Draw Backs of SuperGlue?

R

r_shortt

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 10, 2002
Messages
301
Hey all

Are there any downsides to using superglue to attach a heatsink to a chip? Besides troubles getting it off?

My friends motherboard is flaky at best. I'm sure its the powertransistors on the board since after I added some casefans it ran a little better but not much. Then I placed a 80mm fan over the transistors (are they transistors aren't they? well if they are not they get crazy hot) then computer then ran quite well while playing BF1942. Then crapped out on us again after an hour (which was 100% better then before). He going to upgrade soon but needs a fix till then.

Oh yeah I already replaced the powersupply with a kingwin 350 watt

Sys spects
Xp1900
Giga-byte GA-7VRX(2.0)
256 * 2 pc266
80gig Wd harddrive non SE
Radeon 8500le
52x cdrom drive
 
Giga-byte GA-7VRX

right there is the problem.

It might help to attach some small chunks of heatsink to (I call them mosfets).

I assume these are near the cpu socket mixed with some Caps, and those copper wire beasts.


If you do use the superglue, make sure you use a real small amount, and you might need a fan mounted near them again just to increase the effectiveness.
 
mosfets thats the word I was looking for :D

Is this board really that bad, Could you explain a little more?

I also plan to keep the fan over it. So just use a very small amount?
I think its time to go cut up an old heatsink
 
I would be warry of that Kingston 350w PSU. Make sure he gets an Antec or Fortron or other name brand PSU when he gets the new PC.

As for the Super Glue just make sure you dont get it all over your hands lol. I had the end break off a tube on me the other day and it spilled all over my hands and they hardened up like concrete. It took me all day useing gasoline to get it off :D .
 
i would rather use JB Weld than superglue. Supposedly JB Weld has "ok" thermal conductivity.
 
It's a KingWin powersuppy btw :D

lol I know what you mean about the super glue! I was testing it out a heatsink on a old computer with a freash bottle of glue I cut the tip off and I must have put some pressure on the bottle and it went all over my hand!! Felt like I had a few extra layers of skin :D
 
Superglue works great to close up deep cuts and you don't really feel like going to the hospital for stitches or anything. Just dump some on over the cut and it will seal it up really well. It comes in handy when a tool slips and you cut down into your finger and you are only about halfway through pulling the head off an Escort.

I haven't actually needed to use the superglue while working on a computer yet. Though I'm sure it's only a matter of time.
 
I personally would recommend just putting a little dab in the corners, and using some kind of thermal paste for the rest of the surface. I don't imagine super glue has the best thermal conductivity.
 
But when it is incredibly thin... and on a mosfet where it doesnt really matter anyways... Might work fine.
 
I have two different kinds of super glue infront of me now: Super thin bonds in 1-3 seconds and gap filling flue bonds in 5-15 seconds.

I am thinking super thin with no thermal compound, there chips are maybe at best 1/4inch square
 
Yea, I assume since he is looking for a quick fix, super glue is going to be the quickest thing.


Try it with just the heatsinks and see how it works.


The fan might not be necessary.



As far as the giga-byte board, its just the way some of them are. I know here at work, we use a lot of GA-7VTXH boards.

They have 3 caps that always blow on us right under the cpu. It is because the mosfets get so hot they make the caps get way to hot as well. So after about a year of baking in high temps they just blow up.

Similar thing with the GA-8SR533P throw a P4 2.8 533fsb in there, and the mosfets/caps bottom left of the cpu get scorching hot. Like as in I touched the top of a cap and it burnt off a layer of skin. Even toning the cpu down a lot lower didnt even help the temps.
 
Here is a misconception with thermal transfer: even if it is an insulator, when it is applied thin enough there is almost no negative side effects to using super glue as opposed to any other thermal grease. Think about it, putting a piece of paper between a stove and your hand is not going to prevent burns, but maybe a stack of the stuff will. Are you saying that the super glue will prevent all thermal transfer? No.
 
Well the three heatsinks are on now using the superthin superglue. Put a dab on the heatsink spread it out and shook off all the extra then put it on and BAM well its stuck there now :D

Time to wait an hour to let it cure. Then to power the thing up to see if it works first :) then to see if it works well :D

I'll keep you guys posted
 
Well 2.5 hours of playing BF1942 on it and so far so good. Man the heatsinks are sucking up the heat and are dumping it w00t I think this might have fixed it :D
I went from only minutes of uptime to an hour of uptime and now it keeps going :D
 
I've used super glue for heatsinks before, too. It seems to work fine. It also works REALLY good for cuts, as long as none of it gets in your blood stream, then you get kind of loopy. (lacrosse logic)
 
I would never use glue on anything that needed great thermal transfer...

common sense would tell you that glue isnt a good thermal conductor. The best would be artic silver apoxy and still that isnt as good as normal thermal paste even by a long shot..why waste the time applying a good heatsink with a crap compound, kinda defeating the purpose if you ask me
 
Originally posted by c00z
I would never use glue on anything that needed great thermal transfer...

common sense would tell you that glue isnt a good thermal conductor. The best would be artic silver apoxy and still that isnt as good as normal thermal paste even by a long shot..why waste the time applying a good heatsink with a crap compound, kinda defeating the purpose if you ask me
Click to expand...

