M4A78LT-M LE + Phenom II x2 560 BE (A3 socket) Well, after spending time & money (Jan 2011) rebuilding my desktop machine, I am very disappointed that the CPU connector plate failed yesterday.

I was having physiotherapy and heard a clunk from my desk. I couldn’t see anything fallen over, so carried on with the physio’. I was about to take the panel off the machine, when it shut its-self down.

When I did open it, I was dismayed to see that the heat-sink & cooling fan had dropped off & was resting across a couple of expansion cards. On closer inspection, I see that one of the fixing lugs on the adapter/fixing plate had snapped off. I’ve never seen this before, even on cheaper stuff, so feared the worse.

I've dropped DABs a line to see about returning it, but now it looks like they want me to send it to Asus. Doesn’t that go against UK Law ?

I have now seen that you can buy these adapter plates – so I guess it’s a more common occurrence than I thought. As I am disabled, I do rely on my machine, possibly more than most, and of course I can’t run it at all at the moment.

1/ For the sake of speed: does anyone know where I can get such a plate (A3 socket – bearing the word: AMCO) ? I’ve looked on an auction site, but the only A3 I come up with is from Hong Kong –(400294708174)- and that isn’t quite like mine. Mine is more ‘open plan’ – just the outer frame. Have also Googled it, but can't seem to get anywhere.

2/ I am concerned about any damage caused by this thing falling apart. If I do have to return it – should I insist that DABs take it back, and not Asus ?

thanks

PS: I don't see any formatting tools or preview on this version of PCA. Have I logged onto an older version by mistake ? I arrived here via Google, on a friends machine.