This is a standard LGA775 mounting that can be salvaged from any Intel cooler.

Search for "AABCOOLING Socket 775 PushPin" or "Socket 775 PushPin" if you want to reuse the old cooler.

You can buy just the plastics on ebay from China cheap. Just looks for heatsink mounting pin lag 775 and they are $3 or 4 a set of 4.

I didn't know that the pieces are still made. I have already located them. Thanks a lot for the info

By the way, and some cooling that is better than the one I have and can be bought new.

No idea what LGA 775 coolers are available new these days, but that unit is rated for TDP of 115W, Max 150W.

https://www.arctic.de/media/33/8c/48/15841041 … 80302_r6_EN.pdf

So, unless you are overclocking a Core 2 extreme you should be fine.

As other's said, just replace the clip. I'm not sure where you are but US Amazon has a set of 12 for $5 with next day shipping.

https://www.amazon.com/ZZHXSM-Heatsink-Mounti … t/dp/B0C69DPKXJ

I refuse to use any coolers with those stupid plastic clips.

1. They have a tendency to randomly pop out. I have run into a few machines where this has happened and it is just a bad design.

2. If the plastic clip type cooler is used for a long time, the force it puts on the board with no backplate makes the board bubble warp. I can only imagine what type of stress this puts on the solder joint for the CPU socket and for the capacitors on the back side of the board where the CPU socket it.

At least that isn't one of the stock Intel coolers.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-04-26, 15:11:

I refuse to use any coolers with those stupid plastic clips. […]
Show full quote

I refuse to use any coolers with those stupid plastic clips.

1. They have a tendency to randomly pop out. I have run into a few machines where this has happened and it is just a bad design.

2. If the plastic clip type cooler is used for a long time, the force it puts on the board with no backplate makes the board bubble warp. I can only imagine what type of stress this puts on the solder joint for the CPU socket and for the capacitors on the back side of the board where the CPU socket it.

At least that isn't one of the stock Intel coolers.

What do you recommend?

muon wrote on 2025-04-26, 19:06:

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-04-26, 15:11:

I refuse to use any coolers with those stupid plastic clips. […]
Show full quote

I refuse to use any coolers with those stupid plastic clips.

1. They have a tendency to randomly pop out. I have run into a few machines where this has happened and it is just a bad design.

2. If the plastic clip type cooler is used for a long time, the force it puts on the board with no backplate makes the board bubble warp. I can only imagine what type of stress this puts on the solder joint for the CPU socket and for the capacitors on the back side of the board where the CPU socket it.

At least that isn't one of the stock Intel coolers.

What do you recommend?

Pretty much any heat pipe tower cooler with a 120mm or larger fan that uses a support backplate and bolts to that backplate through the holes in
the board.

4 heat pipes or more is preferred. If not over locking at all or using lower powered CPUs, 2-3 heat pipes might be ok but I like to keep my CPUs extra cool so I've never actually tri d any of the ones with a lower number of heat pipes as the reviews on those were always pretty horrible.

What CPU are you trying to cool?

2-3 heat pipes suck if you are trying to cool an old power-hungry XEON, but for most LGA 775 CPUs the OP cooler is probably overkill.

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550

Ebay is always good for some of the old coolers, you just have to sift through and bide your time.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-04-26, 15:11:

I refuse to use any coolers with those stupid plastic clips.

1. They have a tendency to randomly pop out. I have run into a few machines where this has happened and it is just a bad design.

2. If the plastic clip type cooler is used for a long time, the force it puts on the board with no backplate makes the board bubble warp. I can only imagine what type of stress this puts on the solder joint for the CPU socket and for the capacitors on the back side of the board where the CPU socket it.

^^ THIS 1000%

Intel coolers with plastic "push-pins", be it for LGA775 or LGA115x, deserve a special place in hell!
Well, nothing wrong with the coolers themselves (I actually like the "full height" Intel stock heatsinks quite a bit for any of the Core 2 Duo CPUs.) But the push-pin "mechanism" is indeed terrible for the motherboard, because it uses the PCB as the source of the force to provide tension of the heatsink on top of the CPU. As a result, most boards indeed warp / bubble under the CPU socket quite a bit... and more often than not, that WILL cause BGA damage after a few removals / installations. I have seen quite a number of 775 boards hit the bin due to this, so I refuse to use these push-pin coolers as well.

