Hello out there. It's been quite a while since I've done a custom build- last time was a P4 machine back in the early 2000's. Then bought an extreme gaming laptop a few years back and been using that until now. I like going extreme, costs more up front but end up getting some pretty good milage out of it. When I have to put the settings on medium and still get lousy performance I know it's time for something new. Been using ASUS mobos since the slot 1 days. That P2B-F board with the 16 megs of EDO and 8x cdrom??? Man that was stylin'!!!

Anyway to the point- this LGA2011 socket with all these crazy pins is pretty alien to me. I know what the bent pins looks like, I was in there with a magnifying glass and good bright light. Fresh out of the box the pins looked beautiful, non seemed out of whack or longer than the others. The processor sat in the socket perfect- but when I pushed the lock bar back down the crunching sound was kind of horrifying. I remember just dropping the processor into a ZIF socket and the lockbar closing pretty peacefully, or better yet SECC2 was a breeze. Jeez, that sound scarred me for life. $400+ for the mobo and $1000+ for the i7 extreme, I'm almost afraid to power the damn thing on and have something short out. I'm afraid to tempt fate and lift the processor back out to check the pins. I know I set it in there perfectly, lined up pin1 markers, locked down the #1 bar first.. Like I said not my first build, just my first experience with all those pins on the board instead of the processor.

Somebody out there reassure me and tell me these things make a bit of a racket when you lock 'em down before I power this monster up?