I am trying to remove the motherboard from an old Dell Dimension Case so I can mod it. There are no screws left on the board I can only think that the heatsink is keeping it down. The sink mount is held in by plastic screws, how can I remove it?
The heatsink screws probably go all the way through the motherboard tray. Check the back of the mobo tray.
The mobo tray is held in there so strong I can't get that out either, there is a slide lock for it towards the front of the case but that wont budge.
You might be able to carefully pull up those little white plastic pins that hold down the heatsink mount. Then it should come out.
Seems I may have to ruin the mobo to get it out. I don't plan on using that old mobo but it seems a waste to trash a working mobo.
Sometimes there is a small mechanism or lever that lifts the board out slightly, off of locking pins or something of that sort. Try if you can looking along in between the motherboard and the tray, to see if theres anything in there other than standoffs. Also, have you tried looking up a repair manual for that PC? Replacing the motherboard repair guide would contain data on how to remove the faulty one.
Gotta love old PC's and pulling the apart Had to tear apart an old Compaq 7000 the other night, and i had to use a damn jugsaw just to get the side-panel off!
the whole tenpan(mobo tray) should just slide out when the lever is pressed, if its an old system then it may be stiff, try some brute force and ignorance to rip it out. also take to heatsink retainer screws out they may go right thru
Might there be a screw under the CPU? I recall some old mobo's I had having a screw hole under there. Gman22
"how many Bit-Tech members does it take to remove a mobo?" Try unscrewing the nuts on the COM, parallel and VGA (if present) ports and slide the mobo towards the front of the case.
If you just tell me the model number or service tag on the machine it's not very hard to find the motherboard removal diagram through support.dell.com Most of the Dell machines with P4 boards use slide-lock teeth to hold the motherboard in place, so you have to remove a screw or undo a latch in order to be able to slide it towards the front of the case. A few of the slide-lock teeth that hold the motherboard in place lock into the cpu retention bracket backplate.
No motherboard removing diagram for my model, I really don't see any screws that I've missed. Going to try and pull the plastic pins out with a vice grip because nothing else seems to be working.
whats the service tag and model number, i will check tomorrow at work. I work for dell tech so should be easy to find out
Thanks but I already got it out, the mobo tray was very cold when I tried it(it had been out in the garage) Letting it warm up overnight did the trick.
It was pretty funny after it warmed up I thought it would be stuck in there pretty good still, I yanked on it as hard as I could and almost fell over it came out so easy.
