Fan issue

[tomcraig]

I'm looking at the board you linked to earlier, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how you would attach a heatsink? There's no holes or clips or anything? Perhaps someone can explain how this would work, apparently I'm not too familiar with older style boards like this one.

It's not a very good picture, but there are holes on there. They are in the same positioning as the holes for the heat sink already on the board; one is adjacent to the PSU connector and the other is to the bottom left of the socket, near a capacitor. You can see in this image: http://cl.ly/2k2s081Q0Y1y0E243O38

[DrkSide]

This board (MOCA-AR) doesn't have your normal holes for a heatsink. The holes adjacent to the cpu and bottom left of the socket are for attaching the motherboard to the case.

The heatsink is actually held on by a "clip" between two "loops" and uses the pressure from that clip to stay seated to the processor. I have pointed to the two loops in the picture.

Last time I dealt with something like this is was a chipset heatsink on a dell computer. If the two loops were not connected the computer would not turn on. I guess that there was some kind of current detection on them. Not sure if this is the same case or not.

[tomcraig]

Thanks guys, I've been looking around. Does anyone happen to know why some 479 coolers have screws, versus a clip? I want to make sure I get one that fits.

[DrkSide]

Tomcraig,
(somebody say if I am wrong) but I don't think a normal 479 cooler will work on this because of the Clips that I pointed out. A normal 479 has 4 holes vs these two clips on this motherboard. Not sure where to tell you to find one but any of the aftermarket coolers you buy are not going to have the slot for the retaining mechanism.

[tomcraig]

Yes, I thought this was the case. Any suggestions guys, or should I search around more.

[Lothair]

I think your only choice now is to sell what you have and start completely over, or start getting creative with what you have/need. Such as finding a heatsink that you could then create your own retention clip to fit your motherboard. You just need to be able to secure a heatsink into place with a modest amount of pressure and you'd be good to go. Just don't forget the thermal paste/grease.

I would probably just sell what you have and put that money towards a new setup. You could get a dual core AMD processor and a corresponding motherboard for pretty cheap these days. Probably about $40 for the processor and $40 for the motherboard. Just make sure you buy a retail processor as they come with both the thermal paste and heatsink. Or you could just buy your own. There's plenty of options for new gear. Yours is just a bit dated so it's hard to find stuff.

[mDust]

Socket 478/479 heat sinks clip onto the socket instead of bolting to the board...so no worries there.

It looks like I was partially wrong here. Most of the 479 heat sinks I looked at mounted with a clip. Some also had removable mounts for bolts but they fit on multiple sockets, so I just figured that they just bolted onto those other boards. The ones that do mount with clips mount to a piece of plastic around the socket, which is bolted to the board. (I have no idea what the engineer was thinking about that...pointless to have a redundant part in there.)

If you provide a closeup pic of the cpu area and the board model number, I'll look into this further for you.

[tomcraig]

If you provide a closeup pic of the cpu area and the board model number, I'll look into this further for you.

That would be very appreciated. The board seems to have several different names (both MMOCA-AR and Calcite). Anyway here's the info page

And here are some close ups:
http://cl.ly/0w0v2N0C2B281P2H3t1G
http://cl.ly/1m290r163h2m2Z1J2X3q
http://cl.ly/1m1f2d330A1M3O1S0l2k

(Sorry, it wasn't inserting the pics for some reason.)

[SXRguyinMA]

it's a socket 479M, which is basically a mobile (laptop-style) style setup, so chances of finding a HSF to fit that are slim at best

[SXRguyinMA]

here's one way to do it:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=197451