[njantman]

I've got a whiney fan that I belive is going to fail soon, it sits atop the heatsink on an AMD Athlon™64 X2 3600+ Dual-Core. It appears to have just four screws holding it atop the heatsink so I am trying to determine if it can be removed and replaced (seems simplier than sending the whole tower back for warranty repair).

Anyone have experience doing this? (AMD site offers no help in replacing just a CPU heatsink fan)

I cannot find just the fan for sale, only CPUs with or without the entire heatsink assembly. Are heatsink fans available as an individual item?

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I had the same scenario and I could not find a fan. I just got the whole heatsink assembly and some grease and replaced the whole thing.

[jaxisland]

I had the same scenario and I could not find a fan. I just got the whole heatsink assembly and some grease and replaced the whole thing.

[Neil Jones]

You can replace it with another fan but bear in mind that the existing fan has been selected for the amount of airflow it pushes out at a certain RPM speed.
If you replace the fan with another one that doesn't spin fast enough and/or doesn't fit and/or doesn't push enough air through, you run the risk of cooking the processor.

Its usually more convenient just to replace the entire heatsink and fan with an appropriate third-party solution which tend to be quieter than the retail-boxed fans.

[jaxisland]

which tend to be quieter than the retail-boxed fans.

I have noticed that

[njantman]

Woot! CyberPower is sending a repacement fan and I can just chuck the old one, screw out, screw in, one jumper. Nice.