broken motherboard-mounted retention - heatsink options

I'm a bit of a hardware newbie. Installed plenty of PCI cards and
memory but nothing as complicated as a processor/heatsink.

I'm received a free computer - free because the motherboard-mounted
retention mechanism - the black plastic box surrounding the processor
has a brocken hook so the brackets holding down the heatsink/fan have
come loose The specs of the machine are good enough to make it worth
saving (1GB ram, i think the processor is a p4 around the 2ghz mark)

the mobo is an ASUS P4B533 (socket 478).

so is there anywhere I could buy a replacement "black box" i.e. the
motherboard-mounted retention or get a heatsink for the socket 478 that
doesn't require hooking brackets into the black box.

--
thanks,
Ash

google.DeleteThis@ashirusnw.freeserve.co.uk wrote:

> I'm a bit of a hardware newbie. Installed plenty of PCI cards and
> memory but nothing as complicated as a processor/heatsink.
>
> I'm received a free computer - free because the motherboard-mounted
> retention mechanism - the black plastic box surrounding the processor
> has a brocken hook so the brackets holding down the heatsink/fan have
> come loose The specs of the machine are good enough to make it worth
> saving (1GB ram, i think the processor is a p4 around the 2ghz mark)
>
> the mobo is an ASUS P4B533 (socket 478).
>
> so is there anywhere I could buy a replacement "black box" i.e. the
> motherboard-mounted retention or get a heatsink for the socket 478 that
> doesn't require hooking brackets into the black box.
>
> --
> thanks,
> Ash
>

There are several manufacturers of these that will sell to
a retail partner. Some of the larger electronics/computer
parts stores carry replacement brackets. And they can also
be mail-ordered from Intel as the brackets are, essentially,
plastic, snap-in parts.