Motherboardectomy: how to un-bond the CPU's heatsink?

Joshua Judson Rosen rozzin at hackerposse.com
Thu Jul 7 23:31:43 EDT 2016


On 07/07/2016 10:42 PM, dennis wrote:
> Modern cpus all have heat shields on them so I'd be more worried
> about he pins than the die. Have you tried rotating the cpu/heatsink
> in opposite directions (like you were unscrewing it)? That's usually
> all i've had to do to get them unstuck, even when I've managed to
> pull the cpu out of the locked zif socket.

Yeah--it's *stuck*. Maybe if I still had it locked in the socket,
and/or if I'd been running it beforehand and still had it hot...,
though the whole idea of holding the CPU by the pins, using the motherboard
to apply leverage... actually kind-of freaks me out.... Maybe I'm getting old--
bought a nice SSD along with the new motherboard, and can't just enjoy
the new tech for the sake of new tech--I have to worry myself
about things like the lack of powerfail caps....

I don't know what difference it makes, but this is something like 3 years old
(I think I got it at the last computer show that NC Shows did in NH
before they finally stopped doing computer shows), and it was whatever sort
of thermal stuff AMD pre-applied to the heatsink..., which I seem to remember
being surprisingly solid out of the box.

I guess un-waxed un-flavoured dental floss and a new container of thermal paste
are on my shopping list for tomorrow. I'm assuming mint-flavoured wax is not
something I want to get in the mix....


> ---- On Thu, 07 Jul 2016 22:30:35 -0400 *Star <nhstar at gmail.com>*wrote ----
> 
>     I've used the dental-floss trick, well, actually, thin fishing line.  It worked well enough without the alcohol, it was just a slow, steady process.
> 
>     On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 10:06 PM Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at hackerposse.com <mailto:rozzin at hackerposse.com>> wrote:
> 
>     _______________________________________________
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> 
>         Bought a nice CPU a while back, with a cheap motherboard to put it onto
>         until I found something better (in retrospect, that was probably silly...).
> 
>         Finally found a better motherboard, and am now reminde that
>         (a) now I need to get the heatsink off of the CPU in order
>         to transfer the CPU between the ZIF sockets (since the socket lever
>         is covered by the heatsink), and (b) baked thermal paste is
>         a remarkably good adhesive.
> 
>         Somewhat surprisingly..., the CPU is out of the original socket
>         at this point--it popped out while I was fiddling with the heatsink.
>         I'm going on the assumption that nothing got broken in the process,
>         for the time being....
> 
>         Any suggestions on what the right course of action is, here?
> 
>         Wikihow advises to soak the CPU+heatsink assembly in isopropanol
>         and then slicing them apart with dental floss.....


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