You don't pull the heatsink but rotate it. Goes better when the CPU is hot.

There shouldn't be any paste on the pins. It might act as an insulator (depends on what's it made of).

vladstamate wrote:

The problem is the existing thermal paste made the heatsink stuck to the CPU so when I applied some force the CPU came out of the ZIF socket even though the socket is closed (lever down).

Yikes. I didn't think that was possible.

I wonder if you wrecked the socket?

It's possible and usually this isn't a problem.

kixs wrote:

It's possible and usually this isn't a problem.

Heh, that happened to me with an Athlon 64. The motherboard/socket was intact, but the CPU pins were horribly bent. I found quite surprising how little force it took to rip off the CPU with the lever down.

I now always lift the socket lever (if possible) when removing an old heatsink that seems stuck.

I'll try to clean the CPU pins and the socket as much as I can. Rotating it seems like a good advice, not much space though. Also I cannot pull the level first as the heatsink is rather large and hovers over the whole socket.

Do you know of any methods to get thermal paste off? I just used paper towels.

Paper towels are fine. Just use a little force and slowly remove the paste off.

Well I fixed it in the end. After spending some time closely inspecting the pins I discovered one pin was bent and touching another pin. So I carefully straighten it and now the computer works again. Yay!

vladstamate wrote:

Well I fixed it in the end. After spending some time closely inspecting the pins I discovered one pin was bent and touching another pin. So I carefully straighten it and now the computer works again. Yay!

I've received motherboards from manufacturers (for Intel LGA) where I had to inspect the array of spring contacts on the CPU socket for bent pins. Twice, I've found bent pins that I had to take a mechanical pencil (with the hollow metal tip) and straighten the pins out before I could install the CPU. I've fried a brand-new Core 2 Duo back in 2008 by not looking for bent pins first. Had to replace the MB and the CPU at the time. Now it's party of my computer build procedure - inspecting the CPU socket and the CPU itself.

You smeared thermal paste on the CPU pins?

I'm just trying to wrap my mind around this right now 😕

I had the same thing happen to me when I tried to remove the cooler from my Phenom2 965. I pulled instead of twisted and ripped that sucker right out of the socket hahha. Surprised me as well to say the least. Luckily I didn't bend any pins like you and everything went back together pretty smooth after I applied some AS5 and tightened down the cooler.

Glad you got it figured out and remember from now on twist don't pull! I know I'll never forget haha. 😀