wrote in message
...
On Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:31:32 +0000 (UTC), Meat Plow
wrote:

On Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:26:58 -0400, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

KenO wrote:

Inherited a Dell Dimension 2300 that suddenly shut down for some reason
besides a power outage.

Found reason when opened the case and found a broken P4 cpu heat sink
retainer and loose heat sink.

Did some searching and found others with same problem.

For example:

"The heatsink is clamped onto a black plastic moulding which appears to
be screwed onto the motherboard and surrounds the CPU socket. On of the
'legs' which sticks up from this has broken. As a result one end of the
heatsink cannot be tightly clamped to the CPU.
http://groups.google.com/group/uk.co...thread/thread/
aa39dd6016df30b9/d2b013fe15c9c2ab?hl=en&q=broken+P4+heat+sink
+retainer#d2b013fe15c9c2ab

"When i opened the box to clean it out (been sitting in the same place
in the shop for 5 years) I found one of the heatsink retainers just
lying in the case. Upon furter inspection i found that the plasic
square box that is mounted to the motherboard that the heatsink
attaches to is broken."
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=465220

Since this OEM part tends to fail would like to do a more permanent
repair.

Did a search using [best P4 CPU heat sink retainer] but so far have not
found anything of interest.

Am open to any comments, suggestions, tips...


Pentium 4 Socket 478 Heatsink Retention Module $1.59:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?inv...6W1-51&cat=CPU

Those don't always work on Dell. Last one I worked on the bolt pattern
didn't line up with the holes in the mainboard. Most dell desktop used
a single 120mm fan mounted on back drawing air through a shroud encasing
a heatsink of fins that was about 4 or 5 inches tall. This one was in
pieces when it was given to me and part of the original retainer were
missing. This was an LGA also. I did find the missing part later at a
PC shop a friend owns. He said he had just had one in that the mainboard
was toast. Not a great machine, hyperthreading single core 3.0 ghz Intel.
Got to have at least a dual core these days.
Ahh, the luxury of unreasonable feelings of entitlement!!!

An acquaintance sent over a Thinkpad X40 a couple of weeks ago. He'd
picked it up for $20 at a flea market. 1.2Ghz Pentium M, 500 Megs of
RAM, 20 Gig hard drive, wireless networking, no CD drive, Win XP. He
thought he had 'bricked' it trying to install Win7 from a thumb drive.
After 5 minutes investigation I found the 'clover leaf' power cord was
bad. I hook up a good power cord, it works, the battery even takes a
charge, and send it back to him.

A week later he reports he added another Gig of RAM ($30) a new power
cord ($5), and Win7 and it works wonderfully. "It's the ideal system
to use at a coffee shop".

So for under $100 (a significant portion of which was for shipping)
he's got something that is faster than an iPad, has a real keyboard,
and can be upgraded. Not all people measure their importance by the
speed of their computer.

PlainBill

Something like that would be perfect for reading my collection of e-books
while sitting on the bog.