the fan to my gfx card became dislodged when i was cleaning it....will i better off taking it to a pc repair shop or just try and attach it back on my own by applying another batch of thermal paste.
It should also have some screws holding it on. The PC repair shop will only do what you said, and apply more paste and then re-attach it. Better of doing it yourself, chances are most repair shops wont have even your card before, and then you never know what sort of job they will do. If you've ever fitted CPUs before then you wont have a problem.
yes, your right, it does have some plastic screws to go along with the paste.....before applying a new layer of paste, should i remove the residue of the previous layer?....if so, should i be extremely careful not to scratch the surface?...can you recommend a particular paste i should use? thx.
I use a credit card to wipe the paste off, followed by a piece of kitchen towel. Scratching the surface lightly will make no difference to the operation. although I wouldn't recommend using a knife or similar. I use Arctic Silver 5 paste, its expensive compared to some, but any paste should be okay.
The best solution is to use a chemical like Akasa TIM to remove the existing residue, then evenly spread out some Arctic Silver V then re-attach the heatsink, it will likely do a far better job than before.
Update: I have the paste and have cleaned the heatsink and cpu,but i'm a bit worried by the plastic screws that should fasten the fan to the card.......when i attach the card to the fan, it doesn't attach as well as i think it should......if i were to apply the paste and then attach through the screws, one of the screws will be loosely attached and thus the fan will be loosely attached.......am i worrying about nothing?
No you're not worrying about nothing Sounds like something is either worn or not quite lined up if its not fiting correctly. Make sure you wind the screws bit by bit on each side to get the heatsink to pull down equally on both sides.
If the screws are self-tapping then you may not get a 100% fit the second time around. Don't worry, as long as you're not able to pull the fan off with your hands, it isn't going to matter. The heatsink is what is important to be attached correctly.
my fan isn't attaching properly.....i plug both screws in but one of them doesn't remain solidly plugged in, and thus the heatsink doesn't remain in full contack with the gpu.....i'm going to take it to a repair shop and see what they can do for me....thx
Sounds exactly like what I said, the thread is worn. They don't use self tapping screws on video card fan assenblies. The board will have mounted threads, looks like somewhere along the line the screws have been over tightened or cross threaded.
P.S. Its not always a case of having to replace these fans, its often done as part of an upgrade especially when overclocking the card. Plus the add-on coolers tend to be a lot quieter than those supplied to start with.
Oh absolutely, I know someone who's done it, but I'm quite happy with what I have for now. The more I play with, the more seems to go wrong! Ironically, the problems are almost always unrelated.
