Will superglue work to attach small southbridge heatsink?

Compman55

Golden Member
Feb 14, 2010
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The old motherboard had a wire clip to hold the heatsink to the southbrige. The new identical motherbaord lacks the attachement points to hold in place. Can I superglue this in place and hope for decent heat transfer over not having one at all?
 

YBS1

Golden Member
May 14, 2000
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Not having done this, but from what I understand the best way to do something like this is apply a minimal amount of thermal paste in the center and the tiniest of drops of super glue to each corner of the heatsink.
 

YBS1

Golden Member
May 14, 2000
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I know I'm working on the assumption he wanted to do it right now rather than order something.
 

Compman55

Golden Member
Feb 14, 2010
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Yes, it needs to go back to the owner, and I do not have time to order. Dell cheapened up the new board by saving $0.10 on not installing the heatsink.
 

Rakehellion

Lifer
Jan 15, 2013
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I'd go to Home Depot to get parts to make an adapter.

Super glue is an insulator and doesn't hold that strongly to non-porous surfaces.
 

YBS1

Golden Member
May 14, 2000
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Personally I'd try thermal tape, but I don't know if he has that on hand either.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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This all depends on your desire for future removal of the heatsink.

You can get a two-part thermal epoxy from Arctic. Just be careful to apply it so that it doesn't contaminate conductive leads or surfaces.

Adhesive thermal tape also may work.
 

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
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This all depends on your desire for future removal of the heatsink.

You can get a two-part thermal epoxy from Arctic. Just be careful to apply it so that it doesn't contaminate conductive leads or surfaces.

Adhesive thermal tape also may work.

What he said.

I'd use thermal tape if you ever want to remove it again later.
 
Oct 16, 1999
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Not having done this, but from what I understand the best way to do something like this is apply a minimal amount of thermal paste in the center and the tiniest of drops of super glue to each corner of the heatsink.

I've done this. Works well enough on light heatsinks. Was even able to pop it back off later with some twisting. Don't overdo either the paste or glue.
 

.vodka

Golden Member
Dec 5, 2014
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Not having done this, but from what I understand the best way to do something like this is apply a minimal amount of thermal paste in the center and the tiniest of drops of super glue to each corner of the heatsink.

This works just fine, paste in the center, and a drop of glue on each corner of the heatsink. Apply with decent pressure for a little while until it sticks. If you do not overdo the glue, you can remove the heatsink, as Gonad said.
 

Compman55

Golden Member
Feb 14, 2010
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I am so confused......

The old and new motherboards are idential part#'s, and the old one the heatsink gets VERY hot. The new board does not have a heatsink and I can hold my finger on the core of the chip and it is hot, but not hot enough to hurt you. So it doesn;t need a heatsink I beleive. I am confused as they are idential.

Either there was a chip stepping change that addressed a heat issue, or they lowered the voltage to the chip to reduce its temp.
 

utahraptor

Golden Member
Apr 26, 2004
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It may be that the new board is a new revision that features a die shrunk chip to replace the old one that was getting hot. If so it would be using less power. I have never heard of that before though.
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
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I keep thermal epoxy in my desk drawer just for these occasions. I suppose the super glue advice is well-meaning and maybe even effective, but there's no way I'm going to chance having a heat sink fall off due to thermal cycling. Sometimes people are willing to wait to have something done right, if it is explained properly, failing that, declining the job or having them return later might be options.
 

Joepublic2

Golden Member
Jan 22, 2005
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On second thought I'm not sure how I'd go about attaching this heat sink. Post a pic of the board? Look up the whitepaper for the chipset; if it just uses a few watts and is in a plastic encased package like this:

nhfs3.jpg


we might be overthinking it and the package/board would provide enough of a heat sink effect. If it doesn't have any way to mount one Dell's thermal engineers probably calculated that it didn't need one (this is assuming of course that the board is going back in the original case).
 
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