Working on a computer where the CPU fan broke off the tabs on the board and i was wondering what are the chances that the processor burnt up. I know most computers have a overheating protection but do you think it would catch it in time to save the CPU? By the way, it is a cheapie board (PC Chips M810) and the fan only fit over one tab on each side of the CPU pad. This is the second board/fan type i have seen do this. You may want to inspect your fan and make sure it is the type that fits over all three tabs.

Depends on the CPU and what it was doing at the time. If it's and AMD CPU the chances of survival are less than if it is an Intel. Not all motherboards have CPU overheat protection. The easiest way to find is suck it and see. If it is fried you will know soon enough. With all the fan/heatsinks I have fitted I have never seen broken tabs on the heatsink mount. Must be a fault with cheapie PC Chips mothrboards. Stuart

I have heard that there is thermal transfer glue. It supposedly can be used to glue a heatsink to the CPU. I'm not sure how it would work with an 1800 AMD chip, but it might be worth a try.

Or you get another heatsink that fits to the other socket connectors. My Alpha 6035 also uses only the middle noses on the socket of my asus a7v133 raid but it's there for nearly 4 years now! You have to try the cpu to see what happens. If your lucky it just froze after it got too hot and if not it's burnt! BTW: I think I read something about cheap sockets where the noses broke easily but I don't remember the details anymore!