That said, the AC Freezer 7 that the O/P shows above is still too nice of a heatsink/cooler to go to waste, and I myself have three of these. What I did with all of them is I removed the push-pins and installed them with my own home-brew retention bracket. Perhaps when I get to it, I'll make a thread about it to show one way it can be done fairly easily. In my case, I use a PlayStation 3 cooler spring/backplate with small extension "ears" to allow me to put long bolts diagonally in 2 of the 4 screw holes on the back of the motherboard. On the other (top) side, I just drop down the cooler/heatsink right on top of the CPU and then bolt it down onto the bolts that are sticking up through the two diagonal holes with proper nuts. Because the PS3 spring/backplate is curved / slightly v-shaped, it provides the tension for the CPU heatsink and the reverse-force is all nicely distributed right under the CPU socket BGA, not around it like the stock push-pin setup... thus not warping the board anymore.

So if you are handy, make your own mounting mechanism. Anything is better than those stupid push-pins ---- even zip-ties would be a nice step-up / upgrade. Yes, seriously.

muon wrote on 2025-04-28, 08:02:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550

95W TDP for that CPU I think. I have one with a ZEROTherm NV120 which is overkill, but I got the cooler cheap.

One thing to look out for when buying coolers on eBay is some need special mounting hardware to the board and people tend to remove the cooler for sale and leave the mounting on the board.

I think I have the OP's cooler on an early LGA 1366 motherboard that had standard and LGA 775 mounting holes for coolers.

Never liked those old Intel coolers with the plastic clips because they get brittle with age and snap when you need to remove them to repaste.

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-04-29, 18:27:

95W TDP for that CPU I think. I have one with a ZEROTherm NV120 which is overkill, but I got the cooler cheap.

Indeed it is.
Though 95W is the Intel TDP and not the maximum power the CPU will consume. The maximum will probably be around 140-150W if you use various stress tests and especially Intel's Linpack stress test.

Unknown_K wrote on 2025-04-29, 18:27:

... when you need to remove them to repaste.

🤣 don't think I have ever needed to re-paste an LGA775 CPU... or any non-modern CPU with a heat-spreader for that matter. Granted one of my AM2 systems is now starting to run a bit warmer than I remember it (a Phenom X4 9150e - a 65W TDP CPU). But I used really really cheap runny Ebay thermal paste for that one (the ones where you get a 30 gram tube for like $2-4), which I now know does pump out a little (at least the liquid part of the paste) and the more dry stuff left behind doesn't conduct heat that well anymore. But it's been around 10 years since I assembled that system, and I specifically used it in the hot summer months due to (supposedly) low TDP of the CPU. So I think that's a pretty fair run for this cheap thermal paste.

New thermal paste is better than the old designs, so when I get an old system in, I clean up the boards from dust and also the CPU coolers, so they get removed and need new paste anyway (same for old GPU).

^ I do the same... but if the old paste looks/feels good (not dried up - i.e. I can "re-smudge" it), then I don't change it - yes even after taking off and washing the cooler! 🤣 (Water and dish detergent doesn't seem to affect it at all.) The difference in temperatures between that and new good quality paste is maybe 3-4C max. Tested on plenty of old boards. This applies mostly to CPUs with heat spreaders, though. For GPUs, the paste is almost always dry or on the way to getting there... so for those, I do change it more often than not. But again, if it's a low power GPU and the paste is still good, then I have no shame in reusing it. 😁

I got in some GTX 970 GPUs that were never used (still had all the plastic protective sheets on them) and the OEM heatsink compound was dry and powdery. I guess if you never took the cooler off it would probably be ok, the liquid used in the compound is for making it spread evenly. With the high costs of GPUs these days I figure they will switch to a reusable graphite sheet or something you can't apply wrong.