04 SOCKET ROCKET

Be gentle with the Ryzen 9 3950X. That’s $1,200 in a tiny slab of metal and silicon. Check that the pins are undamaged on any Ryzen CPU before trying to fit it to a motherboard, as a slightly bent but repairable pin may snap and render the whole chip unusable. No, we’re not speaking from experience. Anyway… lift the metal retention arm on the CPU socket and carefully drop it into place, being sure to line up the gold triangle on the chip’s corner with the triangle on the corner of the socket.

This 3950X is somewhat distinct from the other 3000-series Ryzen processors we’ve seen; the font is subtly different, and the gold triangle is smaller. Once the chip is in place return the retention arm to its original position.