The little molex pins are the reason I keep a $9 loupe in my bag now

Took me way too long to figure out that half the intermittent failures I chased on old HP desktops were just loose pins in the 12v ATX connector, not bad caps. Spent a solid afternoon last month swapping a whole motherboard on a Dell OptiPlex 7010 before I actually looked close enough and saw one pin sitting proud of the housing. Now I check every connector with a 10x loupe before I even plug a multimeter in. Anyone else keep a magnifier handy or do you just trust the click?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona_carr261d ago

Totally agree, once you start looking close you see bad connections everywhere. I had a shop vac that kept dying mid-use, drove me nuts for a week. Turns out the power cord connector inside the handle was just slightly loose, and every time I tilted it, it lost contact. Also had a keyboard that would drop letters randomly, looked perfectly fine sitting on the desk, but one of the USB pins was bent flat. A magnifier and a good light save you so much time, it's crazy. People think it's a component failure but it's usually some dumb little pin just sitting there wrong.

scott.olivia1d ago

and honestly thats the same with like every damn thing these days. i found a loose display cable on my tv that was causing flickering for months, looked fine till i got a flashlight on it. once you start looking close at stuff you realize half the "broken" things are just bad connections.