Last night I replaced the Core i7 920 in my XPS 9000 with an X980. After removing the old chip I looked at the socket. It has a band across the middle with no pins. (Somehting like below) All the photos I've seen of the 1366 socket show an entire square array of pins. The new processor seems to be working just fine and all 12 cores (6 physical and 6 hyperthreaded) show up and respond to Sandra's tests. Has anyone here seen anything like this before? I know I shouldn't worry so much if the processor tests OK, but I'd like to know if there are any potential problems that might show up in the future. Thanks for any insight into this. Tom Lake o=pin, x=no pin ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooo oooooooooo ooooooooo oooooooooo xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxx ooooooooo oooooooooo ooooooooo oooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo