Northbridge cooling fan popped off!

[Chang10is]

I have an Epox EP-8KDA3J. It's a slightly different version ofthis one. Mine doesn't have the same chipset cooler with the spikes on it. Instead, it has a small, low-profile fan that was mounted onto the motherboard by 2 spring-loaded plastic pegs that anchored the fan into the motherboard. But I discovered last week that one of the pegs popped off, and I can't get it to stay on the northbridge. It's probably been running this way for weeks or months before I opened my case and found it this way. Anybody know how to get the peg to stay anchored?

It doesn't seem to have caused any problems yet, so should I just keep using my computer like everything is fine, or with this probably cause problems down the road? There is basically no cooling for the northbridge right now. I disconnected the chipset fan years ago because it was incredibly loud.

I don't think there is a sensor for the temperature on the northbridge. If there is, I don't know how to access it.

 

[Zap]

If you value the longetivity of the motherboard you should probably do something about it. At minimum rig it so that it stays. Start by cleaning it up and putting some fresh thermal compound on the chip, then remove the plastic pegs and use something else to make it stay. One thing to try is to use the small 4" cable/zip ties. Two per mounting hole should do it, by putting one through both heatsink and motherboard, and the second to secure the first. Finish by trimming the excess.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Look into getting an Evercool VC-RE (I think that's the one). It's a copper chipset/VGA cooling fan, I installed one on my Gigabyte i865 GME-RH-775 board. Also works well for NF4 chipset mobos.

link

 

[Chang10is]

Thanks for the tips. I'll try the cable/zip tie solution first. I might go to a cheap Zalman cooler from Newegg at some point, unless somebody has a better idea for a passive cooling solution.