How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Cooling Processors quietly

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by doveman » Wed Mar 27, 2013 2:01 pm

The fan is attached to the HDT-D1284 with a rubber lug in each corner but I don't know how I'm meant to replace it if/when it becomes necessary.

I think I read somewhere that you just pull the fan off but I get a feeling this could just cause the rubber lugs to tear in half. Perhaps I need to squeeze each lug as they are spread wider than the holes, so squeezing them might allow me to lift each corner in turn and poke the lug through enough to do this for each corner in turn and then lift the fan off, although this will be tricky for the top two holes as it's hard to see those areas very well with the heatsink fitted.

Anyone got any experience doing this?

QUIET!
Posts: 238
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by QUIET! » Sat May 11, 2013 10:24 pm

The Gaia fan mounts similarly and I removed it by pulling the fan and two of the little lugs to one side, popping out the lugs and rotating the fan to the side to detach the other two.

The S1284 is probably similar but I haven't gotten my hands on one yet.

doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by doveman » Sat May 11, 2013 11:23 pm

Thanks, that probably makes more sense than just trying to pull it straight off, which is what I thought might be the right way (not that I tried).

I guess attaching a new fan would mean sliding two of the lugs onto the heatsink from the side and then stretching it over to slide the other two on the other side.

QUIET!
Posts: 238
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by QUIET! » Sun May 12, 2013 10:46 am

I found it easier to remove two of the rubber parts from one side of the fan frame, slide them between the fins, then slide the fan on sideways and pull the rubber parts through the holes in the fan frame to finish.

Hard to describe in words, I hope you know what I mean.

doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by doveman » Mon May 13, 2013 3:47 pm

Yeah, I can understand what you're saying. Makes sense, thanks I'll try that if/when I need to replace the fan.

QUIET!
Posts: 238
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by QUIET! » Fri May 17, 2013 5:08 pm

I just got my ACK-I5363 Crossbow bracket kit.

I will be installing my HDT S1284 CPU cooler later tonight.

Without my motherboard or heat sink, I can't check it for fit quite yet but the pieces of the kit seem to fit each other.

Fingers crossed, it looks like it will be an easy install.

QUIET!
Posts: 238
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by QUIET! » Fri May 17, 2013 10:38 pm

I was a little nervous about the fit after reading various reviews of the bracket kit. I was optimistic after I put the kit together without the cooler.

Now I know that the kit works perfectly and is pretty easy to install.

It took me maybe 10 minutes to go from a bare motherboard, a CPU, two sticks of ram, a CPU cooler and a bracket kit to a motherboard with CPU, ram and CPU cooler installed.

On the other hand, I am fairly handy and I did not follow the instructions.

The back brace/nut plate comes with some adhesive pads on both sides and three hole patterns. Since I am installing it on an LGA1155 motherboard, I'm using the LGA1156 hole pattern which should also be compatible with the LGA1150 of Haswell. The other hole patterns are for LGA1366 and LGA775 but those applications are pretty much obsolete. Any way, since the back brace has adhesive, I want to make sure it gets stuck down straight. To do that I used the four heat sink mounting screws to bolt it in position.

After the back brace was stuck to the back side of the motherboard, I removed the mounting screws.

Next is the simple task of screwing the two side brackets on to the CPU cooler with the small flat head screws. The brackets go on top of the CPU cooler base block with the screws going in through the bottom of the block.

Apply heat sink grease.

Now here is the second deviation in my installation. Take three of the mounting screws and install them in the side brackets without the springs (in the middle position for LGA1155). Now lower the heat sink and mounting screws over their holes until the screws can be threaded in. Get the screws "finger tight" and now the screws will guide the heat sink straight down on to the CPU IHS. Once its flat on the IHS, install the fourth mounting screw "finger tight" with its spring while pressing down on the heat sink to ensure that it does not tilt off the IHS. After the first spring is installed, while still maintaining downward pressure on the heat sink, remove the screw diagonally opposite the screw with the spring, add the spring and then install it "finger tight". You can now remove the downward pressure because the diagonal clamping should hold the heat sink flat. Now tighten the screws with springs a little at a time altrenating between the two screws until they bottom out on the motherboard.

