How would you deal a chipset fan failure on a Sunday morning?

Last week (precisely 6th of June) SpeedFan reported an increased temperature reading on the mainboard sensor from my Windows box. It runs on a ASUS K8N4-E Deluxe mainboard which i bought almost 3 years ago because of the outstanding reviews. It has 2 SATA controllers, one from Silicon Image one from nVidia, which can connect up to 8 disk drives along with 2 IDE ports. All this along with nVidia 4 chipset, 2 IEEE 1394 ports, Gigabit LAN. All wrapped up: pretty neat.

Early January this year the IEEE 1394 controller crashed. Don’t know why, i’ve used it quite a few times last year (2-3) to transfer video data from a miniDV cam. So, suddenly, Winblows pops up to tell me a IEEE controller was found, and of course cannot find a suitable driver for it. Pitty. Couldn’t find time to investigate the problem given the fact i stopped playing around with miniDV stuff. Reason? Way too much time to spend on transcoding processes. So that was it. Disable IEEE controller and live happily ever after.

The board was in service after the 1st year because of the PCI-Express crash. Was it the video card that crashed the mainboard or the other way around i don’t know. So that’s her history. I call it Quimera. That’s spanish for Chimera.

So, hands-on-Sunday to see what’s wrong with the chipset fan. I must say that ASUS engineers found a very crappy solution for cooling down the chipset. A sort of an aluminum slot with a mini-fan on top. Clearly with ASUS branding all over it, disregarding the cooling principles that govern most of the heat sink manufacturing. This wouldn’t have been a bad thing if the chipset aimed a lower functional temperature. Another mainboard i got live 24h a day, EPOX 8K9A-I, beside the common fanless cooler, runs in a range of 36 degrees Celsius to 38 degrees Celsius on a regular basis.

Given the fact i had the Bios alarm on Chip fan warning, i didn’t bother too much. But any alarm can trick you…the fan was blocked (in fact upon inspection afterwards, was declared dead).
So here I am, Sunday, with no possibility to shop for a fan, chipset cooler or any available metal workshop around that would tailor a cooler i got laying around to suit the chipset. Home-tools from few of my friends i called, rendered useless.
I remembered reading this guy some time ago, on a short review, cooling down RAM with 1 cent coins… :). 1 cent coins are copper 100% (at least this is what i found) so finding a solution to glue them up to my aluminum bed would be a nice solution.
But since i live in Europe and none of my friends got spare cents from any of their US trips, i decided to give it a try using euro-cent coins i got around from shopping things around Europe.

I used a epoxy adhesive combined with sliver thermal paste, since the epoxy compounds from this product are not very suitable for heat transfer. I decided to use a 5 euro-cent coin at the base of the structure and progressively build up using 2 euro-cent and 1 euro-cent coins. The result: reported 42 degrees on the chipset. Touching it felt a bit more, so i placed a 12V 2000 RPM fan i found around directly on it.
Since this was designed as a temporary solution i had to start looking around for some proper heatsink solutions.

Some other problems:
The old thermal compound on the chipset was quite overburned and solid. So i had to find a solution to remove it easily. Since it was Sunday and no shop available to buy a specialized cleaning solution, I got my WD-40 spray can which i’m using to remove stains from quite a lot of things. So i gave it a try. Now i can submit a new use. Removes/Disolves overburned thermal compound. I was so satisfied with the results, consequently i decided to advertise them in a picture. Since WD-40 has some organic compounds such as a petrol derived components, the chipset was cleaned afterwards with an alcoholic based solution.

I scratched a bit the base of the aluminum slot before mounting it on the chipset with a new round of thermal silver compound. Contrary to what the physics says, I hoped this would ensure better heat transfer because of the enlarged surface of thermal contact between the compound and the chipset.

I finally managed to order the best buy chipset cooler, Zalman ZM-NB47J. With a bit of patience - i had to blueprint the mounting holes on the mainboard on a piece of paper before aligning the link assemblies of the cooler in order to perfectly match the motherboard design - i managed to get it up and going in 40 minutes. Having the fan oriented vertically left a bit of a space between it and the video card below. And of course exposed to a maximal airflow front-current from a 10 Volts, 120 mm case fan mounted upfront in the case which is cooling the hard-drives.

BIOS temperature readings were great after 15 minutes of test, no airflow in the case except the one generated from the PSU fan.

I also found this outstanding 1500 RPM fan, Arctic Cooling AF8L at the same guys (sorry, Romanian only),a brilliant collection of products mostly dedicated to pc-cooling & modding - www.pc-coolers.ro. I was more than satisfied regarding the price and the shipment. Great job guys.

Check out the difference between a 5 euros fan and a 3 euros fan. Which one will you buy next time?

Conclusions
In conclusion, there is no conclusion. I did a survey on some of the most recent ASUS mainboards. Think they’ve fired their chipset heatsink craftsman and hired a real engineer. Heatsinks do look ok now. Not like Zalman’s tho’.:)
Zalman manufactures some of the best products on the entry level of pc modding. But unfortunately I didn’t have anything to do with pc modding. I just wanted to save my mainboard :). And it seems i did. Being effective.