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CPU fan wires touching the blue heatsinks on my motherboard?

T

tom2000

Member
I'm building my first computer, and I was wondering about my CPU's fan wires. I'm using a Gigabyte EP45-DS3P and an Intel E7300. The wires seem to run around the CPU heatsink/fan and clip into little clips on the outside. This puts them in direct contact with the big blue pieces of metal surrounding the CPU. Is that going to be a problem, or is that what its' supposed to look like. If I don't clip them in, they need to run right over the fan, which isn't very well shielded, and I'm afraid they might get caught occasionally.
 
I agree with the concern about the wires getting caught in the fan - been there, had that happen. 🙂 But why the worry about the fan wires being in contact with the heatsink? You are worried that the heatsink will get hot enough to melt the wire cover?

I don't think there's any worry with having the fan wires clipped to the heatsink - they don't (normally) get that hot and there's definitely no EMF or noise concerns (in fact, the opposite is true).
 
I think the copper heatsinks are anodized blue on the board he has -- my EP45-UD3P heatsinks are blue as well.
 
In the picture above, the three heatsinks surrounding the CPU are copper. Mine are painted blue. My wire comes out the CPU towards the left, and it needs to go to the lower right CPU_Fan attachment. If I don't clip it, it bends over the CPU fan. If i do clip it, it runs around the CPU in a clockwise direction, running right up against the top heatsink (the one with the word "Gigabyte" painted on it in the picture). Yes, I'm worried about the wires melting. I don't know how hot they get. Its my first build, and since its called a "heat"sink, I figured it might get hot and I should ask before I go frying a fan wire.

Also, I fasted the CPU down and then thought the fan wire clips were bending the motherboard heatsinks, so I took it off and rotated it 90 degrees and clipped it back down. Should I have any problems with the thermal paste? It got smeared all over the CPU, but I assume thats what its supposed to do. I just took the CPU off and turned it and pushed it back in, so I think I'll be ok.
 
No the wires won't melt 🙂 If a heatsink got that hot you'd be more worried about the cpu and mobo before you worried about your cpu cooler's power connector.

As for not re-applying thermal grease, you'll lose a few degrees at most from doing what you did, however if you don't plan on pushing your cpu to the limits it'll go on air it shouldn't really matter.
 
Sweet. Good to know. Thanks for all the help, and thanks for the picture Blain to help explain things.

On a different topic, is there any difference between the SATA connections? The picture shows 4 in one place, two in another. Mine has 6 and two. Why do they put two off to the side and label them differently? Does it matter where I plug everything in? My hard drive and DVD drive are both SATA, and I have two connections at the back and one in the front to plug in that can be used by external devices. Can i just put things anywhere?
 
Yes you can put them anywhere, actually 1 reason why they have SATA ports sideways is because video cards got so damn long and big if you had them facing up you'd block off several ports, which although most people won't mind it was enough to warrant a small change.
 
Got it. Good to know. I'm hooking up the final parts tonight. Lets hope it turns on and works! 🙂
Thanks for everyone's help!
 
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