Here are image for 6 different boards showing side by side the front and back of the CPU socket area. On all of these boards the "clasp assembly" mounts to posts on the back plate. The boards then fall into 1 of 2 groups:
In this group there's a threaded hole on the clasp assembly onto which the heatsink/fan was mounted:
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In this group there are no threaded holes on the clasp assembly onto which a heatsink/fan could be mounted. Instead the heatsink/fan was mounted to a bracket attached to the board itself which I had already removed.
Attachment:
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5.1.3.png
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I don't see a way to remove the plate w/o removing the clast assembly but y'all have seen orders of magnitude more server motherboards than I have so I defer to your wisdom. :)