rocket Money users today who are saving more and spending less. Go to

Rocketmoney.com or click the link in the video description to get started for free or unlock even more features with premium. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe you'll like watching us fix bent pins in a CPU socket that can be even more finicky than this.

Can I Make Money Fixing Dead CPUs?

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.


Can I Make Money Fixing Dead CPUs?

Can I Make Money Fixing Dead CPUs?

Scripts