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Thread ID: 48999 2004-09-07 07:09:00 Removing existing cooling fans royalp (2229) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
270132 2004-09-07 07:09:00 I wish to upgrade the existing fan on my P4 3.0 chip as the noise when it cuts in to full speed, sounds like concorde warming up and I have had enough. Trouble is I have heard horror stories of people removing the fan and pulling the CPU with it clean off the board due to the thermal paste sticking, then having to pry the two apart with a screw driver!
Does anyone have any first hand experience of this? or can offer any tips on removal. How much abuse will a Pentium CPU take.

kind regards Peter.
royalp (2229)
270133 2004-09-07 08:00:00 By Fan i assume you mean heatsink and fan combo? Those horror stories youve heard are a load of ass. Just undo the clips holding the stock HSF on and give it a lil wiggle, this should loosen the cheap thermal pad(you may not even need to give it a wiggle) and slowly pull the HSF away. The thermal pad is mearly designed to transfer heat between the CPU and HSF its not designed to hold the HSF on. The HSF should lift away easily. Pete O'Neil (250)
270134 2004-09-07 08:00:00 I've never had one stick more than a gentle prise with a finger nail would not fix. I'd be more inclined to work an old bank card between the two if stuck than try a screw driver.

Cheers Murray P
Murray P (44)
270135 2004-09-07 08:04:00 Just make sure you either have another thermal pad on the new heatsink or some thermal paste - you don't want to cook the CPU!

If you need thermal paste, look in your local computer shop for some (Arctic Silver is probably the best to look for).
wintertide (1306)
270136 2004-09-07 08:11:00 If your really worried about damaging the CPU then ask the shop where you buy your new cooler from to do it for you. Any decent shop should do it for a small fee or even free, seeing as your buy a new cooler from them. Pete O'Neil (250)
270137 2004-09-07 09:07:00 >then having to pry the two apart with a screw driver!

Nothing wrong with that.... :D
Growly (6)
270138 2004-09-07 10:15:00 Some thermal paste has a glue element in it,it can be used to mount a fan with no clips,in fact i pulled a cleron 553 straight out of a board today without unlocking the lever.

This was a dead comp btw so i wasn't taking any care,and i swapped what was left for a Doz of export gold.

Anyhow,I spent a good 10 minutes trying to free the heatsink from the cpu and the cpu certainly felt like it would break before the glue let go.

As usual a brightspark wandered in and insisted they had a freind just back from networking skyscrapers in Japan who had a solvent specially made for disolving the glue............I think they hear my grunts of frustration and come in to boggle my mind with fantastical stories....
metla (154)
270139 2004-09-07 10:55:00 with age some thermal paste will harden like rock and can be very hard to get off. i've had a few which i've cut through the thermal paste with a thin string acting as a saw. tweak'e (174)
270140 2004-09-07 11:26:00 "with age some thermal paste will harden like rock and can be very hard to get off"
A few months back a guy brougt a celeron 2000 in that he had a go at replacing with a 2400 northwood. He sheepishly told me he coudn't get the heatsink seperated from the cpu and handed me the heatsink and cpu still welded together. Obviously used considerable force and it had come off at an angle since the pins on one outside edge side were almost horizontal.
Who ever attached this must of used a compound with adhesive qualities like expoxy resin. Took ages to seperate it and clean off the heat spreader and straighten the pins.
String is a great idea.
the highlander (245)
270141 2004-09-07 11:34:00 Dental floss would be good then .

You can get epoxies for securing heatsinks to chips but wouldn't be keen to try them myself after seeing what happened to someones CPU after they "borrowed" some low viscosity epoxy of me to secure a water block (which I might add had worked perfectly well on another CPU), the thing fried in less than a minute, for some reason he had disabled the auto shutdown in BIOS . He managed to retrieve the water block and video card .

Cheers Murray P
Murray P (44)
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