Is my chipset fan safe?

[kupocake]

My old chipset fan went dud a year ago (well, "it started making obscene noises, so something was wrong" kind of dud anyway), and after a year of running without one, I've gone and got a new one in the hope of curing my recent crash problems in just about every game under the sun.

I got This fan and put it on, but I'm rather worried about how well it actually attaches itself to the board. There are no pins or anything connecting it to the board, just the "Thermal conductive adhesive transfer tape" that comes on it. Now i'm pretty much a noob when it comes to PCs. I've practically built a PC through putting bits in an removing over the years, but I still don't know an awful lot and am prone to mistakes and mistaken panic. I assume that the thermal tape is enough to attach the fan to the board, but why then was it so incredibly easy for me to remove it even after it had been on for about 15 minutes? Does it take a while to bond, or have I done something wrong? (number one culprit: instead of removing the previous' fan's paste with some kind of car oil like some sites recommend, I used a tissue I understand now that this prevents the paste from operating optimumly, but does it also stop the paste from sticking the fan to my chipset all together?). Is there a chance that with a little knock, the fan/heatsink could come off and start bouncing around in my pc, probably doing one hell of a lot of damage?

 

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Which chipset are we talking about here?

 

[kupocake]

Northbridge

 

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Which motherboard do you have? Most northbridges are passive cooled. If it is designed to be passive cooled, it won't have any fixings for a fan powered cooler, which it will need. If its designed to be fan cooled, it should have fixings to attach the hsf securly.

 

[kupocake]

It's an old NForce2 era MSI K7N2 Delta ISLR. It definitely has the fixings because I removed the old fan/heatsink that it came with (it had worn down and become noisy sometime last year, but it became evident through frequents hang-ups that I needed a chipset fan) in order to place the AK-210, but the AK-120 doesn't have fixings anyway. But i'm not too sure any of this is relevant... The issue is whether a thermal strip alone can keep a heatsink/fan stuck to a motherboard (and clearly it must be expected to, otherwise they wouldn't sell it like that), even when I was lazy enough not to clean the old paste off properly (i.e. just rubbing it with a tissue until it looked clean).

I'm most worried that if I give the PC a good kick as I'm walking by, that it could just detach. So far, it has stuck on no problems and I got several hours of good gaming out of my PC which I've not managed in quite a long time, suggesting that I was right about needing a replacement fan/heatsink

PS. Changing a chipset fan is one hell of a hassle! Taking your motherboard out and having to disconnect everything for one lousy little fan seems a bit of an excess really

Edit: While I'm at it, I have another Q that i've been meaning to ask for a while now:

CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2600+
GFX Card: Ati Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
RAM: 1024mb 3200 DDRAM
Motherboard: MSI K7N2-Delta-ILSR
Including onboard 6.1 Channel Sound, 10/100 Network, Firewire and USB2 Support
Drives: Seagate Barracuda 60GB (Partitioned 40/20)
AOpen 16x DVD
MSI 12xDVD/8xDVD-R
3 1/2 Floppy
Peripherals: Mouse, Keyboard, Scanner, Printer
Cool: 2 case-mounted fans, 1cpu fan and 1chipset fan

Is it alright for all that to be running off of an ageing, hell-knows-what branded 300W PSU? I've always wondered whether that would be too much for the PSU to handle, but I suspect that I've avoided any trouble because so much of the PC's functionality is on-board...

 

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The reason I ask is because if the motherboard has fixings for the stock cooler, then its likley that, no, the thermal paste alone will not be sufficient to hold the cooler in place. Aside from anything else, the motion from the coolers fan may well cause the heatsink to "walk", causing a lose in performance and the eventual return of the problems. Thermal paste is not designed to work like a glue, which is why anything with a fan should be able to screw into place.

To be honest, I would suggest checking you have bought a compatible cooler, as if the board can use fixings but the cooler dosen't have any, then it could be that they are incompatible.

Anyone who knows more about northbridges than me feel free to jump in and correct me here.

 

[kupocake]

The reason I ask is because if the motherboard has fixings for the stock cooler, then its likley that, no, the thermal paste alone will not be sufficient to hold the cooler in place. Aside from anything else, the motion from the coolers fan may well cause the heatsink to "walk", causing a lose in performance and the eventual return of the problems.

But surely there is no difference in the conditions that the fan will operate in whether there are small holes on either side of the chip or not?

Thermal paste is not designed to work like a glue, which is why anything with a fan should be able to screw into place.

It would seem that manufacturer thinks so though. There is no way of attaching the heatsink to the motherboard if it isn't with the pad on the bottom. No screws, no holes for screws no nothing. On top of that it is called "thermally conductive adhesive transfer tape", but that just whacks me for six with the Jargon hammer all over again

EDIT: Nope, this one just answered itself. The damned thing just fell off. Doesn't seem to have damaged anything though... Best go buy a different one :/
EDIT2: Any recommendations for a chipset fan?

 

[Asus]

Did you clean the chip with rubbing alcohol or acetone? Those are best to remove the old compound and clean the surface for the new compound. I wouldn't use a tissue that produces lint. That would make it not stick at all.

If the heatsink does not use any mounts then the compound can't be normal heatsink grease but is an epoxy or adhesive. That came with it right?
I've had bad experiences with tape. You have to really make sure the surface is clean or it doesn't stick as well. hehe
If it doesn't stick then either the surface is not clean or the compound is not an adhesive.

If you have two holes at the corners of the northbridge chip then you could buy a heatsink which mounts use the holes instead of relying on adhesive.
This is a good Zalamn chipset heatsink. It's big enough that it shouldn't need a fan and then there is no fan to break on ya.