The plastic piece that held the heat sink on my dell Dimension 2400 broke on one side.

I’m guessing heat caused it to brittle or the fact they made the plastic thinner on the sides. I can still use one side to hold it down but that causes it to be sideways and not touching the full cpu. Should I find a replacement part or just let the heat sink glue hold it in place?

 

The easiest thing for you to do now, assuming those retainer hoops have to be replaced, and irreparable, would be to get yourself a new northbridge heatsink. Those are relatively cheap, and come with their own retainer hoops.

above from here, do not know if dell will have replacement retainers

 

reply 2:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fr...00+Heatsink+Retainer+Retention+&_sacat=170078

found the above if you want to buy the replacement retainer

 

It happened a couple of times to me too, and I was lucky enough to find an 'almost' compatible retainer among the pile of junk I never had the guts to throw away.
Ask your friends for it, go rummage in a junkyard, replace it with a piece of (insulated) iron wire, do whatever you wish but don't - repeat DON'T - just rely on the glue. Overheated chips die with discouraging ease

 

Ya it looks like I have to wait for my next check to get a new retainer as I want to get everything in one go. I finally found a graphics card on eBay but I’m just hoping it won’t be gone by the 31st because it was a pain just finding that one.