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I have an Asus Maximus IV Extreme-Z. While installing the standoffs for mounting my waterblock, the pliars slipped and I damaged 3 traces. Scraped it down to the 1st copper layer. The three traces connect the CPU directly to dram bank 1.

Needless to say, the system will not post with DIMMs populated in bank 1 so I am stuck populating my 2 DIMMs in bank 2 causing me to lose dual channel operation and causing extra stress on the IMC, forcing me to lower my RAM speed and loosen timings to maintain stability.

The repair is not a concern. I can seal the copper layer and jump the traces. My question is, by jumping the gap in the traces, the length and materials and therefore the resistance will be (very, very slightly) changed.

Will this have an impact on overall stability?

I know the difference will be minimal but I typically run my ram at 2133MHz at 8-10-8-24 with 1t command rate. At such high speeds I know every little Change in the system can have negative (or positive) effects. If yes, is it something that can be corrected by adjusting clock skew?

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I would say, yes you can repair it; but you have significantly decreased the life of that mother board. You have also decreased the OC bias on the machine as well (meaning you can't OC it as much as your used too, probably by as much as 50% if the damage is as significant as you say). I would just not use it, and get another mobo personally; damage like that can cause excessive CPU heat spots on the mobo, and no clear method to clear it. – zackrspv Jan 7 at 6:52
if you reconnect it properly and dont cross it up or damage anything else in the process. if you dont leave tails and tips, and cold joints, it will work. I would rather do a poor job of fixing it, than leaving it broken. seal and jump? I would be doing the unseal (scrape the insulation) and patch the trace itself in place. If you are away from the boards next layer, that could subject it to more interferance? – Psycogeek Jan 7 at 7:06
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As i recall it, and i could be wrong here, as i'm not a mother board designer, in addition to resistance, you need to worry about timing of signals (hence all those carefully selected complicated traces in a mother board). – Journeyman Geek Jan 7 at 10:45
Depending on how bad it is, you could get a Number 2 Pencil and redraw the traces. I remember connecting two points on the old AMD motherboards to overclock them. From my experience, it worked great. However, this was just something simple and important data did not transfer on this connection. – kobaltz Jan 7 at 14:58
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If those are data wires, they are part of a parallel data bus which means the length, resistance and capacity must match exactly for the correct operation of the memory especially under high frequency . If you decide to pain/draw/jump those wires, make sure they can't be shorted in any ways because you could damage your CPU and your RAM. – billc.cn Jan 7 at 22:57
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