Do you have a laptop that’s been making a grinding noise? If so, don’t panic! It may just need a new fan. In this blog post, I’ll show you how to replace the fan on your laptop. So, if your laptop is making any strange noises, keep reading!
Dell laptop fan making grinding noise
We’re going to be using a dell laptop fan making a grinding noise as an example, but these instructions will be pretty universal.
First of all, you’ll need your tools. We’ll be using a small Philips head screwdriver, some fine tweezers and a can of compressed air.
The first thing we’re going to do is turn the laptop upside down and then remove the battery and any screws that may be on the bottom… <start removing screws> …we’ve removed all of the screws from the bottom now so we’re going to gently flip it back over…. And here’s what we have now:
Next up, we’re going to turn over our dell laptop again because I’m sure you didn’t even notice my attempt at distraction there. Now, as you can see in this picture I took right performing this step, there’s a little notch where you can grab hold of the front cover and pull it upwards to release it from the clips holding it in place. If you slide your fingernail under this notch, you’ll be able to lift up the front plastic panel.
Now we’ve got easy access to the palm rest, keyboard and disk drive. Before I do anything else though, I’m going to remove the cooling fan by unscrewing those 4 screws… <remove those four screws> …and then carefully disconnecting that black ribbon cable as shown here:
Now that we’ve removed our old, dead dell laptop fan – which is now useless – let’s put our new replacement dell laptop Fan in its place. This one’s a little different to the Dell fan that we’ve just removed because it’s got an additional black sticky out thingy.
This, my friends, is a heat sink and serves to cool down your laptop by transferring heat away from the CPU and into the air via this tiny fan. Unfortunately for us though, dust bunnies love nothing more than living in between our vital components. This is why you need to clean out your cooling fans every now and again through all of your laptop’s ventilation slots. If you don’t clean them regularly enough, you’ll end up with a hot laptop that will inevitably turn on its side and start making grinding noises like mine did!
So, before I do anything I’m going to pour some of this canned air into the cooling fan to clean out all of that dust. <add canned air>
I’m going to give it a good 10 seconds to work its magic, just gently moving the cooling fan so that it blows some of that canned air in between your laptop’s ventilation slots. Afterward though, I’m going to shut off the canned air and then use these fine tweezers to remove any dust bunnies that may have been shaken loose during cleaning. Remember, don’t touch any screws or other components on your motherboard with these tweezers! We only want them for picking up dust!
Now I’ve got all of the dust out of my dell laptop, let’s put our new replacement dell laptop fan in its place and screw it back into place. Remember, we want the heat sink to make good contact with the CPU to maximize cooling efficiency.
Now we’ve got our new replacement dell laptop fan in place, let’s reattach that black ribbon cable and tighten those screws back up again:
The last thing I’m going to do is put my battery pack back together. To do this, just follow these simple steps:
And there you have it! A nice clean laptop that doesn’t sound like a coffee grinder anymore! If you’re experiencing any strange grinding or whirring noises coming from your laptop, give this guide a try and hopefully you’ll be as successful as me Good luck 🙂
