baldric

Yes I followed that guide and removed the stock Intel fan which was screwed on top of the metal plate as you can see by the four empty screw holes at the edges of the metal plate.

I recently acquired an Intel DQ67EP, LGA 1155/Socket H2 Motherboard for building a pfSense/opnSense router. It came with an Intel i3-2120 already installed. The CPU i3-2120 does not have AES-in which pfSense will require after its 2.5 version (I know there are conflicting reports about this but I want it to be future proof). Possible cpu's for replacement are (low TDP a must have). Both cpu's are on the mobo recommended list: Xeon E31260L : 4 cores, 8 threads, 45W http://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/spec/SR00M.html 2. i5-2500S : 4 cores, 4 threads, 65W http://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/spec/SR009.html I removed the cpu fan but the existing cpu is blocked by a passive heatsink. See attached pic. I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to remove that metal plate without breaking the mobo or something in the house. And I have been searching youtube, google for the last week. Any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated.