A couple of days ago, I noticed my CPU idling at some very alarming temperatures - under load was even worse! Confused by what was occuring, I was led to believe that the "ASUS My Probe" program was playing a trick on me. I restarted my computer and took note of the temperature being reported in the BIOS and it was the same - 74 degrees celcius! Perplexed by these seemingly undesirable temperatures, I removed the side panel and took a look "under the hood" while it was still running. Interestingly enough, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. I shut off my PC and proceeded to take a can of compressed air to the CPU cooler. While a considerable amount of dust was removed in the process, the problem was still eminent. Finally, I decided to take a closer look. I opened the case again and to my surprise, the God forsaken clip on my S478 Motherboard had snapped off! Preventing the CPU cooler from applying the required amount of pressure needed to absorb the heat.

As you all can imagine, I'm extremely p**sed off right now. Why? I'll tell you why. First of all, I can't use my computer until this gets resolved. Sure I have a laptop but, I could care less - it's not the same. Secondly, any expenses involved (if any) will be unnecessary as I would have expected a little more craftsmanship.

Anyways, on to the real problem. Even though I found the broken piece, I highly doubt that I'll be reusing it and for obvious reasons. It appears that ASUS decided to fasten the bracket to the Motherboard using nylon screws. Yes, nylon screws. I'm wondering, is there a way to properly remove the nylon screws without ruining the Motherboard? My father is really confident and seems to think that he can do a clean job. I tried telling him that they're NYLON screws. The really annoying kind! LOL. Any help is appreciated guys.

Thanking you in advance.

Not trying to bash ASUS, but you might consider changing the thread title to something like
"So that's what the ASUS motherboard CPU overheating problem was!"

Maybe that's too much of a mouthful?

Might help people searching for help on ASUS, motherboard, or CPU problems. I'd consider ASUS, motherboard, CPU, and overheating as the keywords here in any subject search on HWA.

I feel your pain. I've seen some pretty crappy component retention designs in critical locations (like cooling). I don't know if it's the permanent efforts to drive BMC downward, poor vendor parts quality (perhaps due to moving more manufacturing to third-world countries or constantly swapping vendors), lack of testing, or just plain laziness, but mechanically failed parts in computers seem to be happening more often lately.

That would be a mouthful, indeed! Lol.

I agree completely with what you said in regards to a lot of companies concentrating more on quantity rather than quality. As a matter of fact, almost every company seems to be suffering the same ordeal. The culprit in my opinion is piece work. Followed by outsourced (and cheap) labour makes for a wonderful combination. Honestly though, I'm not surprised or impressed with ASUS anymore than the next company.

By the way, would you say there was a way to remove them pain in the arse nylon screws without ruining my motherboard?

That happened to me once. Luckily it was a s**tty socket A motherboard I got on eBay for $20 (that I immediately returned).

Haha John you really don't like ASUS!
Nylon fook sakes that's scandelous to say the least. How much was that MoBo? A $?

Nylon screws? Wow that's like as bad as making CPU HSF out of plastic.

Well keep in my that my Motherboard is based off of a S478 design which is more than 5 years old. The decision to use nylon screws to secure a HSF bracket to the Motherboard must've been a good idea at the time. Only now are we finding out that it wasn't. Lol.

I'm wondering if I could just pop them out from underneath. I've tried searching for some articles on the net but have come up empty handed.

I'm figuring this is fixed, but for futures in case someone wants to figure out what the problem is, get a small brad nail and push on the center of the bottom of the nylon screw plug thingy. It will go in just a tiny bit. On top of the board reach into the corner and get your finger nail under the top of the screw and pop it up. We're talking maybe an eighth of an inch or so. Then you can grab it and lift the screw out. It's not really a screw but a push in pin. You can get new brackets on line cheap.