HP Smart Socket Removal?

[Zarathustra[H]]

So,

I got a pretty good deal on a couple of Xeon E5-2650v2's on eBay.

I guess I didn't study the listing closely enough, but they came with some sort of blue plastic bracket attached (glued?) to them.

A little googling suggests this is called a HP Smart Socket.

Anyone know if they are difficult to remove from the CPU's?

I suspect I might just be able to heat them up with a hair dryer or something, and then carefully pry them off, but I don't want to break anything.

Does anyone have any experience with these things, specifically removing them?

Much obliged.

 

[rhansen5_99]

I recently put together a current gen HPE server and the plastic thing just clipped on the chip to make installing into the socket and heat sink install super easy. I would guess it was the same 3 gens ago?

 

[Zinn]

yeah from your photo it looks like it's just clipped to the heatspreader. just carefully pry the tabs up and i'm guessing it pops up. i doubt they glued it, that would be a stupid socket.