HP 6305 SFF fan upgrade

[AlanMar]

Hello: about 18 months ago I acquired a 2011-era "HP Compaq Pro 6305 Small Form Factor Business PC".

The machine has an AMD A10-5800B processor, 8 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard disk. It performs well.

However, I occasonally use it for "light gaming" - 2004's Half Life 2 recently, for example. When I do this, the system fan spins up alarmingly, and reported temperatures jump to well over 100 degrees Celcius (as reported by Piriform Speccy and HWMonitor).

The machine has a very strange APU cooling arrangement. The processor is fitted with a passive cooling aparatus, as in the picture at the end of this message, and a case fan with a plastic shroud that directs air toward the heatsink. It doesn't appear to be terribly effective.

Imagining that I could swap it out for something better, I purchased an "Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Plus". However, upon receipt, I've discovered that it doesn't come supplied with a mounting bracket, which is built-in to the stock cooler. Worse, a visual inspection suggests that the motherboard miight actually use some strange proprietary design that won't accept the cooling system that I've purchased (which is designed for the FM2 socket).

However, I don't know this to be true, and it's what I'm attempting to ascertain. Obviously I could discover this for certain by removing the existing heatsink, but since I need use of the machine in the meantime, I'd rather leave that as a last resort.

And so that is the reason for this thread. Is anyone able to tell me definitely whether the motherboard will accept a "standard" AMD FM2 compatible heatsink and fan? I've been looking at mounting brackets and I'm sceptical whether the dimensions will suit the motherboard in this machine (which I believe to have this product code: 703596-001). Thank you

[AlanMar]

Forgiven me for "bumping" this thread, I won't repeat the process.

I've tried very hard to find out any information about my original question online, but I haven't been able to discover anything that gets me any closer to an answer. I'd really be very grateful if anyone has any insight.

Thank you.

[TheN00bBuilder · Accepted solution]

I do not think that a standard FM2 cooler will work. What you can do, and I know it's not an elegant thing to do, but you can ziptie an 80MM fan to the cooler to get some air over it and prevent overheating. They just need to be extra-long zipties so they can reach around the cooler and get to the other side of the cooler, and you only need two.

[AlanMar]

Thank you - I suspected as much, but it's useful to get some confirmation.