I recently bought a low cost aftermarket heatsink from Scan that is listed to be compatible with socket 1151. Yet it does not fit my 1151 motherboard because of the heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket. I raised an RMA asking for return costs to be covered, Scan's email to me: . I am unsure of the consumer law here, but it seems harsh. Who is responsible for return postage costs? Obviously if I had known it would not fit, I would not have bought it. The compatible socket type list is always what I have gone on...
Imho, unless Scan specifically confirmed that the heatsink was compatible with your particular board then I think you're out of luck. There are tons of heatsinks out there that won't be compatible with some boards because of the placement of components around the socket, despite being compatible with the socket itself. I think they all you can read into "socket compatibility" is that, providing nothing gets in the way, it will fit that socket. The opposite would be that, even if there was nothing around the socket, it wouldn't fit on the socket. Unfortunately, heatsink manufacturers aren't going to be able to confirm that a product will fit every board with that socket. All you can do really is check if the heatsink respects the keep-out zone around the socket and take your chance if it doesn't. And of course if your board has stuff that intrudes into the keep-out zone then you're shafted anyway.
What @bawjaws said, I'm afraid: the heatsink is, indeed, compatible with the Socket 1151 socket; it's just not compatible with your particular motherboard, which was never claimed. As it is, the onus was on you to either do your research or to specifically ask the question "will this work with my motherboard?" Had you asked the latter and Scan said "yes," then you've a strong case for rejecting it as not-as-described. Without that, though, it's on you to cover the cost of returning it - as per the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 (that applying as the goods are unwanted rather than faulty, which would be covered under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.)
Well I did check the dimensions beforehand. It is only fractions of a millimeter of the retention bracket getting over the clip. Nevermind, I will just have to pony up! Thanks for your responses.
This I had to get my dremmel out on on a bracket once so it would clear a component, luckily you could buy a replacement bracket cheaply so I bought one and modded mhat to avoid any warranty issues. I believe it was a scythe mugen 2 not that it matters.
Actually now my memory has decided to work properly it was a Titan Fenrir (again not that it matters lol)
