northbridge fan busted

[batchie]

my MSI K8N SLI Platinum board has been making some wierd noises over the past week and today it's stopped , checked the system over and its the northbridge fan thats stopped and no longer works..
i'm in the process of ordering a new board but proberly won't get it untill next week will it still be safe to run my pc without the fan or am i asking for trouble, also while i'm at it can i replace the fan with a normal heatsink so i can pass the board over to my son bearing in mind the graphics card stradles the thing..

 

[batchie]

thanks for the quick reply in the process of ording my lan party and while checking the coolers the only one that jumps out is the Vantec Iceberq CCB-A1C VGA & Chipset cooling kit (SY-000-VT)
will this fit ok seems like 2 push fit pins holding the old fan in and if the board passes over to my son then he will proberly only need the one gfx card installed.