Unless that thing shorted and heated up so much that it melted the solder, in this case I’m not sure there’s any extra harm in putting it back in the socket. I usually wouldn’t advise this but if it was gonna cause extra damage it’s probably already done.
Fair point. I’m probably not going to experiment too much. I was just curious about the silver blob, because I’ve never seen this before. If I can’t find any obvious faults, I’ll just advise my friend to take his PC to a repair shop or something.