Quick question for those who oiled their M11X fan!

Hey guys looking to oil my m11x fan to see if it gets rid of the grinding noise. And just wanted to know if i was applying it in the right area.

Is the yellow boxes the correct places? Only asking since the fans I've worked on usually have a small cover you pop off and apply it there, the fan of the m11 looks like 6 small bearings?

THANKS!

 

Wow no one?

 

The M11x isn't exactly the most disassembly friendly laptop out there, so I'd figure few people have actually taken theirs apart. The other issue is that since the fan is even more difficult to disassemble than the rest of the laptop, I'd wager even fewer people have taken that apart. With this in mind, it'll be difficult to tell you where to oil the fan if people aren't sure, in order to avoid the possibility of advising something that could damage your computer.

 

What you have pictured looks to be the mounting points for the stator in the motor portion of the fan. It doesn't rotate and oiling there will do nothing for you except possibly shorting the motor or causing it to run erratically. Usually these fans are on a ballbearing, so the noise you hear is most likely built up dust and dirt that has wormed its way under the plastic fan and is grinding between the fan and the motor mechanism. I would try to use compressed air to blow out the fan as best you can or replace it.

 

As long as you use the right kind of oil, you don't have to worry about where it goes... just get it on the bearing inside the casing...

 

Hmm thanks for the response. I am pretty sure the fan is damn clean as I cleaned it pretty good but I guess I can take a look again. As for replacing the fan, it's connected to the heat sink how easy is it to just replace the fan itself ( looks to be attached to some adhesive?) or would one just replace the whole heat sink assembly?

Thanks for the response, I'd like to be a bit more careful than that lol.But if nothing shows up I guess i'll try it out.


Heres a video for all to hear the severity of the grinding.

VIDEO0010.mp4 - YouTube (Might need to turn it up)

 

Nothing against saving a little money but you could just replace the fan. Here are some ebay auctions:

Brand New for Dell Alienware M11x Laptop Series CPU Cooling Fan | eBay
Brand New for Genuine Dell Alienware M11x Series CPU Cooling Fan Fast Shipping | eBay
New for Dell Alienware M11x Laptop CPU Cooling Fan 5M8N2 Fast Shipping | eBay

 

Do you know how easy it is to replace the fan? It seems to be some adhesive that keeps it glued down, I don't want to rip that off to find I can't reapply it and stuck with a fan that isn't properly seated.

 

Sorry, I don't know how easy it is to separate the fan from the heatsink but it should not be too difficult. Hopefully, some others can weigh in. Otherwise, there are complete heatsink and fan assemblies selling too, for not a lot.

 

A Dell engineer replaced my R3's fan/heatsink (it's a unit, Dell support kept referring to it as "the heatsink" when I was takling about the fan) due to overheating. It took him quite a long time and looked very involved - more than that I cannot say, I'm not techie enough.

Here's a guy with the same problem ... and here is the Alienware teardown vid which might help you

 

Your fan could appear clean, but it only takes an exceedingly small bit of dust or dirt in the fan to get that noise. This is what the stator looks like...



The inside of the fan assembly (the actual fan itself) is a ring magnet. The distance from the edge of the stator and the ring magnet is about .2 mm. So even a human hair can cause issues.

Replace the fan, will be the easiest in the long run.

 

I guess (just a guess based on my life's experience) is that you need to drill a little hole between those 4 yellow squares and put 1 drop of oil... if you see the bearing there of corse.