Dell d620 Fan noise - revisited

Hi All,

I've been searching on the forums about d620 fan noise for a while now, but finally came to replacing the fan with a £7.50 part (P/N PD099) off ebay - I didnt really have to actually when I inspected the old one, but I thought after the hassle of taking the whole laptop apart, it would be sensible to use the new one anyway.

What actually happened was the laptop had been dropped and the thin plastic around the fan housing had bent in and touched the blades and made a horrible whining noise when the fan speeded up. If I bent apart the thin plastic housing it would have freed the blades, but just incase I discarded the old fan as I didnt want to have to open the laptop again.

Anyway, I followed the service manual and took apart pretty much everything, as you have to loosen the system board to get at the fan itself.

In the process you have to take off the cpu heatsink, and I also noticed that the old heat compound had deteriorated over time, and made the cpu run hot all the time. It is mandatory that you get some new thermal compound and scrape off the old, clean it with antistatic screen wipes, and make sure both surfaces are clean before applying a thin layer of grease.

After doing this, the laptop is healthy and quiet again, and temp is around 49-57c with minimum fan control, and 45c average on high speed min load.

C