Accidently "broke" off M.2 standoff from motherboard.

[dias_flac_og]

Hi. I was recently uninstalling one of my M.2 drives from my Maximus X Hero and when I used the hex screw driver to remove the standoff I ended up removing the "base" standoff.

It's that little hex "nut" that sits on the motherboard itself that allows you to screw in a standoff to mount the M.2 drive.

Now my motherboard has a hole where that little nut was. There's a "silver" outer ring where the little nut used to sit on. I can put the little nut back in but now it just falls off.

From the looks of it it was originally glued on to the motherboard?

My question is, can I use Krazy Glue (super glue) to glue the little hex nut back on to the motherboard or will Krazy Glue kill my motherboard?

[xeromist]

The important thing with any kind of adhesive is don't bridge to any surrounding contacts. Basically don't use too much. There is no electricity going through that standoff (unless something goes VERY wrong) so you can refasten it to the board safely.

[BillBittel]

Do they really just glue these to the mobo? Its not some sort of PEM stud that mechanically anchors to the hole?

[dias_flac_og]

Haha yea I went ahead and Krazy Glued it back on! It worked perfectly.

Sadly I did get some Krazy Glue on the outer edge of the "silver ring" (where the lil hex nut sits). It spilled a lil on the mobo itself (the black pcb part of it) but just a tiny bit not like giant blob of Krazy Glue I was doing my best to only apply a small amount.

The motherboard seems to be working perfectly?

As far as I know Krazy Glue isn't conductive so there shouldnt be any issues with the tiny spill? It's already fully dry too. I guess I can maybe "scrape" off the tiny "piece" of glue that spilled onto the motherboard pcb. However I feel that I can physically damage the mobo if I try to scrape off that dry glue. So it would be better to just leave it there...

Also this was on the bottom M.2 slot the one all the way at the bottom of the chipset heatsink. This was not the one over the GPU/CPU area.

BillBittel, yes seems so. As far as I know these little hex "nuts" are just "glued" onto the mobo itself. They sit on a lil silver ring thats on the base of the mobo.

Its a very dumb design. Like if these lil hex nuts arent meant to be screwed off why the hell do they give them that lil HEX shape? Without paying much attention I literally took my hex screw driver and just pushed it all the way down...and just turned it hahaha.

I completely had forgotten that the M.2 stand off actually screws onto the lil hex nut on the mobo....Thats what I was trying to remove. The M.2 stand off also has the same size hex as the lil nut on the mobo you can see how easily it is to screw up if you arent paying attention.

[sedex1]

I also had this incident recently.
I applied a little bit of solder to the motherboard with a thin soldering tip.
Then with (A clean!) solderingtip, i soldered the hexnut with heat transfer to the motherboard.
i.e. I pressed the hex nut with the soldering tip onto the motherboard.

It is important that no solder ends in the screw thread.
The screw also provides a groundplane to the SSD so soldering would be a better solution than gluing.

I agree that this is a weak construction.

[dias_flac_og]

sedex1 wrote:
I also had this incident recently.
I applied a little bit of solder to the motherboard with a thin soldering tip.
Then with (A clean!) solderingtip, i soldered the hexnut with heat transfer to the motherboard.
i.e. I pressed the hex nut with the soldering tip onto the motherboard.

It is important that no solder ends in the screw thread.
The screw also provides a groundplane to the SSD so soldering would be a better solution than gluing.

I agree that this is a weak construction.

From the looks of it. These aren't soldered on. When I "broke" it off you can see dried residue of some kinda "glue" under it. I even removed it with my finger nail (XD) It clearly wasn't soldered on.

I feel like unless you are a pro at soldering you should never try to do that you can easily short something on the MB.

No one seems to know what is used to "glue" these lil hex nutts onto the motherboard though.

[M1key87]

I accidentally did this on purpose,  realized to late that it wasn't made to unscrew.. I'm having an issue that the standoffs that came with mobo doesn't fit into the pre-installed hexscrew standoff thing.. I've spent hours trying to figure out how to install my m.2