Heatsink with 3 screws

[5cupa]

just had a heatsink screw break off into my motherboard.

anyone successfully ran a heatsink using only 3 screws insted of 4?

[matty-hodgson]

I've ran a heatsink with only 3 attached before, accidentally, and the result was about 10'C higher temps across the CPU..

I wouldn't risk it tbh, but others might advise otherwise.

[scaryjim]

Essentially one corner of the heatsink won't sit properly, so that part of the CPU will get hotter than usual. Probably ok for a day or two, but I personally wouldn't risk it for any longer than that - pick up either a new screw, or a new heatsink, ASAP!

[DDY]

[mycarsavw]

I thought this was a for sale thread - sounded like a good deal too

Do as the wolf says above but use (a big) cable tie(s) to keep the other two screw-less corners down?

[pauldarkside]

What about using a hand drill (less vibration on the motherboard) with a small bit to remove the duff screw?

[kmac]

Didn't realise the screws actually screw into the motherboard. Thought they just went through the holes in the MB and sandwiched the MB with nuts.

[Pob255]

Yes, it shouldn't screw into the motherboard, but a plastic bracket (which can be removed) or a backplate.

If the screw was too large for the hole in the motherboard then you might of been screwing into it, although you motherboard will not of been made for that.

You could try (very carefully) using needle nose pliers to grip the broken off screw and turning it to get it out.

PS One thing about not connecting a socket 775 stock cooler with all 4 pins and I've seen this happen.
We had a pc at work that kept turning it's self off, I opened it up to discover the stock heat sink laying on the bottom of the case.
after investigation I figured out what happened, one or two of the top push pins was not in correctly, now the stock intel paste is wax based, it's designed to melt with heat and reharden when cooled, what happened was the paste melted, and flowed away from the unsecure corner, then reharden when the pc was turned off, building up in the sight gap and pushing against the cooler untill the pressure from this action caused the remaining pins to pop out and the cooler to fall off.
I could tell this from the way the paste was now only covering half of the coolers copper plate yet was thickest in the center.
After finding that I double checked the rest of that batch of pc's and I found one other with and incorrectly pushed in pin, the same thing was happening to that one but it hadn't got as far as detaching the other pins, it was lifting off the cpu in one corner as the paste built up and the cooler fan was really working hard to try to cool it.