well i ripped the cpu out because i was having problems, and i meant to take the hsf off, but the cpu just came out with it with at least 6 or 7 pins badly bent. the reason i was wondering is because the problem i was having was the the system would start up and then turn off immediately, which turned out to be a grounding issue, then when i took everything out of the case and gave it a whirl, i got no display from the monitor. i thought sli was definitely the culprit, but i tried it with one video card, and even an old pci video card, and i got no display either way. so maybe from the grounding the motherboard chipset died or something of that nature, not allowing it to give a signal to the monitor from the pci-e lanes. I was wondering if during that process my precious 7800 gtx's could have been damaged from those grounding issues/whatever. i highly doubt it because when i had grounding issues with an old intel mb, as long as the mb worked, the video card and ram worked fine. I just tested the ram in an old intel platform and all of it is recognized, so im ok on that.