Fixing the fan on my noisy Lenovo s10e
I’ve written before about my trusty Lenovo s10e, which I’ve had for about a year now.
Recently though I’ve been loving my little netbook a lot less, as the fan was making such an atrocious noise that people on the other side of my office were complaining. Sadly this seems to be a common problem.
Today I decided to dive in and have a look, using the hardware maintenance manual as my guide. There was nothing obvious wrong with the heat sink and fan assembly (other than the pathetic jury rig of spacers and heat conductive plastic). I was however able to remove the fan itself from the rest of the assembly (after taking out 3 more little screws), and it turns out that it’s held together by magnetic force, making it a snap to detach the fan vanes from the motor mechanism.
After putting on a dab of high temperature CV grease (of the sort that I have for motorcycle maintenance) I put everything back together and we’re back to silent(ish) running. Hopefully I’ll have a few days of happy use before my s10-3t arrives and the s10e heads into the family hand-me-down hardware cascade.
Filed under: could_do_better, technology | 5 Comments
Tags: fan, fix, hack, lenovo, noisy, s10e
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Chris Swan's Weblog 
Hi,
I’m having the same problem with a Lenovo 3000 N200, but it seems the fan is not over but next to the heat sink and the processor. I suppose the heat sink gets cooled by the fan through some metal bars that transport the heat. Picture here:
http://felipebm.blogspot.com/2011/01/mi-ruidoso-lenovo-3000-n200.html
I’d manage to take off the fan and the noise was over. It seems it is the fan vibrations that hit on the laptop casing causing the noise.
My question will be: Shall I put the thermal grease as a cushion under the fan? can you think of other solution.
From the picture it looks like there’s a heat pipe from the processor leading to the fan assembly.
Heat sink compound should only be used between the processor and where the heat pipe mounts onto it.
Have you tried lubricating the fan (a tiny dab of CV grease or similar on its bearing?
I just made a test taking the fan out of the case while its still connected to the motherboard. After I turned on the laptop and the fan was resting at my hand, everything was very quiet. But once I placed the fan over a rigid surface, it started vibrating, thus making lot of noise.
Thanks for your answer! ;)