Conclusion

I'm really happy to be able to save money (and a good heatsink!) by reusing an old Socket 462 heatsink on my new Socket 939 motherboard. Now I can spend the money on something else!

While rather old, the Thermalright SI-97 is still a very good heatsink. Even Thermalright modified it slightly to make it compatible with Socket 939 motherboards. Of course, it's a newer model which they named SI-97A.

I think it is really worth reusing your old Socket 462 heatsinks, instead of buying new Socket 939-compatible heatsinks. Especially if you have good heatsinks like the Thermalright SI-97. All you need then is the retention clip from the stock cooler and you will be able to use your Socket 462 cooler on your Socket 939 motherboard.

But please note that the purpose of this guide is show you how you can mount a Socket 462 heatsink you already own onto a Socket 939 motherboard. If you do not have a good Socket 462 cooler you can use, you should just buy a Socket 939-compatible heatsink like the Thermalright SI-97A or XP-90.

I personally like Thermalright heatsinks because of their outstanding performance. I also modded the SI-97 to fit my Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card. You can have a look at the mod here. Just two weeks ago, I modded another Thermalright heatsink onto my new Radeon X1800XL graphics card to save some money and well, I was not able to buy the Thermalright V1 Ultra either. Stay tuned for developments on that end!

We hope that this guide is of some use to you in modding your Socket 462 coolers to fit your Socket 939 motherboards. Please do let us know here if you successfully mount other Socket 462 coolers on your Socket 939 motherboard. We'd really love to hear from you!

Questions & Comments

Please feel free to post your questions or comments here!