You should now have two diagonal screws with springs holding down the heat sink and two screws without springs that are just holding things in place.

Now its time to add springs to the other two screws and you want to do it essentially the same way, finger tight at first, then altrenating sides until the screws bottom out.

Give it one last diagonal tightening (like the lug nuts of a wheel) to make sure all the screws are tightened a similar amount and you are done.

I must say the CPU cooler looks quite impressive with its four 8 mm direct contact heat pipes and 120 mm fan. The clamp seems quite sturdy and could be shimmed under the springs for additional pressure if needed. My low profile Samsung green ram has ample clearance below the heat sink and because I'm a slight cable routing freak I clocked the fan so that I could thread the fan cable under the CPU cooler mounting brackets and back to the CPU fan header with very little slack.

Speaking of fan cables, unlike my Gaia CPU cooler, the fan on this one has a nice braid cover to keep it neat and protected.

And that is the easy way to put a nice but ~obsolete CPU cooler from the bargain bin on to a modern cool running processor.

doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by doveman » Sat May 18, 2013 3:34 am

Nice writeup of your installation, thanks.

It took me rather longer than 10mins to install but I was rather nervous and triple-checking everything ;)

I actually got a bit annoyed with the adhesive backplate as I had to remove it when it turned out to be machined wrong and I was a bit uncomfortable with how it pulled on the motherboard when I was pulling it off but I don't think it's done any harm. Even if it had been machined properly, I may have stuck it on wonky or I may want to change the cooler one day so I think it would be better without the adhesive. Obviously that would make it a bit harder to fit as you need to hold it in place whilst putting a couple of the screws through on the other side but I managed that (when I was testing by putting it upside down, so the adhesive was away from the board) so it's not impossible (or if you have someone else who can hold it in place for you, even better).

I was a bit worried that the heatsink didn't seem to be sitting flat when I started fitting it but I think once I'd fully tightened it up, it was OK (temperatures look great anyway!) I was mounting on AMD, so it might be different for you but your tip about only fitting one spring at a time sounds useful.

QUIET!
Posts: 238
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by QUIET! » Sat May 18, 2013 7:03 am

I can understand the adhesive.

If you've seen the Gaia mounting bracket, that one uses some standoffs to attach it to the motherboard before the CPU cooler is installed. With nothing to hold the bracket in place installation might have been a job needing about 3.5 hands so I appreciated the adhesive.

Both styles have their positives and negatives, there is no way to increase the clamping pressure with Gaia but it works so?

And the one step I neglected to mention was when I checked the hole pattern against the board before exposing the adhesive tape.

Its a bummer that yours was defective but when they are right they work pretty well.

QUIET!
Posts: 238
Joined: Sat May 11, 2013 8:33 am

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by QUIET! » Sat May 18, 2013 7:18 am

Another thing: were you using the crossbow or crossbar?

Mine is the crossbow which is very similar to the original LGA775 mounting with the push-pins replaced with the spring and screw hardware, add a back plate and slightly changed hole spacing.

The crossbar version is quite different and a good idea but more mixed reviews and less availability pointed me to the crossbow which seems to work well so far.

doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by doveman » Sat May 18, 2013 8:23 am

Yeah, I used the Crossbar ACK-U01 as the Crossbow ACK ATI-775 is totally unavailable now (almost found one in Poland but it turned out they just hadn't updated their listings!)

doveman
Posts: 870
Joined: Mon Jan 29, 2007 10:30 am
Location: London

Re: How do I remove/re-attach fan to Xigmatek HDT-D1284?

Post by doveman » Sun Aug 25, 2013 5:02 am

Well I ended up just cutting the damn things off as I couldn't work out how to pull them off. It's not like they're re-usable anyway and I had to attach the fan with zipties to make it easier to replace if/when it does fail and my brother needs to do it by himself.

Shame they didn't use a simpler, re-usable attachment method in the first place though.

Now I've got to remove the heatsink to turn it round anyway, as I think the reason it's running 20c hotter than my TRUE did is because I've got the heatpipes at the top instead of the bottom!
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cooler ... 284_5.html

Post Reply