Hah. Most of these stories are lame. Back when I was a n00b (=probably up to this day) I didn't know that there were different types of thermal grease. So I had this P4 Prescott, and I applied this cheapo generic white sticky silicon stuff on it and put the heatsink on. Well, guess what, after about a year the CPU HSF got so full of dust and crap that I had to clean it out. I also didn't know there was anything such as canned air that can help you with these kinds of things. So I take out the HSF and it's really, really hard to do. But these plastic clips on the socket 478 have always been hard to work with, so I think, whatever, it's just being stubborn. Imagine my horror when i realize that the processor came out with it! Once I had cleaned out the heatsink, I reassembled everything, and... the comp wouldn't boot. I take out the CPU, and guess what, one of the pins is off. So me and a more savvy friend get out this soldering iron and manage to fashion a replacement pin that we stick on there. So far, so good. The system works perfectly.
If that had been the end of the story, i would have been a happy man. But of course, being a sucker for punishment, i decide that I really need to get a better mobo so I can do some overclocking. So I take out the processor again, and of course the sodder pin falls off. What to do now? I call up the same friend, and we try to resurrect the CPU again, except this time, it doesn't work. The heat of the soldering iron ends up melting the solder point on an adjacent pin, and it falls off. This continues, and in the end, therre are 5-6 pins missing, and we're like "f*ck". Being an even greater sucker for punishment, I try to replace the pin with a little piece of metal that I stick into the mobo socket. Some people have indeed done this successfully. Well, I have 5-6 pins that I have to do it for, so end result is that it doesn't work and i end up thrashing the socket on the new mobo. So I went from working mobo and CPU to broken mobo and CPU (I traded in the old mobo to get a good price). End result? I end up getting a new board off of newegg and a used proc off of ebay. Set me back some $200. The new processor does overclock well, but since my RAM is kind of budget and the multiplier is locked... well, I've never been able to reach more than 3.6 GHz, and i can only run 3.48 or so completely stable. That's the system I'm sitting on now. but it's like they say. The more dumbass things you do, the more you learn.