Safest way to remove stock heatsink?

A

aggr1103

[H]ard|Gawd
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Mar 24, 2007
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I've got a stock heatsink with stock thermal material attached to my current amd cpu. Its just the aluminum block with 70mm fan. I've got an aftermarket cooler on the way to replace it, but I've heard horror stories of folks taking off stock heatsinks and pulling cpu pins out, bending pins, etc.

What's the safest way to remove this thing without damaging my cpu?
 
Run some load software to warm things up (the factory thermal pad in particular) then having your tools ready and before hand knowing exactly how the heatsink is removed, shutdown and undo the clip or retention levers and with a gentle side to side twist/wiggle pull gently up.

Should come right off.

There are only two reasons I can think of for the "horror" stories,

a) Very dumb Gorilla hired to grab and jerk the HS off the CPU.

b) If both HS and CPU are lapped to perfection the very good mating surface can cause a vacuum like situation where the parts want to stay stuck together. Hence the gentle wiggle. If you did not lapp the parts its highly unlikely this will be problem.
 
Thanks Bill. I'll post my success/failure at this once my new cooler comes in.
 
If you have trouble with the thermal paste sticking the cooler and CPU together while removing it, you can try heating up a soldering iron and touching it to the heatsink to warm it up. After a little bit it should help to melt the paste.
 
***note: I will in no way be held responsible if this wrecks your cpu but it worked for me***

I had a Radeon 9700 video card with a dead fan on it, and I couldn't find a replacement fan for the stock heatsink, so I purchased an aftermarket GPU HSF for it. However after removing the retention pins I found that the heatsink was held on with thermal cement and wouldn't budge. I ended up putting the card inside a plastic bag and then putting hte bag in my freezer for an hour. Once the card was good and cold, I removed it from the freezer and gave the HS a twist- the thermal cement had turned brittle with the cold and broke off easily. Of course the suddent change in temperature resulted in a fair bit of condensation forming on the card so I had to make sure I left it in a warm, dry place to dry out thoroughly before plugging it in again- but it certainly seemed to cause no ill effects andf lasted me several more months until I upgraded.
 
i have use some nylon fishing line before when a HSF was attached with a little too much AS5 and o it created suction which was making it difficult to remove. just take the fishing line and hold it like floss and put it between the HSF and cpu....
 
Adidas4275 said:
i have use some nylon fishing line before when a HSF was attached with a little too much AS5 and o it created suction which was making it difficult to remove. just take the fishing line and hold it like floss and put it between the HSF and cpu....
Click to expand...


Sneaky, I will remember this one, nice trick.
 
The simple twist worked guys. I don't think I'll ever use a stock heatsink again though. The gunk used on the bottom of the stock heatsink took forever to get off. Arctic silver cleaned up in a jiffy.
 
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