What kind of tape do I need to tape cpu fan to heatsink in notebook?

Question

I'm cleaning up a notebook from dust and the cpu fan is usualy taped to the heatsink all around it.

This time half of the original tape was also covered with dust so I want to just replace it.

Can ordinary (office) tape be used for this?

hardwarecentral thread suggests an electrical tape is not a good choice.

I have found three kinds of tapes in house - office transparent, office like brown and doublesided. So I taped them to oven sheet pan so about 1cm² of each end is glued to the pan and the middle between them is bended up in the air and sticked them into an oven on ~ 85°C for 5 minutes and see no change on the tapes.

When advancing to 125°C I can see small shrinking on the middle part of the brown one, the glued ends seems to be ok as well as both remaining tapes.

So I'm gonna go with the ordinary transparent office tape.

Is the tape even neccessary there?

UPDATE: Why is the tape there in the first place? In this case I can see it serves to hold the cpufan directly to the heatsink as there is some wiggle space but I've seen other laptops where it wasn't needed for this.

Solution 1

Normal tapes are a bad idea because the heat from the CPU will melt the glue, making a sticky mess.

Use something like Kapton tape made for high-temperature environments. I have heard of people using high-temperature (hot-melt) glue as well.

Solution 2

Scotch tape (office clear) and masking tape (office brown) get brittle as they age. Heat causes them to dry out and age faster. Vibrations from the fan will disintegrate brittle tape. Bad idea.

In a pinch, I would use electrical tape. It is non-conductive, heat tolerant, and a bit stretchy. Those guys advising against it probably applied a single flat piece like office tape. Electrical tape is designed to be wrapped around itself, so do 2-3 full wraps. The glue does get soft but sticks very well to vinyl (the tape itself).

For a long term solution, get yourself a proper heat sink with clip-/screw-on fan.

Comments

[Jan Matějka]

it's for notebook as stated. I think it's standard practice to just tape the fan.

[Jan Matějka]

Can you support your claims about brittling and using electrical tape on heated material by some resources?