I've built a PC that I need to ship to my brother, but I don't trust the clips that are currently holding the fan on to stay in place. Nor do I trust my brother to check it and be able to reattach them if they do come loose.

So has anyone got any good and simple alternative methods of securing a 80 or 92mm fan to the Minja? I'm thinking of something involving elastic or zipties, as long as the heatsink won't cause those to melt! I'd like to make it fairly easy to remove the fan as well, as it will no doubt need replacing one day. It's in a Aerocool VS4 case and there's not a lot of room for fingers between the heatsink and top of the case either, so I need to bear that in mind.

I'd take a few rubber bans and cover the whole HSF with them to secure the fan in place for long distance transit.

I can see the logic in that but I think it would be too fiddly for my brother to remove the rubber bands when he receives it. I also want to find a simpler alternative to the clips for even when it's not in transit, as they're almost impossible to get in place with the motherboard in the case, so if they did come lose or the fan needed replacing, he'd be stuffed.

I did think of just ducting the rear exhaust fan to the heatsink and not having a fan on it, but as it uses onboard IGP I'd need to cut a hole in the bottom of the duct between the rear fan and the heatsink, which I imagine will severely impact on the CPU temperature.

If your brother can't remove some rubber bands he doesn't deserve the computer you're sending him

Maybe replace the HSF with the stock one, that won't be flying off during transit.

I'm not sure I could remove (or put on) the rubber bands with the motherboard in the case, there's not really any room between the heatsink and the top of the case.

I can't use the stock HSF as this is an HTPC and so needs to run quietly.

Anyone else got any thoughts on this?

The options I can think of are

a) secure the fan with zipties going around the heatsink

b) secure the fan with elastic (round/bungee type) going around the heatsink

c) remove the CPU fan and duct the heatsink to the rear fan (with a hole in the bottom of the duct to allow the fan to draw heat away from the motherboard/northbridge)

The concern I have with a) or b) is that the heatsink might heat the zipties/elastic too much and cause them to melt/break. The concern I have with c) is that having the (necessary) hole in the bottom of the duct might reduce the effectiveness of the heatsink cooling too much.

I wouldn't use rubber bands, they'll perish in a warm environment. Zipties should be OK though.

I've used thin wire (the plastic-coated variety you get from Maplin) a couple of times to secure fans to heatsinks.

Go this way: you may add some sort of rubber pads between fan and heatsink to prevent any rattle or hum (lately I'm using a Pattex Power Fix Brico soft tape to do that).

Cool, thanks. I hoped zipties would be OK as they're probably the easiest thing to use and I have a plentiful supply of them (I can never find the ones I've got when I need them, so end up buying some more!)

Thanks also for the tips re putting some padding under the zipties and using thin plastic coated wire instead of zipties. Both good ideas and neither would have occurred to me

In case the setup required you to use the push-pin set, make sure to check the push-pins post-shipping. When I moved, I transported my Minja rig by car, being extra careful not to give it any hard knocks. Despite this the top left push-pin popped and stripped itself, presumably during the car ride, becoming nearly useless.

Later I had the same thing happen to the replacement cooler, but that was due to a knock I gave the cooler while rummaging around in the case.

Thanks for the warning. Luckily it's an AMD mount using the clip, which is hard enough to remove when you actually want to, so I'm not concerned about that

I had a go with the zipties yesterday and I've run into some problems and the fan still moves up and down, so is likely to end up resting on the RAM which I don't want.

One problem is that the zipties that I've got that fit through the fan corner holes are too short to go between the fins (as I need to attach another one to the end), so I've had to go under the fins instead. I imagine if I had longer zipties and could go between the fins that would keep the bottom of the fan up enough and off the RAM. Putting them under allowed me to fit the second ziptie to the end of the first one before feeding it under and between the heatpipes but obviously I can't do this if going between the fins as the ziptie head won't fit, so I'd need zipties long enough to allow me to fit the second one after. I've realised I don't need the zipties to go through the furthest hole on the fan, only the nearest as I've done with the top holes but even then they're not going to be long enough. I've got some much longer ones which are too thick to fit through the fan holes but perhaps they make some longer ones that aren't too thick.

The other problem is that the top fan holes are somewhat above the heatsink, meaning the ziptie has to go up at an angle into them and therefore there's a lot of give in them to move down. I'm thinking perhaps if I can get a suitably sized strip/block of firm rubber to put under the zipties that will prevent that but I'm not sure where to get that from.

I probably only need to solve one or the other of these problems and hopefully that will be enough to keep the fan securely in place.