just wiggling back and forth on the stock fan to remove today and the whole thing came off with the chip without the socket latch being lifted, seems the thermal pad bonded quite a bit

first time this has happened in countless cpu hsf installs/removals

anyone ever do this 'oh shit' moment before and damaged/not damaged anything?

Yea i did it a few days back when i changed heatsink/mobo and there was no problem with the cpu

There is a risk that the cpu pins will get bent but if they're all fine then the cpu is still fine, mine was

mine appear straight too. and it posts afterwards still so i hope there isn't any other non visible damage. phew, i'm convinced spcr is nothing more than a support group with a certain quietpc disease well, at least that's how i'm using it hah.

of course, therapy and support groups are supposed to make us -better- not worse...

We are not a Support Group.

We are Enablers.

Run Prime95 or CPUBurn for 10-20 minutes prior to removing the heatsink from a CPU. This will warm up the TIM and it won't stick the heatsink to the CPU as much as when it's cool.

I've had it happen to me a few times, to no ill effect, I have, however, seen a case where it was worse - much worse - although it did end fine.

A guy bought a CNPS-7000B-AlCu for his P4 2.8C. I explained to him how to install it, and he took it home. Shortly after, he calls, and says that he can't dismount his stock HSF. I sigh and tell him to bring the system over to me so that I can do it myself.

When he did bring the system, it turned out that he turned the retension levers, but failed to disengage the plastic clamps from the retension frame, and when he tried to pull the heatsink out, the CPU got stuck to it and came out of the socket. By the time he brought the system to me, the CPU spent quite some time rattling freely against the socket, and a good portion of the pins were pretty banged up.

It took me about an hour to straighten them all (fortunately, none broke) using thin pincers, needles, a very small screwdriver and a box cutter knife. It still works, OC'ed quite a bit, although I have no idea how...

My CPU got stuck to my Zalman 7000 a couple of times because I didn't read the new instructions for AS5. I spread it over the whole heatspreader, and it was so sticky, it yanked it right out of the socket. No damage though.

I've had that happen before, and seen it happen several times at work with Dell GX260 GX270 and GX280 desktops. In all of the cases, the CPU worked fine upon re-installation.

i have used screw drivers with full Italian-beefcake-forearm force to pry off fans from cpu's and gpu's. Bah, never worry!