Tonight my LG DVD writer stopped recognising all of my media.  A right inconvenience that was.  I decided to take apart the drive to clean it in hope that would fix the problem.  It improves the situation although it is still unable to recognise blanks CDRs and to get it to recognise CDRs with data on them I have to insert an original cd and then put in the CDR for it to be recognised.  So I started putting my PC back together...

Now, before I continue I will just mention that there was a small cube of black plastic in the bottom of my pc case  "Hmmm, where did that come from?  Oh Well, time to rip out the drive".  

I knocked my CPU HSF and it alarmingly moved very easily side to side.  "Hmm, why is this so loose?" I wondered to myself.  I quickly found out why...

 

Initially it looked like the clip had slipped off but it quickly dawned on me where that piece of black plastic had come from.  The clips on the Heatsink mounting had sheared off on the bottom.   Fortunately, as the pc is in a tower, the top clips are ok and the HSF is still hooked into those.



I managed to get some pics close up of one of the sheared clips on the mounting.



This is an absolutely pain in the behind because I am going to have to completely dismantle my PC to replace this mounting.  The HSF in question is a Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro (SKT 754/939/940) CPU Cooler

My PC is still usable as it is.  The top clips and gravity and thermal grease are keeping the HSF where its supposed to be.  

Has anyone got a space AMD Socket 754 mounting?

Woah good job your found them. I bet there was some strong language in your house for a bit....

nasty  :shock: :shock:

I see why new ones mostly have been changed to screw down mountings instead.

I suspect it may well happen again as the retention mechanism does appear to apply alot of force on the clips and its a thin piece of metal.  It is conceivable that the HSF eventually cut through the plastic clips.

Also I am not sure about the nasty effects... the thermal paste that was on there was like thick gunk when I removed it.  I am surprised I experienced zero stability issues.