Artic Silver thermal adhesive to attach the heatsink to the cpu???

[stang95]

I have a socket 7 board that had the tab broke off where the heatsink clips to. Can I use Artic Silver thermal adhesive to attach the heatsink to the cpu???

 

[Sorgon2]

That is a good question. I wouldn't think that wouldn't be a great idea bcs if you wanted to take the heatsink off in the future, then there may be a problem. If your Socket 7 board has the 4 mounting holes around the socket by chance, then you could purchase a heatsink that is designed to use those holes for mounting. The Swiftech MC462-A uses those holes and I think the Zalman does as well. You could always buy a new mobo if that was an option. Good Luck!

 

[Hani]

Why would he want to get a Swiftech 462 or a Zalman for a socket 7 CPU?

Did you break the middle tab? Or all three?

 

[McCarthy]

Can you? Yes.
Should you? Up to you. Sorgon's point was valid, but you can break the heatsink loose with some pressure without damaging anything. Mix it a bit weak if you plan to. Guessing you won't be needing to upgrade that socket 7 again though anyway.

Didn't need a huge amount of pressure for those, I'd try epoxying the tab back into place if you have it. Or "ghetto" as the kids these days say, run a short screw in to use as a tab, just don't get into the wiring.

Depending which side you broke, there are a number of cheap heatsinks (Chrome orb comes to mind) which use all three (or were there only two on that socket, can't remember) on one side, just use the middle one on the other side. So may or may not work, but a thought since a chromey costs less than an AS adhesive kit.

Heck, for that matter I'd just put some heatsink compound on, run a bead of regular epoxy around the edges, set a book on it until it dries and call it good. But I'm cheap. Nevertheless, would work.

 

[whitelight]

if you only broke off one tab, you might want to consider heatsinks with 3 hole clips. you could use ASTA to attach the heatsink to the cpu but if you don't have a spring clip there, the heatsink might fall off, considering how heavy they are these days. also, you might not get a good connection between the core and heatsink because there is no pressure holding the two together.

 

[DocDon]

Busted the tabs on mine and couldn't get anything to work -- no holes around the heat sink or anything where I could "tie" the heatsink down. Finally, decided, its an 800 MHz processor (PIII) and a 815 board -- would never upgrade this board/chip combo. So I used Arctic Silver epoxy and glued a heatsink on the chip -- seems to be working fine (two months).