Can Krazy glue damage?

[mushi]

I glued a heatsink on to the back side ram of my video card and I was wondering if krazy glue can damage components? I'm guessing it can, (because almost anything can damage microelectronics) but i just wanted to know how possible it is to damage my video card. I know that the only way to find out is to try it out, but i'm going to wait till morning to let it dry. If anyone can answer me soon, please do. I don't want nightmares tonight. Thanks.

[Target]

I'd say its possible, but depends on how carefully you applied it and to what surfaces. Some glues contain acetone..... that substance can eat away at some sensitive components and plastics. Its doubtful that you have hurt yours, but getting it back off without damage might be another story.

I think that something like frag tape (thermal tape) might have been an easier, and less permanent solution, but there is no un-doing what is done.

Good luck.

[mushi]

Thanks a lot Target. I can finally sleep now. haha. I hope i don't have any gluey nightmares. Lets just hope, i'll post back in the morning. Oh and about that acetone thing.... thats starting to scare me. I used regular Krazy glue (the brand name) and to make things worse they didn't list the ingredients. Oh no. I'm not going to sleep after all...

[jbt]

Krazy glue is ethyl cyanoacrylate. I don't think it actually contains acetone. Acetone is the solvent which dissolves crazy glue. Also, if you applied sparingly, the glue should set up rather quickly. No need to wait overnight to dry.

I doubt the glue harmed anything. The damage will come if/when you peel the heat sink off.

[Richard_Cranium72]

Super Glue like you used contain cyanoacryalate esters, acetone is a solvent to take it off. Adhesives are something used in my trade daily. There are very few plastics that are disolved by this type glue. Mainly be careful during removal, usually it is brittle and will snap right off.. Test on a non-valuable subject first, DrVette

[Target]

Hey guys, thanks for the correction on the acetone thing.... (thats what I get for posting answers late at nite and having a poor first-hand knowledge of chemicals).

"ethyl cyanoacrylate".... <shew> say that three times fast <lol>.

[Axel]

I would point out one little thing here - the time to ask about the application of super glue is BEFORE it is applied http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

Moving on

I believe it would have been much better if you only applied a drop at two corners of the heat sink to attach it to the video card. I would have tried to put an extremely thin film of thermal paste between the sink and the chip between the drops of glue as a conductor. If you applied a lot of glue over the entire surface of the sink, you may actually have insulated the sink from the chip.

Also - as MOST of us don't keep bulk Acetone about the house, you can typically use unscented nail polish remover to loosen up the glue. I'd apply it with a q-tip if you absolutely have to. Use as little as possible and hold the board so any drops don't run down the rest of the board.

If you went to the trouble to put a sink on the video card, you might also take the trouble to put a CPU fan on the sink.

[Paul V]

Oh, come on, you can make acetone with just isopropol alcohol and a powerful oxidizing agent, how hard is that? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

And how much glue did you use? Hate to tell you this, but if you coated the surface with glue you probably will do more harm than good -- glues often conduct heat worse than air, so putting a layer of glue traps heat in. That's why there's thermal paste and thermal adhesives. I dunno about Krazy glue, but adding epoxy to a processor is a surefire way to make things worse.

[Richard_Cranium72]

Axel, that is "Non-Oily" fingernail polish remover for a fairly good acetone. It's main usage I've found is getting the glue off your fingers. I use superglue to adhere the temperature bulb of a outdoor/indoor thermometer to my heat sinks when trying to diagnose probs. I encase it in a short piece of clear tubing with foam in each end to prevent moving air from causing erratic readings. The therm. runs up to 130.2F on my P100 o/c to 120mhz with stock cooling, add a good fan and case fan, now 88F max. Then it snaps right off for use on another project. This is glue to metal....! Glue to plastic, bakelite, rubber, or phenolic board will have different results. The heat sink glued to the ram is probably permanent. No amount of acetone will penetrate a tight mechanical joint to disolve the adhesive... Man, so much drivel,, I think I need a bibb.. DrVette

[alien_from_io]

Speakin of using a fan on the video card, I've used the little pentium cpu fans on different hot spots on mobo's. They are $5-12.00, but I get them free usually(very used)and remove the tape off the back and put in a drop of oil.. On one application this stopped errors on a wimpy system running Win98. Alien

[RobRich]

What, you guys don't stock a 55 gallon drum of acetone at all time? Maybe I'm just the only KRAZY one around here! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

I usually recommend "frag" tape, but I found a decent solution for low stress areas. I uses a mixture of about 60% thermal paste and 40% clear nail polish. Just mix, apply, and let it setup for about an hour. It works decently well (esp. for installing minuture heatsinks where they won't be under stress).

[mushi]

WOW. I didn't expect so much feedback. Well it is another day. My video card seems to be fine. (i didn't remove the glue still on the ram, is that ok?) Well the story is..... i put a book on top of the video card to apply a little pressure on the heatsink. I went to sleep and around 4 AM, i woke up because of some outside noise and went to get some water. While walking back half-asleep, i kicked the book and the heatsink came flying off. GREAT, i said. Too tired to do anything, i just went back to sleep. Next morning, i cleaned off the thermal grease and everything seemed to be ok.

Well if anyone wanted to know how I even got into this mess.... i had an extra heatsink and one night i got a little too creative. haha. Thanks to all that replied.

[RobRich]

One can get caught up in the cooling frenzy really fast. I should know, I'm probably the only person here with an oversized 486 heatsink attached to a Creative Labs AWE64 sound card, because it thought it ran a little warm!

But without creativeness, we wouldn't have such cool things as water cooling, or slot fans, or hard drive heatsinks.