Stripped Screw in Heatsink

[VRyze]

My friend has a stripped screw on his Heatsink Rubber bands were not effective...  its also really tight, I am suprised the CPU did not break... its kind of stripped, all the screws look diffrent he only took out 1 screw.

[Kisai]

If you're looking for a solution to removing it, you may have to just drill it out and replace the entire heatsink. That has it's own risks.

[JeJaRaLa]

10 minutes ago, VRyze said:

My friend has a stripped screw on his Heatsink Rubber bands were not effective...  its also really tight, I am suprised the CPU did not break... its kind of stripped, all the screws look diffrent he only took out 1 screw.

looks like you can use some pliers to grab and  rotate the screw

[mr moose]

If you can't rotate it with pliers, there are special screw removal tools you can get for battery drills.  It looks like a counter sink bit but it grabs the screw in reverse and when it bites it reverses it out. 

[The_russian]

If you do end up using a screw removal tool like @mr moose mentioned, make sure you get a quality one. I made the mistake of getting a cheap set when working on my car, the bit snapped while I was trying to remove the bolt and just made the job harder.

[Sarra]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

If you can't rotate it with pliers, there are special screw removal tools you can get for battery drills.  It looks like a counter sink bit but it grabs the screw in reverse and when it bites it reverses it out. 

These are commonly called 'easy outs', and on hardened steel, they don't work very well. They tend to break, even the expensive ones, but on something this small, it might be difficult to get one small enough to work for you.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Sarra said:

These are commonly called 'easy outs', and on hardened steel, they don't work very well. They tend to break, even the expensive ones, but on something this small, it might be difficult to get one small enough to work for you.

I have a small kit I use on small engines and the like.  They work reasonably well down to 8mm. 

I imagine if the screw head burred/sheared like it did trying to undo a heatsink thread then the easy out should easily get enough bite.

[Sarra]

It should, but it again depends on how hard the metal in the HS screw is. If it's hardened, then you might have to fight it. If it's mild, then it shouldn't have much difficulty.

 

One thing to keep in mind, as well, is that you usually have to drill the head slightly to give the easy out a smooth surface to work with, so you're probably going to end up with metal shavings all over your mainboard.

[minibois]

Look for a flathead screwdriver that might still grab onto the little bit of screw head left. I think there is still plenty to turn the screw.

This has always worked for me personally.