Heatsink a pain to remove

loque

New Member
Hey,
I have an old socket A MSI board with an Athlon XP 2600 in it. I want to remove the heatsink to remove the CPU to sell them separately, but I'll be damned if I can get the heatsink off. It seems very tightly clipped in which is desired when you actually need it to work but removing it seems a different story. :)

Any ideas on how I can extricate this heatsink?
 
Thanks for the responses so far. I'll get a pic as soon as my camera batteries are charged. It's a stock heatsink from an Athlon 2600. It has a green clip on one side of the heatsink (which I haven't seen on socket 939 heatsinks) if that helps at all.

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Push down on the green tab untill the clip comes off and the other side will come loose after that. Make sure the board is on a flat surface
 
lol. I hate those things. As mentioned, push down on the tab, but get a small flat head screwdriver underneath and pry the clip outwards so that it pops off. That's the easiest way to do it.
 
Yup... A screwdriver was all you needed. Just be careful any time you work around those types of heatsinks. I have ruined a motherboard trying to remove one of those a while back...
 
I've also had the screwdriver slip and hit the board. Luckily, the board was dead already! Pulled it and found a melted (literally) ATX power connector. Anyways, yeah that is a pain in the ass. :)
 
Them heatsinks are the worst ever made IMO, I have 3 of them on each of my celly's, almost cut half my finger off trying to get one of the damn things off, my hand slipped into the metal clip as i was prising and ouch :\

I still have the huge retarded scar, makes my finger pretty useless and has done for a few weeks!
 
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