Cooling Fan vibrating against motherboard after cleaning heatsink and fans.... Help!

Took apart my HP Pavilion G7, lifted the board, disassembled the fan, cleaned all dust, wiped layer of soot off of copper heatpipes....

Now my computer is operating a whole 20ºC cooler.... Awesome!

Did this a week ago and now suddenly my cooling fan is causing vibration between itself and the motherboard, I guess that is what the double sided tape was for!

Determined this after popping it open and narrowing it down to the slack between the too due to the lack of double sided tape....

What can I use to fix this?

Was thinking applying some thermal compound?

Apparently the tiny piece of cardboard I jammed in there did reduce some of the noise but it's still there.

What type of solution can you all think of to either make the fan and the board stick and not vibrate or silence the thing?

Local solutions will beat out having to order some kind of special tape off the internet.... Help me out forum

 

The fan bearings may be nearing the end of their life, worsening the vibration somewhat. Judging by the twenty degree temperature drop, there was probably some dust keeping the fans from running at full speed, so that may have reduced the vibration before the cleaning as well.

See what a replacement runs on eBay maybe.

 

Thanks for the input, but it's definitely not the bearings. I think the fan is actually bearingless but I know its not the bearings because when I applied pressure on the case it stops the noise.

Also there was pretty strong tape holding the fan to the board that I had to peel the fan off to get it out and cleaned. Theres definately space and plenty of give without the tape sticking it to the board, that's whats making the noise, the fan enclosure vibrating against the board.

Next suggestion? I need help figuring out how to safely glue / stick the fan to the board...

 

.... did you try maybe..double sided tape?

 

Fan is out of balance. Clean it again paying particular attention to the blades and rotor hub. If it still vibrates, replace the whole fan.

 

What kind of double sided tape is good at handling the heat of a processor fan?

 

Is there a power cable that is kinked and hitting the fan blades?

I think you need to find the source of the fan vibration and fix it, rather than just put a bandaid over the symptom by slapping tape on it.

Normally, I'd say go for the tape. But if a fan is vibrating, it means something isn't right. And when that fan fails, it will not fail gracefully. It will be a pain in the butt to fix, and possibly take out a few laptop parts with it when it dies.