Broke the darn heatsink pins - now how do I remove them?

[dzamija]

Alright, so I was being stupid thinking that I'm skilled enough to replace my own CPU, and broke the freaking pins (3 out of 4) that were being used to fix the heatsink to the motherboard. Now I get idle temps of 60 ° C (around 134 °F) - probably even higher, didn't want to wait and check. So obviously there's no real contact between the CPU and the heatsink and the heat has nowhere to dissipate.

Now I found a guy that sells replacement pins, but there's only one problem - I have no idea how to remove them whatsoever. Here's an image of my heatsink to give you an idea of what's going on:

I looked up a few YouTube vids and all they seem to do is just pull the pin up a bit more and they slide off. It isn't happening in my case. I'm using all the (reasonable) amount of force I can without breaking the whole damn thing apart, I've already caused enough damage. Any idea what's going on and how I can remove them? Thanks!

 

[luketexas]

Hi, my advice would be to ditch the stock cooler. It would be much better and less effort for you just to simply replace the heatsink for a better one. Noctua and Deepcool offer good aftermarket air coolers, and you can pick up AIO liqiud coolers fairly cheap nowadays as well.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I don't see anything broken there. What exactly is the issue?

Anyway - if the cooler is broken, then get a new one - CM Hyper evo 212, Cryorig H5,H7.

 

[luketexas]

I don't see anything broken there. What exactly is the issue?

Anyway - if the cooler is broken, then get a new one - CM Hyper evo 212, Cryorig H5,H7.

The plastic foot is clearly broken off the leg

 

[SkyNetRising]

Nope, still can't spot anything broken there. Looks normal.

May be another photo from a better angle would help to see the damage?

 

[dzamija]

Sorry, that was kind of a bad photo lol, here's a better one:

As you can see, only one of the pins survived - the remaining three have had the yellow/white plastic top broken off. I really don't see the point in buying a new heatsink if just the pins are broken, this one has worked just fine for seven years already until I got my butterfingered hands on it - not to mention that it is super quiet and has kept my CPU at 38C idle throughout its entire lifespan. Nothing wrong with the unit itself. I already found replacement pins for the unit, and the guy said that I should just break the original pins off by force, that it is in fact the only way to remove them. I'm always skeptic about using excess force with anything, but maybe this is an exception?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Oh yeah. The small plastic top has been broken off.

If you think, you can replace it, then go for it.
Probably should get some extra replacement pins in case, if another one breaks.

 

[dzamija]

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up - turns out one of my friends had a spare cooler exactly like the one I broke, put that baby on and I'm getting a solid 38 °C idle, and barely 55 °C in-game. Thanks for all your help, I appreciate it!