Removing Stock Retention Mechanism from an A64 Board

hmsrolst · Post by **hmsrolst** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 4:55 am

I'm about to replace the stock cooling on my first AMD board (ASUS A8V), and replace it with an XP90. The backplate seems firmly connected to the mobo (unlike Intel boards), and the installation guide says to drip some nail polish remover on it. I'm nervous and wonder if there is anything I need to be wary of. Thanks.

keith · Post by **keith** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 8:15 am

I just replaced my stock AMD cooler with an XP-120. I was nervous about that as well, but you don't have to remove the piece on the back of the motherboard. You only have to remove the piece that surrounds the socket. On my Asus A8V, it was not glued to the board. I simply took out the two screws and it came right out.

I wouldn't worry about using the nail polish remover, though. You would need a pretty harsh chemical to hurt the motherboard. Try just removing the screws and see if it actually is glued/epoxied to the board. You might not need to raid the wife's beauty supply cabinet after all!

Keith

Herb W. · Post by **Herb W.** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 11:37 am

My experience is the same as Keith's - just unscrew the A8V bracket and mount the new one. However do NOT use the origninal screws as they are too long for the new bracket - use the ones that come wtih the heatsink (I got wrong advice from my retaler on this).

Let me add one piece of advice - mount the heatsink outside the case, on a flat surface. It takes a LOT of pressure to get the 2nd pair of latches to slip into the bracket (at least on the XP-120). And if you have to dismount the HS for any reason, be very careful when doing so - when my first MB was DOA I had to dismount the HS; the CPU stuck to the bottom of the HS and was yanked out from its supposedly locked in mount on the MB. As a result a few pins were bent. That I fixed but then the CPU was found to be DEAD. (I was able to get a free reeplacement as the problem arose from the dead mb). In future I will make sure the CPU is hot before doing any dismounting to loosen up the Arctic Silver.

hmsrolst · Post by **hmsrolst** » Wed Dec 29, 2004 1:52 pm

Thanks for advice about removing the heatsink. I've run into the same issue but fortunately never killed a CPU and never thought about doing it with a warm CPU. I recently mounted an XP-120 on a P4, and found it not hard to mount on a bare board outside the case, but a real risk inside.

wisefool · Post by **wisefool** » Thu Jan 06, 2005 10:48 am

I had a Neo Platinum 2 that with a stock retention plate I needed to remove (socket 754 IIRC, the first ones). Trick was to use a blow dryer to warm up the glue, then it could be pried off.