Recently my northbridge fan has been screaching. I want to replace it with a nice passive cooler like a zalman. However my mobo seems to have a weird bracket to attach the fan. I have an Asus a7v266-e board. Any ideas on how to mount a new cooler? I can't see a way to remove the bracket, and from what I have seen, most other boards don't have this type of bracket.
Hmm..not sure what the bracket looks like. Is it like two holes that have a little plastic clippy going through them. Im sure theres a way to get off the bracket. IF not...
Can you get a pic of the bracket? Best I could find was This which looks like the fan screws into the heatsink...
Yes Splynncryth! the second link clearly shows the northbridge fan. As you can see there are 2 posts that the fan is secured to... and then the fan is screwed down to the square holder. The problem is that that square holder and the pegs are mounted securely to the chip... I don't want to order a zalman cooler for it if it will not fit, and I have nothing to test with.
I belive that all of that is a housing/heat sink. The chip itself should be very very thin. Usallt the pins are barbed, look at the underside of the mobo. Often times the barbs can be squeezed together to remove then, other times there is an extra pin between then that gets pulled up before you can squeeze the barbs together.
Yeah, you can't put a zalman heatsink on top of the stock heatsink You have to remove the fan, then remove the heatsink. as Splynncryth said, look for the barbs on the back of the mobo. After the barbs are free of the mobo, it will be just some thermal paste/adheasive between you and getting that sucker off.
