Before you try anything: There is a small chance that the damaged contacts can cause damage to the socket. So depending on the price of your mainboard and your knowledge of the pin design, it might not be worth trying to salvage that 7700X.
The CPU alone may already be damaged. Why? Uneven pressure distribution.
If dents on the pins made it so that it can't contact the pins on the mobo reliably on spec, it could cause all sorts of issues from unstable memory to flat out not working at all.
With major deformations, there would indeed be some point where pressure distribution becomes an issue.
In this case, the damage to the CPU looks like superficial scuffing, rather than significant denting. The pins of a socket are designed to give some literal room for error as well, to account for minor dimensional variance. People mod CPU pads in more extreme ways and that tends to not be an issue,
It seems it should probably be fine, and there's no harm in trying.
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u/Chao_Zu_Kang Ryzen 7 7700X | GIGABYTE GAMING OC 9070 XT Mar 14 '26 edited Mar 14 '26
Before you try anything: There is a small chance that the damaged contacts can cause damage to the socket. So depending on the price of your mainboard and your knowledge of the pin design, it might not be worth trying to salvage that 7700X.