cleaning Zalman?

[fuentefan]

I really need to clean my Zalman CNPS 7000B......but it seems compressed air isn't doing the trick! What should I try next?

p.s. this is my first post, been lurking around here for a year or so!!

 

[canadageek]

well, you can always pull the heatsink off and clean it with a soft brush of some sort, that's about all i can think of if compressed air doesn't work

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Think about something like this. Get yourself a small paint-brush at the hardware store -- an inexpensive one an inch or less wide. Ground yourself to your computer case, or wear a ground-strap. You should be able to brush away a good part of your dirt problem, then blow it out the case with a can of compressed air.

 

[Navid]

I use a small vacuum cleaner I bought for $10.00 from home hardware. It has a hose with a thin tip that does the trick.

 

[wkwong]

When it gets really nasty, I take the whole thing and and clean it in water and blow dry it. No rust or anything and clean as when I first got it. I did this with heatsinks that have removable fans, not sure if you can easily take the fan off Zalmans.

 

[Dough1397]

i recommend takign it off and sprayign teh compressed air on it or using aa vacuum....

would a copper heatsink corrode if it was just in teh case coolign the cpu?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Somehow, removing the heatsink to clean it seems a bit drastic -- a lot of trouble, and an increase in risk -- let alone the consumption of thermal paste and the time to let new thermal paste reset.

If the problem is "cruft" between the fins, I can't understand why the paint-brush idea won't work. If it is "tarnish", I don't see how tarnish is going to significantly affect heatsink efficiency.

 

[MDE]

Take the heatsink out, flip it upside-down and blow the crud out. Zalman's mounting system makes it pretty easy to do, it's only two screws.
Yes copper heatsinks do corrode "just cooling the CPU" because they're always reacting with oxygen in the air. I just pulled the heatsink off of an Athlon XP 2200+ that had been there for over a year and the copper base ws slightly darkened around the CPU contact area but not where the CPU die contacted the heatsink. However, it's nothing major and shouldn't affect the heatsink's performance all that much.