Hello, I'm currently concept CADing for my new project, and I wonder if magnets could work instead of screws for fitting a CPU cooler to the motherboard. I mean look at the MacBooks which charger is magnetic they don't seem to break because of that? So would four magnets screw up my motherboard or CPU?
given the size of the magnets that would be required to hold a cooler with the same force as four screws. I would think they would probably mess something. I doubt its feasible anyway, interference or not.
Only way I can think of finding out is to try it! Just stick 4 magnets of the size you'd need around the CPU socket. Given that magnets do what they do though, and electronics is succeptible to EM interference there's a good chance they'd affect something, especially the signalling lanes like the CPU/NB and CPU/RAM connections.
This won't work. As shadow says, you would need some serious neodymium magnets within a few centimetres of an expensive chip containing billions of tiny transistors. Things would go badly wrong quickly.
I wouldn't really recommend it, but if you try, be sure to report back. In the end it still is a static magnetic field, and a signal is a relative thing, so maybe, maybe if you're lucky, it won't do anything big. I'd be a bit scared of silent corruption however. The mac power thing works because it is quite far away from the electronics (magnetic field strength reduces very fast: 1/r^3) and is not that strong of a magnet. I'm a bit curious as to why you would want that? My first guess would be to make the cooler easily removable, but considering how strong the magnets have to put a somewhat effective pressure on the cpu, I think removing it will be anything but easy.
Well okay, thank you for all your responses! You won't know if stuff works until you either try it or ask a smart person to explain it to you! Thanks
