Pre-attached heatsink has fallen off MSI motherboard. Help?

[LuckyDrive]

Motherboard is an MSI B450i Gaming Plus Max WiFi. It's only about 4 months old. I bought it off Amazon so the return/exchange window has passed.

 

I'm not sure how this happened. As far as I can tell from the manual the heatsink should come attached already out of the box, and shouldn't require any installation. So I'm unsure of why it has suddenly fell off.

 

Looks like it's supposed to be screwed in through the back of the board.

I'm guessing I'll have to buy special screws to put it back in. Anyone know what type of screws I need? Manual doesn't even mention the heatsink.

 

Thanks for any and all help.

[da na]

Well, looks like the clips holding it on snapped... 

Not much you can do, I'd recommend buying a replacement heatsink or screwing that one back on. You'll want to cool your chipset.

[8-Bit Ninja]

I'd shoot an email to MSI honestly, that's some very poor quality control on their part. As for the exchange window, I'm not sure where you're located. But in the UK a warranty is with the seller not the manufacture, so you may still be able to get amazon to offer you an exchange. 

 

If not, assuming that's thermal paste not a pad. Clean the gunk off the heatsink, apply new thermal paste to the chip. And then honestly just get some screws long enough to screw through the board into the heatsink, I wouldn't worry too much about the threads being perfectly the same as long as they bite. 

[mariushm]

You can get the plastic/metal clips but not sure if they're the same size (depends on the hole in the board) and not sure they'd work with your heatsink, looks like your heatsink is not using the below type of retaining clips.

 

Example of those retaining clips :

ATS-HK127-R0 Advanced Thermal Solutions Inc. | Fans, Thermal Management | DigiKey

ATS-HK91-R0 Advanced Thermal Solutions Inc. | Fans, Thermal Management | DigiKey

ATS-HK76-R0 Advanced Thermal Solutions Inc. | Fans, Thermal Management | DigiKey

 

Anyway, the chipset's TDP is 4.8w ... up to 2-3 watts you don't even need a heatsink. So, you don't really need such a big heatsink. MSI only uses such big one for looks.

The chipset doesn't get that hot, so you could just some memory/mosfet heatsinks with double sided adhesive tape and stick it over the chip surface.

Example : https://www.amazon.com/Easycargo-Heatsink-14x14x7mm-Conductive-14mmx14mmx7mm/dp/B079FP1FWR/

Put 2-4 of these on the chip and you're good.

 

You can get heatsinks of the exact size of your chipset (measure the dimensions, don't know them off the top of my head) from sites like Digikey, Mouser, Newark/Element14  will have such heatsinks with thermal adhesive / tape pre-applied.

 

Here's an example of bga heatsinks, i sorted by quantity in stock, so it's not the cheapest first : https://www.digikey.com/short/93wbq0rv

You could try to find one which has mounting holes where your motherboard has holes, but you could just filter the results to show only square or rectangle heatsinks sized close to your chipset's size, and use thermal adhesive/tape to hold the heatsink.

 

Example with push pins : https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/advanced-thermal-solutions-inc/ATS-P1-138-C2-R0/4623805

The above is 25x25 mm and the holes are 30mm apart ... the values are in the datasheets.

 

Example of plain square 17x17mm heatsink with thermal adhesive/tape  : https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/advanced-thermal-solutions-inc/ATS-55170K-C1-R0/1284995

 

 

[LuckyDrive]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

You can get heatsinks of the exact size of your chipset (measure the dimensions, don't know them off the top of my head) from sites like Digikey, Mouser, Newark/Element14  will have such heatsinks with thermal adhesive / tape pre-applied.

Hey man, thanks so much for the info!!!

 

I live in Canada, so I don't quite have as much as options. Would something like this work? https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07Q8RW5Y2/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_5K0TCA1B86EDVWVEGCZC

 

I was also wondering if I could just get any aluminum heatsink and some adhesive thermal tape from Amazon, and stick it on there. I measured and the chipset seems to be about 21 mm.

 

Edit: I ended up going with this, https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B010ER7UN8/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_P7HVRC62V73JN6ARV95R?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

Along with some double sided thermal tape.

 

Hopefully this does the job. Thanks for the help everyone.

[mariushm]

49 minutes ago, LuckyDrive said:

Edit: I ended up going with this, https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B010ER7UN8/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_P7HVRC62V73JN6ARV95R?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Along with some double sided thermal tape.

Hopefully this does the job. Thanks for the help everyone.

They're a bit low height but should work.  Try those 14mm heatsinks, arrange them in 2x2 shape even if a bit of the heatsinks go partially outside the chip area.

More fins is better ... those smaller heatsinks have only 4 wide fins, while the bigger ones have more surface area by cutting the wide fins into 4 smaller fins, and the sides of those fins also radiate heat, so you overall get more surface area.

 

Use HWInfo or some other software that reports temperatures and check the sensors and make sure the chipset doesn't go over around 70-75c  ... I think the throttle/shut down temperature is somewhere around 80-85c.

Check temperatures after doing some work, like transferring some big files between two drives, if you have a couple (loading the sata controller will produce a bit of heat).

[LuckyDrive]

On 12/29/2021 at 4:44 PM, mariushm said:

They're a bit low height but should work.  Try those 14mm heatsinks, arrange them in 2x2 shape even if a bit of the heatsinks go partially outside the chip area.

More fins is better ... those smaller heatsinks have only 4 wide fins, while the bigger ones have more surface area by cutting the wide fins into 4 smaller fins, and the sides of those fins also radiate heat, so you overall get more surface area.

 

Use HWInfo or some other software that reports temperatures and check the sensors and make sure the chipset doesn't go over around 70-75c  ... I think the throttle/shut down temperature is somewhere around 80-85c.

Check temperatures after doing some work, like transferring some big files between two drives, if you have a couple (loading the sata controller will produce a bit of heat).

Hey man, just wanted to say thanks for the ho and info!

 

Based on your post, I decided to look for bigger heatsinks. Also looked up some graphs regarding TDP's and appropriate heatsink volumes. Attached pictures of the fix I did using some double sided thermal tape.

 

I think I did a pretty good job. Unfortunately I don't have an extra drive to test. Instead I've been running HWINFO during gaming and Cinebench (though I understand these tests won't actually stress the chip itself), but the temps for the chipset seem perfectly fine, sitting around 41 - 45 degrees (I believe the chipset shows up as PCH in HWINFO, please correct me if I'm wrong though).

 

Anyway just wanted to say thanks a lot for the help everyone.