When I putting the new PC together last week, I groaned when I saw the processor had come with a bent pin. It was on the outside of the chip, but bent pins on $200 CPUs aren't good. The obvious resolution would have been to send it back, but I was too impatient, so I decided to fix it.

I Googled to see whether other people had succeeded with it, and after a while I discovered quite a few people have fixed pins on the Athlon X2 chip without too much trouble. So.. I figured I'd use some Googlejuice and help anyone else who might have the same problem.. yes, it's easily fixed, but be careful. Don't blame me if you try to fix it and break the pin off (though even that's fixable if you have a really good soldering iron and nerves of steel).

I simply used some regular tweezers and bent the pin at the point of the bend. If you don't do that, you might end up with a doubly bent pin. The pins are supple but still reasonably firm, so as long as you're slow and delicate, you can't get in too much trouble. Good luck!