Very bizarre heat sink installation problem

J

jon_k

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Jul 29, 2004
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I have an old Thermalright Ultra 120 CPU cooler. I recently bought an Asus P8Z68V-Pro Gen3 motherboard with an Intel i5 2500K CPU. The Thermalright 120 came with monunting brackets for a LGA775 socket, so I bought the following kit to attach it to my new motherboard:

http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/venomous-btk.html

I installed the Heatsink and I was getting all these weird errors which made me think I had done something to fry my motherboard. Sometimes it wouldn't even post, and sometimes it did but shut off while windows was booting up. Took it off and put the Intel stock cooler back on and it works like a charm. I did a bunch of stress testing with Prime95 and Skyrim to make sure my system was working good, and it worked like a charm.

Tested this a few times, and indeed I can confirm that it's the mounting kit that's the problem. I've never seen something like this before. The only thing I can think of is that the mounting kit puts too much pressure on the motherboard. Has anyone else experienced an issue like this? I'd like to put the Ultra 120 to cool the CPU as I'll be able to cool and overclock it better, but I'm kind of scared to try this again. It might brick my rig.

Thanks,

Jon
 
Are you slowly and evenly tightening the attachment points? Not to be insulting, but I have seen people just start at one side and tighten each one up all the way before going on to the next. Not such a good idea.

Backplate not making metal to motherboard contact is it?
 
Aaron_ATX said:
Backplate not making metal to motherboard contact is it?
Click to expand...

Possibly. There are some plastic washers used to connect the back plate to the mobo (I lost one and I'm using a rubber washer), so as long as rubber and plastic don't conduct electricity I should be fine.

The first time I installed it I forgot to put the plastic washers on, but I went back and changed it immediately so I don't think that's the issue.
 
It is a big heavy heatsink, so maybe the weight hanging down bends the motherboard and causes some intermittent problems.

Also those aftermarket heatsinks do not blow air in all directions like the stock heatsink so that top mosfet heatsink on your board is not getting much if any airflow with the Thermalright in there.
 
I tested it outside the case so the airflow should have been fine, and even if the mobo temp was a little high that's no reason for the system not to post. I think the heatsink might have bent the mobo somewhat.
 
i'd say its more likely a pressure issue, lga 1156/1366/1155 are very finicky with the amount of pressure put on the cpu. put to much you lose half your memory and various other crap like that.

if you think it might be the weight take the board out of the system and run it open air with the board laying flat on a table. that should tell you if it really is due to the weight of the heatsink.
 
The rubber washer is going to compress and squish. So that's peob your issue. As you tighten you are not tightening that side till the rubber is flat and the bracket is touching the mobo
 
An update on this for anyone who is curious. I contacted Thermalright and they told me it might be a faulty motherboard. I decided to RMA it and that fixed every single issue I had. (I'm also using thin paper washers instead of the rubber/plastic). Works like a charm now.
 
What kind of temps are you getting?

I just bought the Venomous X Mounting kit for my old TRUE and am getting pretty high temps with a 4.6Ghz overclock and two GT 1850rpm fans in push/pull. How far did you tighen the pressure screw in the middle of the heatsink?
 
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