Halfway through fan replacement: What do I do now? (photos)

Morninglord

Need help if anybody knows. I'm a complete noob at this sort of thing. I can't find any information on exactly what to do right here at the moment.

Basically the motherboard chipset fan on my gf's A8n-sli mobo started failing and asus sent us a new one.

So I took the old one off and this is a photo of what I found (photo size are 250k which is why they are links):

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n208/morninglord21/IMG_5260.jpg

As you can see there's a little clear sticky plasticy thing that covers the circuit board and not the chip and the old thermal stuff is all over the place underneath it.

This is on the underside of the old fan/heatsink:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n208/morninglord21/IMG_5259.jpg

It's some kind of black plastic cover, I assume the clear plastic sticky thing helped hold it in place. It wont come off, I'll have to carefully peel it off with quite a bit of force.

Now this is fine right, just take that black plastic cover off, pop it on the new fan? The clear plastic is still a bit stick I guess. The trouble is the new fan doesn't have a replacement sticky thing:

This is the new fan:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n208/morninglord21/IMG_5262.jpg

So....how safely can I clean all that white gunk off. Can I just take off that black cover, take off the clear plastic sticky cover, clean the whole chip with some rubbing alcohol, then put the black and clear cover back on and stick on the new fan?

Do I need to find another one of those clear sticky plastic covers? Is that there to protect the circuit board the chip connects to? Can I put the new fan on without either of the covers?

The only heatsinks I've ever put on off are cpu one's, so I want to be sure I don't damage her machine by installing it incorrectly.

Also no information online says anything about the cover thing, so I want to know what the process is here.

Thanks for your time.

Macro9

Just clean it as best you can with alcohol and apply some TIM then the heat sink. Shouldn't hurt anything.

Morninglord

Macro9 wrote: »

Just clean it as best you can with alcohol and apply some TIM then the heat sink. Shouldn't hurt anything.

TIM? Is that the thermal stuff. The new heatsink has some on it already, it's the pink patch.

Do I try to put the cover things back on or can I throw them away and put the new heatsink on directly?

Transparent

The manufacturer was obviously worried about the metal from the heat sync shorting out the components beneath or thought there needed to be some thermal insulation between those components and the heat sync.

If it were me, I'd find a way to keep those components covered, but by no means am I an expert.

Morninglord

The rubbing alcohol wont remove the white completely, some of it is stuck. Would it be alright to just whack the new heatsink over it?
I'll be reusing the covers I think, hopefully the pins will keep them in place and whatever is left of the sticky.
Decided not to peel the plastic off to clean the white underneath because it's been fine so far.

Silvoculous

Morninglord wrote: »

The rubbing alcohol wont remove the white completely, some of it is stuck. Would it be alright to just whack the new heatsink over it?

It should still be okay with your new heatsink's pre-applied thermal pad. Go for it.

Morninglord

Just wanted to say thanks for helping a nervous chipset noob. Her computer is running perfectly now, all snug and quiet and she's very happy.

So thanks from me and her.

fightinfilipino

i was going to say that acetone might do a slightly better job at removing that old thermal paste gunk, but it looks like you've already installed the thing :o

El Guaco

fightinfilipino wrote: »

i was going to say that acetone might do a slightly better job at removing that old thermal paste gunk, but it looks like you've already installed the thing :o

I'm pretty sure acetone eats any kind of petroleum based products, namely plastic, so if any of the parts were made of plastic this would be disastrous. Acetone is nasty stuff! Be careful.

Edit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone Yikes!

Macro9

I tend to use a coffee filter and some rubbing alcohol. The TIM manufacturers use is a pain in the butt to remove. They seem to put more than is needed and do a sloppy job all around.

Pheezer

Yeah seriously don't use acetone inside of a computer near a PCB. Or at all, for anything, if you can find any alternative chemical to use.

fightinfilipino

Pheezer wrote: »

Yeah seriously don't use acetone inside of a computer near a PCB. Or at all, for anything, if you can find any alternative chemical to use.

huh.

if you use it on the separated heatsink, it's fine. if you're careful, you can also use acetone with a cotton swab to clear up the chipset itself, provided you don't get any on the rest of the board.

i've used acetone to clear up nasty thermal paste/cement before, though, and it's been fine.

ArcSyn

I don't want to derail this thread, but it's the closest to my needs and I can't create my own.

My processor heatsink and fan are not working well. My computer will shut down due to heat problems (My processor temp has exceeded 100C) throughout the day. I have an Athlon 3000+ on a Gigabyte K8NS Pro board and I need to get a new heatink and fan. I don't want to buy something expensive, because it's old and probably won't work on a newer chip when I can eventually afford an upgrade. But it needs to cool it well, because right now I'm killing my processor with these temps.

Any suggestions? I've searched Newegg and there are tons on there but with every good review there is a bad one, which just makes it that much harder to pick something.

fightinfilipino

ArcSyn wrote: »

I don't want to derail this thread, but it's the closest to my needs and I can't create my own.

My processor heatsink and fan are not working well. My computer will shut down due to heat problems (My processor temp has exceeded 100C) throughout the day. I have an Athlon 3000+ on a Gigabyte K8NS Pro board and I need to get a new heatink and fan. I don't want to buy something expensive, because it's old and probably won't work on a newer chip when I can eventually afford an upgrade. But it needs to cool it well, because right now I'm killing my processor with these temps.

Any suggestions? I've searched Newegg and there are tons on there but with every good review there is a bad one, which just makes it that much harder to pick something.

that board is a Socket 754 board right? this Arctic Cooling heatsink seems to be a favorite with the Something Awful crowd. well reviewed, too.

ArcSyn

fightinfilipino wrote: »

ArcSyn wrote: »

I don't want to derail this thread, but it's the closest to my needs and I can't create my own.

My processor heatsink and fan are not working well. My computer will shut down due to heat problems (My processor temp has exceeded 100C) throughout the day. I have an Athlon 3000+ on a Gigabyte K8NS Pro board and I need to get a new heatink and fan. I don't want to buy something expensive, because it's old and probably won't work on a newer chip when I can eventually afford an upgrade. But it needs to cool it well, because right now I'm killing my processor with these temps.

Any suggestions? I've searched Newegg and there are tons on there but with every good review there is a bad one, which just makes it that much harder to pick something.

that board is a Socket 754 board right? this Arctic Cooling heatsink seems to be a favorite with the Something Awful crowd. well reviewed, too.

After reading that review, I may grab the Freezer version of the two, considering it did a bit better under load and it is only $4 more since Newegg has $7 shipping on the alpine, taking it's reasonably cheap $14 and turning it into $21, where the Freezer is only $25. If it was $14, I'd take the alpine instantly.

Thanks for the recommendation. Hopefully between this and hopefully a new HDD soon my computer should see new life and I can finally trust it for editing movies again.