Q: How does one separate a P4 which is glued to its fan?

[Wiley Q. Hacker]

Hi all:

I have a P4 2.6 GHz on an ECS motherboard, for a system I'm building
for a friend. When I first booted the PC, the monitor didn't even
detect that the PC had been turned on (the power LED didn't turn green
from orange). No BIOS beeps or any other indication was forthcoming.

I tried three video cards, two of them known good. No change.

So, I tried to see whether the CPU had been seated properly. When I
removed the fan, the CPU came with it! The locking lever was still in
place. I found that one of the CPU pins had indeed been bent. I
straightened it. I hope things will be better now.

However, I seat the CPU back in its socket with the fan still
attached. The P4 is much smaller than its fan in size, and the locking
lever on the socket won't let me seat the CPU with the fan attached.

Object lesson: turn the PC on once before sticking the fan to the CPU.

Problem: Where do I go from here? How do I separate the fan from the
CPU? BTW, I used a CoolerMaster fan, and did not use any extra thermal
glue, only what came pre-applied to the fan.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[SteveH]

Hi all:

I have a P4 2.6 GHz on an ECS motherboard, for a system I'm building
for a friend. When I first booted the PC, the monitor didn't even
detect that the PC had been turned on (the power LED didn't turn green
from orange). No BIOS beeps or any other indication was forthcoming.

I tried three video cards, two of them known good. No change.

So, I tried to see whether the CPU had been seated properly. When I
removed the fan, the CPU came with it! The locking lever was still in
place. I found that one of the CPU pins had indeed been bent. I
straightened it. I hope things will be better now.

However, I seat the CPU back in its socket with the fan still
attached. The P4 is much smaller than its fan in size, and the locking
lever on the socket won't let me seat the CPU with the fan attached.

Object lesson: turn the PC on once before sticking the fan to the CPU.

Problem: Where do I go from here? How do I separate the fan from the
CPU? BTW, I used a CoolerMaster fan, and did not use any extra thermal
glue, only what came pre-applied to the fan.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

If you are talking about the thermal pad that came with the heatsink, then
it's not glue on there, just thermal compound. VERY gentle twisting of the
cpu should get it off.
By the way, this is not an object lesson to switch on the pc once without
the heatsink attached. If it were an Athlon CPU on some mobo's it would
probably kill it immediately. The HSF should always be attached correctly
before switching on.

SteveH

 

[Jan Alter]

Hi,
Using either an Xacto knife or other fine thin knife starts the separation
process and then the twisting finale ensues. Watch those pins though.

 

[Sooky Grumper]

Hi all:

I have a P4 2.6 GHz on an ECS motherboard, for a system I'm building
for a friend. When I first booted the PC, the monitor didn't even
detect that the PC had been turned on (the power LED didn't turn green
from orange). No BIOS beeps or any other indication was forthcoming.

I tried three video cards, two of them known good. No change.

So, I tried to see whether the CPU had been seated properly. When I
removed the fan, the CPU came with it! The locking lever was still in
place. I found that one of the CPU pins had indeed been bent. I
straightened it. I hope things will be better now.

I hope the CPU isn't dead. This does not sound like a good scenario.

However, I seat the CPU back in its socket with the fan still
attached. The P4 is much smaller than its fan in size, and the locking
lever on the socket won't let me seat the CPU with the fan attached.

Object lesson: turn the PC on once before sticking the fan to the CPU.

No. That's not the greatest idea. Better to seat the CPU properly and
not bend the pins in the first place. If the CPU isn't dead, then things
should be salvagable. The bent pin isn't just hanging on by a thread
though, is it?

Problem: Where do I go from here? How do I separate the fan from the
CPU? BTW, I used a CoolerMaster fan, and did not use any extra thermal
glue, only what came pre-applied to the fan.

So it was a thermal pad? If so, the pad may have melted onto the CPU.
It's just a thick waxy type substance. You should be able to carefully
wiggle the CPU free and tear the waxy sheet that is the melted thermal
pad. It should not have been the thermal epoxy adhesive that people use
to add heat sinks to memory chips for overclocking. Putting that on a
new CPU would be very foolish. You'll need to look up some of the posts
from this group in the google archive about cleaning off the remaining
thermal pad and applying thermal grease properly. Here's a post I made
regarding AMD CPUs, but it's applicable here, too:

http://groups.google.com.au/groups?...TF-8&[email protected]&rnum=31

or

http://tinyurl.com/24rdz

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Let us know how things turn out please.