I was not thinking what I was doing when I put my hsf on my new processor. I had the heatsink on backwards and could not figure out why it was so hard to clip on. When I saw my blunder I took the hsf off and noticed some small damage on the edge of the actual core, not the edge of the CPU. Thinking that I was screwed, I connected to the mobo anyway but everthing looks good. Installed windows, Loaded windows, etc. Is there any way to know if I have done damage I may not be aware of yet?

If all is running good, I think you are safe. If it were damaged you would know about it by now. Don't feel bad, just last week I put a heatsink on backwards after all the builds I have done. And I did it in front of my son, who I was teaching.:0( With some it's real easy to do. Just make sure the CPU runs cool and you will be all right.

What do you mean 'backwards'?

Back to front, wrong way round, rotated 90 degrees. If you look closely at the CPU in its socket without the heatsink, you will see that it is offset slightly to one side. The heatsing clips are built to accommodate this offset. If you put the heatsing on backwards the CPU core is not in the centre of the heatsink and as Dougie found out, can exert uneven pressure and damage the CPU. I think you were lucky Dougie, but as Ranchand says, if you had damamged it, you would know about it by now. If you had left it as it was, the CPU would have almost certainly overheated. Stuart

Thanks for the responses everyone! Now I can stop worrying if I have some damage I just haven't seen yet. By backwards I meant it was clipped on, but the little riser on the heat sink was on the opposite side of the Socket A bar (for lack of a better term). The Motherboard has a auto shut down feature if the CPU fan is not plugged into the CPU fan connector or if there are heating issues. This is how I knew I had a problem when I first fired it up and it immediately shut the power off.