First of all its not a "good" heat sink. It's part of an old pentium1 heatsink. Second of all, no one makes heatsinks (that I can find) that fit mosfets that are less then a 1/4 of an inch square.
killernoodle is right about thermal transfer.
Yes sivler apoxy would have been bust but I'm not going to spend 20 bucks on a quick fix that may or may not work. Since I was pretty sure that the board was going to be shot.

And now I had it running for 5 hours then went to bed (when I first got it it wouldn't run more hten 5 minutes). I woke up this morning and it was off and now it wont boot. So Now I'm sure the motherboard is fubared:mad:

Time to look for a new board. Any cheapish suggestions? I took a quick look and found a MSI KT4AV-L and a Asus A7V8X-X for pretty cheap.
 
Thats a bummer that it died on ya


At least you know that those mosfets getting to hot were the cause of all the trouble.
 
And I just noticed and I'm pretty sure it wasn't there before, the caps around them have domed up
this blows I didn't want to have to rebuild his computer
 
ahhhh

Your caps are toasted. If you touch them make sure to wash your hands. There is acid inside of them.

You could always order new caps and replace them, but I have a feeling that if the board keeps getting really hot there that they will always be blowing up again.

If you take the board out take a look at the other side and see if the pcb is discolored at all where the blown caps are. If the board is slightly discolored it might even be beyond repair.
 
Got Burn Motherboard?
At least it went out honorably playing BF1942. Damn the Axis they took this guy too soon he was only a year and a half old lol


fried.jpg


Talked to my friend looks like we are going to wait till he gets his tax return back then possibly go intel or just get a really good amd board

Thanks for everyones imput!!! :D
 
yeah superglue could of easy been a insulator, which i am suspecting. The microviods in superglue would be filled with air which is an insulator. In the future, use the super glue on the exterior and thermal paste on the interior. Meaning that the thermal paste will be in contact with the glue on the outside holding it on. Not the best contact but better than putting an insulator on there
 
I don't think in this case that the superglue had anything to do with this.

It was prolly the fact that the extra heat sinks on the mosfets let the computer run more then 10 minutes.

With the increased time and heat, it eventually just popped the caps while he was playing for 5 hours.

We see caps blow up and the brown pcb on the back all the time here at work. Usually if it doesnt burn the pcb we can replace the caps and send them back out.

There was one board where it got so hot that the mosfet actually just fell off because it burnt the pcb so much it bubbled it up and forced the mosfet right off. Needless to say, that went right in the trash. =p
 
i used Superglue to place a blue orb on a 5200 that didnt come with active cooling and although it decreased my OC by 5 mhz or so the card has been stable for 6 months now with no issue and the only thing between the GPU and the heatsink is Supaglue ;)
 
I'm with Dekar12 and killernoodle
The superglue did not act as an insolator (the heatsinks still got plenty hot) and allowed the computer to run 5 times longer then just a fan. I used superthin (thats what the bottle said) superglue it worked very well actually. It may not work with something not putting out that much heat ( see the 5200 blue orb example). If you use superglue to attach a heatsink to say a mosfet that get hot enough to burn your finger in under a second that thin layer of superglue may block some of the heat from reaching the heatsink but if something is putting out enough heat then it will just overcome the difference.

Read killernoodle's post about the paper and the stove thats the best example I can think of.

I think the morals of this story are:
#1 SuperGlue works to attach heatsinks
#2 Cooling mosfets is an effective way to get a board more stable
#3 Some boards cannot be made stable and go up in smoke :D

Maybe we should ask why motherboard manufactures seem to like attaching the mosfets to the motherboard as a way to cool them off. They could atleast put a tiny sink on them to cool them
 
Originally posted by r_shortt


I think the morals of this story are:
#1 SuperGlue works to attach heatsinks
#2 Cooling mosfets is an effective way to get a board more stable
#3 Some boards cannot be made stable and go up in smoke :D

Maybe we should ask why motherboard manufactures seem to like attaching the mosfets to the motherboard as a way to cool them off. They could atleast put a tiny sink on them to cool them
Click to expand...

Going from personal experience, some motherboard makers do. For example, the FIC AZ11EA I'm looking at right now has heatsinks attached to *some* of the MOSFET's. My Asus A7N8X doesn't have any. I think it has to do with two things: #1, the number of phases(essentially, as I understand it, more phases requires more MOSFET's, and basically can be compared with load balancing), #2, MOBO manufacturer preference in regards to failure rate vs typical application etc, #3, Expected current draw through the MOSFET's, and #4, other things inside the motherboard near the MOSFET's that might cause undue heat to them.
 
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