JimT.

I was given a working FIC K8M-800 motherboard, minus heatsink/fan. The MB has a heatsink retention bracket (big plastic rectangle with wideset hooks). While searching online for a suitable heatsink/fan, I found it impossible to determine if a given socket 754 heatsink will fit this bracket. Most would appear not to, since the bracket is 4" across.

I see that some socket 754 motherboards don't feature the bracket, although most do. Can I assume that any socket 754 heatsink will work? I don't want to order a heatsink only to find it won't fit.

wrench97

Most Socket 754 are the same depending on the cooler you select it may come with it's own mounting hardware, the bracket you have is not part of the motherboard but rather part of the last cooler that was on it if it was the stock AMD cooler any will fit.


http://www.fic.com.tw/product/mother...s/k8m-800m.jpg

JimT.

Thanks fo r the response, wrench97.

I'm still confused, because in my efforts to figure out the situation, I searched for for new (if stale) socket 754 motherboards for sale, and virtually all of them had the retention bracket mounted. I suspected the FIC photo showed a board with the bracket removed (the two mounting holes are visible).

Note that in the photo, there are no hooks built into the CPU socket (as one would find on a socket A, for example). Easier to see in the flesh. Without the retention bracket mounted, there's no way to mount a heatsink. None of the heatsinks I've looked at mention having a bracket included.

I might have to look at a heatsink locally to figure this out.

wrench97

The plastic piece mounts to the board and the hooks go into it or the cooler could come with a bracket that mounts under the board and the cooler would have screws that go through the board into the lower bracket.

Here is the stock bracket> http://www.unicornelex.com/detail.php?itemno=56-Z249

JimT.

Yes, that's the plastic piece that's mounted on the 754 and 939 motherboards. It's quite large. I've also seen a metal bracket for sale in connection with coolers, but never saw how it mounted. Some of the fancy coolers have four posts, presumably to mount on AM2 boards, replacing the AM2 plastic retention bracket, which has four mounting screws instead of two. The bracket screws fasten to a metal plate under the motherboard, so the holes in the motherboard aren't threaded.

One of the few clear photos of a heatsink I could find shows a double wire spanning the heatsink and ending in a single slotted metal piece--presumably on each side--designed to engage just one of the three hooks on the retention bracket. A lever tightens it. Perhaps it's able to swing out and span the half inch distance between the heatsink and the hook .

I'm still going to see a heatsink in the flesh before ordering.

wrench97

The high performance heat sinks like the Zalman line or Thermaltake come with upper and lower brackets that will fit almost any socket type D/L the manual from tis link at zalman it has some decent illustrations of how this model installs> http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Pr...ad.asp?Idx=313

JimT.

Yes, I see that the old-style Zalman heat sink has a clip that's long enough to fasten to the retention bracket's hook on each side. The others I've checked out appear to come up short. After much hunting--I haven't spent this much time on motherboard selection--I found a Thermaltake heatsink that's big enough to (hopefully) engage the hooks. (Shipping) time will tell.

Thanks for the input.