Heatsink fell off! What glue do I use to reattach?

[Tedster]

In any event, you are gonna want to get the residue of that old paste or glue OFF of the onboard chip before you attach anything to it again or you will likely defeat the cooling you are trying to re-achieve.

So, if paste, isopropyl like suggested.

If glue, there are some products that will dissolve/soften them that you can (carefully) use.

use electronics cleaner. Alcohol can leave a residue and household alcohol is a solution with water. Definitely not recommended.

 

[CMH]

Well, I've always been using 99.7% isopropyl alcohol, and I've always made sure that it doesn't look wet before plugging it in. And I've never seen residue...

But then again, residue can be really tiny, so I won't say anything cos I don't know better.

All I know is that I have always been using isopropyl alcohol, and it seems to work. This includes chips, and even on the circuit board itself, when I accidentally got AS5 on it.

 

[Tedster]

isopropyl is a poor cleaner. Plus it leaves a residue and the water doesn't help either.... electronics cleaner is cheap, evaporates very fast, and cleans thoroughly. I use it all the time to remove thermal grease from pulled CPUs.

 

[CMH]

Well, 99.7% means there's probably no water in it, the 0.3% is probably other impurities....

But I should give electronics cleaners a go....

But they're all hydrocarbons anyway, whats the difference?

 

[Tedster]

maybe so- but electronics cleaner uses some pretty powerful solvents.....

water and alcohol are poor oil and grease solvents.....

it's just chemistry.

 

[CMH]

hmm... forgot that alcohol was a polar substance...

I'll give electronic cleaners a go...

 

[Per Hansson]

Just a note, maybe too late now

But if the clip on the mainboard really has been ripped off, you wont be able to fix it with a new heatsink

You either need to solder a new clip back onto the mainboard or use only Arctic Silver Thermal Adhesive to attach it (don't worry, it will hold the heatsink on it's own if you clean both surfaces properly and apply it according to the instructions on Arctic Silvers homepage)

The third alternative would be that you could use that Zalman heatsink linked before if your mainboard also has holes through the mainboard that you can put pegs into.. But I doubt that

 

[Aolish]

I'm surprised no one mentioned this, do you have a separate gfx card install on the mobo? if so when your HS fell off it might of landed right on it, if it did chances are the video card got damage as some of them are thin as well as any other expansion cards that were beneath it. Make sure they are all okay unless you use onboard video, sound, lan etc.

 

[xchtguy]

Aside from the thermal paste do we need any other type of adhesive to keep the heatsink on or will the thermal paste provide enough support?

 

[captaincranky]

Some days your CPU just smells slightly less than fresh....

maybe so- but electronics cleaner uses some pretty powerful solvents.....

water and alcohol are poor oil and grease solvents.....

it's just chemistry.

OK, Isopropyl can be used as an anti static agent when painting fiberglass if anybody cares. Actually, I don't consider it's solvency very high, with respect to grease and oil type deposits.

Arctic Silver markets a 2 solution kit for cleaning and prepping the CPU surface. I assume they know what they're doing, so I bought myself a kit . The second solution, (the one that preps the CPU surface), smells lemony fresh and nice. You'll never convince that's a bad thing, so just don't you even try Misters.

 

[mailpup]

xchtguy, the heatsink and fan assembly are attached mechanically to the motherboard and not by the thermal compound. The thermal compound is for heat transfer purposes, not adhesive purposes.

 

[captaincranky]

I Have Some Good News and Some Bad News.....

There actually is thermal adhesive, (epoxy based); http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835100005 Sadly, it's not really intended for CPU heak sink fans. (They're probably way too heavy).

 

[nosebleedXD]

you could try glue gunning the cpu chip and applying your heatsink back on top =]

 

[noHP]

super glue...?

This same thing happened to my mom's HP Pavilion a810n desktop computer. She past away a year ago and now my dad uses it mostly for e-mail. It's on 24/7 so as not to need waking it or starting it up.

Long story short (I posted elsewhere here in a reply about the same PC with heatsink falling off), I found the missing "clip" which looks like a circuit jumper with metal hoop on top and put it back after adding 'super glue' to the bottom of it.

The thermal paste on the chip and heatsink seemed good enough (for all I know it might be bad) because I could slide it around and it was sticky.

I bent the wire spring straighter to make it less a strain on the clips yet still hold okay.

To get power back into the PC I had to disconnect and reconnect the PSU to the motherboard while plugged into the wall AC.
Moving the computer meant unplugging and so lost power again, had to redo the fix a second time.

I would guess the chip has a problem now but the computer works okay I think. There had been complaints of it being slow, so I wonder if it was getting worse long before now.

Anyway, glueing the clip was my quick fix rather than trying to remove the motherboard and soldering so I hope it will last awhile that way.

I think people should at least take a look inside their desktop computers even if nothing seems wrong. Could prevent an unnecessary PC or motherboard replacement.