Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

[dood]

I've got two PCs here that I built roughly 2 years ago. One has a Biostar board, the other a PCCHIPS. Both are socket AM2.

The first came in for unrelated (possibly) reasons. It was only when I pulled the board to replace the chipset heatsink/fan that was grinding, that I found that the retainer bracket for the proc fan was missing a tab. The only thing holding the CPU on was the thermal paste (which was actually doing a very admirable job, considering the CPU hadn't been overheating at all).

Next up, the other PC... this one would run for about 3 minutes and then freeze the video with vertical lines all over the place. First thing I did was pull the case open, and found that the heatsink was not touching the processor at all, and was hanging from the top plastic clip only.

That's two 2 year old systems in a week. I ordered a total of 4 brackets, because they're coming from HK, so it'll take at minimum another week to get them in.

Anyone else running into problems with these?

[Wizard]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

Quality of bracket do matter and biostar/PCCHIP boards are regarded poor.

My AM2 board is asus and haven't popped off yet.

Cheers, Wizard

[kc8adu]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

a friend had an am2 bracket snap in her pc.
it was an hp.
when i replaced it i noticed the old one was very brittle.

[acstech]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

I've never had a problem. Some heatsinks use clips that apply too much force. Installation has a lot to do with it as well. If it wasn't on completely that can happen. Usually they either break on installation or stay on forever. I think it was an installation error that went unnoticed.

What brand heatsink did you use?

Pics!

[dood]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

The ones I ordered from eBay seem to be beefier around the clip. Where the old ones are flat across the top, these seem to have a raised area for more support. See here - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=160313302901

[acstech]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

Was the Biostar a T-series board or one of their standard cheaper ones? What did their bracket look like?

The one on the T-series board (TF7025-M2 in the test computer) I have is quite beefy.

[dood]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

ACS- The Biostar board was a cheapie... NF4U AM2G

The heatsinks are stock AMD ones. I'm fairly certain I didn't install them incorrectly, as they're pretty boring to install. Nowhere near as difficult as the socket 462 ones! I've never liked heatsink designs with a single point of attachment. This used to happen on 462 heatsinks all the time, if you didn't get the ones that used all 3 mounting tabs on the socket. And then, it was a much worse fix, since the tabs were right on the socket, not like these where there's a replaceable bracket.

Pics are forthcoming. I don't have my camera here at the house right at the moment.

[370forlife]

Re: Failing AM2 heatsink brackets

My Tpower N750 has a nice and strong retention bracket, I don't worry about that. Strangely, my old ECS RS482-M754's retention bracket is really, really strong. Never had any problems with that, actually one time i put a heatsink on that was poorly made and put so much force on it that the board bent, but the bracket is still fine, don't worry, the board survived.