Originally posted by: Maki
The stock HSF also warps the hell out of the motherboard under it.
Me no like, bad medicine.
hmmm... I didn't even think about the
warp factor. Considering the tension that pulls the heatsink up against the CPU, I was always concerned that those plastic pins holding the heatsink mounting bracket onto the motherboard might get heated up over time and allow the heatsink to move away from the CPU. My fear was confirmed when I had a local customer bring his system in complaining about BSOD syndrome, and sure enough, 1 of the 4 pins had somehow allowed the heatsink bracket to lift away from the motherboard by 1/16" and his heatsink was no longer making uniform contact with the CPU. I remembered the old Socket 423 method of mounting the brackets through the motherboard, directly to the case, so I took the following steps:
1) I pulled those 4 plastic pins out and removed the bracket from the motherboard.
2) I temporarily mounted the motherboard in the case so I could mark the 4 places I needed to have motherboard standoffs.
3) I took the board back out, and went to work with a drill and tap, and installed 4 motherboard standoffs in the 4 corner locations of the heatsink bracket.
Now the bracket is not attached to the motherboard. It is being held in by 4 of the longer mounting screws that go through the motherboard and into the standoffs. I should have taken some pics, but I was in too much of a hurry to see how it would work. I later figured that I could have saved myself some time and effort by just replacing those pins with some 6-32 screws and locknuts, but now that you've mentioned the motherboard warping, I may actually use this method again on future builds.