Intel's Heat Sink Clip Broke My CPU Socket

[BillE58]

Man you talk about a sucka...design. The first problem is the 4 inch long heat sink that comes with the 1000 MZ PIII chip I bought. It would not fit on my CUBX motherboard(Intel's comment in the instructions was to buy another motherboard; well thanks a lot Intel). It probably won't fit on anyone else's either except Intel's. Well I cut a corner section off of it to make it fit. Then POP, there went one of the plastic tabs on the CPU socket when I pushed the tighting clip down. Man, this sucks I thought. It's O.K. though, I put my golden orb HS that has a clip on connecter on the socket. The Orb has a second metal clip opening that fits over the longer plastic tab on the edge of the MB socket. The heatsink now rocks up on one side and does not make full contact with the chip. I mounted a bracket that extends over the corner of the heat sink that does not make contact and tapped a 1/4-20 hole in the bracket right over the heatsink edge. I then rigged a spring loaded screw that I can screw in to push down on the corner of the heatsink. This is cool, I can watch the cpu temperature change while tighting the screw and adjust it for the lowest temperture based on the pressure placed on the CPU.

Has anyone else had a problem with breaking on the plastic tab on your MB socket with that Intel sucka...heatsink clip.

 

[Darksamie]

Haven't had the problem, but I have seen it plenty of times....now the motherboard manufacturers are getting a little bit hostile when it comes to that. There is a pipeline just in front of the chip on most boards and a lot of people actually rupture it trying to get the damn clip on.

My recommendation:
A pair of needle nose pliars
Bend the clip before you put it on. They are at impossible angles to start with

If this doesn't work, get another heatsink

 

[Packet]

I had this problem,

fortunetly for me it was on a generic slotkey and not my actual motherboard

seams like it could be replaced, but I am sure that installation / removal would be beyond a pain.

There are a few options I can think of,

A) Bite the bullet, buy a new MB
B) Call intel, tell them what happened, maybe they will extract some corperate pitty on you
C) Do a perm jobber, spread the middle with thermal grease, glue the edges with thermal epoxy.

 

[xtreme2k]

I had this before.

My Coolermaster clip broke my brand new Asus A7V133. I really had nothing to say. Thank goodness I found a 'Taisol' that has a wider '3 hole clip'.