Replacing Intel 845PE Northbridge cooling

[tornadobox]

So the fan is dying on my MSI Max2-FIR 845PE motherboard, and I was looking into replacing the unit with a Zalman heatsink. I took off the fan and heatsink that's on there right now, and the nortbridge has a tiny raised core, just like on the old Coppermine CPU's. I noticed that the heatsink has a felt-type rim on the undeside, to keep the heatsink raised, sort of acting like a shim.

The Zalman heatsink has a completely flat bottom, and it needs to be installed with thermal adhesive (I have no mounting holes on my motherboard, the current setup is a retention clip system). So I figured I would just get a coppermine CPU shim, adhere that to the northbridge chip, and then adhere the heatsink to the shim...anyone know if that'll be ok?

If anyone's done anything like this before, please let me know what you did and how it ended up. Also, if I need to cut down the shim (it's a standard non-conductive shim), can I take it to like Home Depot or something and have them cut it down? (I have no tools...apartment living!).

Thanks.

 

[BBond]

I replaced the factory NB HS on my Abit IC7-G with a Swiftech MCX-159P.

The IC7-G has the same NB set up with the raised core. Swiftech includes four small round plastic pads to stabilize the HS on NBs with exposed cores. This setup works fine. I've had no problems since installing the new HS several months ago.

You can see the pads attached to the bottom of the HS at the link.

PS I use this HS without the fan, passive, and get better NB temps than with the original Abit HSF combo.