Reattaching chipset heatsink / thermal adhesive

[fedxpress]

Hello,

i need to reattach my northbridge heatsink after the anchor clip popped off. I have anchors on one side but not the other. i cannot find another clip anywhere. i bought arctic silver thermal adhesive which makes a permanent bond - my sense is this is the only option - to permanently bond the heatsink to the chipset. this is an old computer and i do not plan to replace the heatsink in the future. is this advisable or is there another option?

 

[tecmo34]

Arctic Silver does not make a strong enough of a bond to hold your heat sink off. If your heat sink has 4 anchors and two are gone, I would take one from the other side and place it in the opposite corner with the AS applied.

 

[4745454b]

I bought a used board from someone and there was no heatsink on the NB at all. Same problem you had, one clip from the side was gone and no way to keep it on. I went to newegg, bought the adhesive, mixed it up, and "glued" an old 60mm CPU HSF to it. Mine said to lay it flat for 24hrs, so I didn't mount it in the case till the next day. Its still working fine. Make sure you have the sink you want for the rest of that computers life. Other then that you should be fine.

Tecmo, its not normal AS. Its two tubes, one contains your normal TIM, while the other is a bonding agent. You mix the contents of the two tubes together, apply like normal paste (but be quick about it) and then hold the sink to the chip for about 5min. After that let it sit for 24hr and then you'll need an act of God to get them apart.

 

[fedxpress]

since electronics is not my area of expertise, after tecmo's reply I went and bought the regular AS thermal paste - so now i have tubes of the adhesive + the paste. i guess what I'll do is use the adhesive to glue down the loop to the opposite side and use the paste to attach the heatsink just in case i ever decide to upgrade it in the future, rather than make a permanent bond - and in case the HS does not sit properly, i can always remount it with the adhesive.


thanks all for the replies..

 

[4745454b]

I'm not sure that will work, but good luck on the try. I don't think the glue will be able to grab and hold that thin wire that well. Certainly not well enough to keep pressure on the chip.

 

[fedxpress]

so whats best thing to use to anchor the wire loop to the motherboard? I'm a little hesitant to use the thermal adhesive because it apparently does have a miniscule amount of conductivity and there's a lot of small circuitry surrounding the holes on the MB.


how does superglue hold up under hot temps?

 

[4745454b]

As long as you use a small amount you should be fine. Remember that this is for a NB, not a CPU. Make sure you use an active cooler and not just a sink.

 

[fedxpress]

oh why's that? i was just going to reattach the stock passive heatsink that the computer came with...

also this is a pentium 4 if that matters.

 

[4745454b]

Why is what? If you use a small amount of TIM, it won't leak off the edge of the chip so it doesn't matter if its conductive or not. If you were asking why use an active sink, that was my suggestion if you use too little TIM. If the cooling isn't good enough when your done, you can always strap a fan to it and make it better