The heat sink and fan installation did not go smoothly. Okay, I confess, I nearly cremated my CPU. My problem came in part from following Intel’s strict instruction to install the heat sink and fan when the board was
screwed into the case. (When all else fails blame Intel.) The PC Mechanic Guide I bought did advise installing heat sinks on the bench. (Right again, Mr. Risley.) But Intel’s instruction to install the heat sink in the case was written in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. And, given how the HSF is engineered, it does make sense to install it with the board fixed to the case. But, ultimately, I had to remove the board to see what the hitch was when the CPU was trying to melt its way through the heat sink. Thanks again go out to PC Mechanic for advising a peek at the hardware monitor right after the initial boot up. I was pretty excited when everything worked, but went through my check list and saw the processor was cooking at the 73 degrees centigrade. Time to power down and take steps.
It was really quite a deceptive problem, since the pop-in fasteners did engage enough to appear locked when they weren’t. And the HSF did appear snugly married to the board. But the attachment problem could only be
seen once the board was out and the reverse side could be examined. Then it was plain that the locks that pin the fasteners in their holes firmly were not completely seated.
The snafu stemmed from the fact that the board required a little freedom to flex so that the heat sink fan’s pop-in fasteners could indeed seat properly, lock in completely, and pull the heat sink firmly on to the core of the chip. When the board was screwed into the case it was too rigid and the fasteners just wouldn’t fasten all the way down. No sane amount of pressure would make it happen. Once I got it out of the case, I was able to squeeze the HSF into place. But get this: the proper HSF installation caused the board to bow significantly — a sickening sight. So far the bend has not created any problems, but it is not a good thing and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
For a complete and exhaustive explanation on how to install the tricky HSF cooler surf to this excellent LGA775 guide on the Hardware Zone. The detailed instructions with pictures will really help. In my opinion this HSF is a nice design when it works, since the board (theoretically) does not have to be removed from the case to engage or disengage the heat sink and fan. Unfortunately, the tolerance on the P5GD2 Deluxe was not fine enough to make this in-case installation happen.
This snap-in HSF design, by the way, is in line with the Land Grid Array’s pinless CPU architecture, which is meant to increase the lifetime of the chip across many extractions and reinstallations, since it has no pins for idiots like me to bend. Putting the CPU into the ZIF was a breeze, by the way. There was even a geeky little video on the motherboard’s utility disk. Too bad Satan made them omit the video for the heat sink fan.
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