Had some hardware-related computer problems recently. In the course of troubleshooting, I realized that the little tiny fan on the Northbridge chipset of my Asus A8V-E Deluxe motherboard was not working. This wasn’t causing my issues, but I wanted to get it resolved.

I swiped this pic of the original fan from xbitlabs.com. They weren’t very impressed with the fan in their review of the board, they didn’t think it worked very well.

I contacted Asus, and they graciously sent me a replacement heatsink. Evidently they agreed with xbitlabs and changed the design of the board, replacing the fan with just a heatsink.

Here’s a picture of the new heatsink installed on my motherboard.

It was a pain to install. I had to completely remove the motherboard from the tower in order to bust the pins on the backside that were holding the original unit in place.