T520 fan/heat assembly noise when laptop body is oriented vertically

When using my laptop in conjunction with an external keyboard/mouse/monitor (ie desktop mode) I recently tried to start sitting it upright like a book to save a bit of space on my desk.

It sits a little like this except the 'front' of the laptop is facing down, and the hinge (and the 9-cell battery) is facing upwards. (Also it doesn't cost me $300, thank goodness).

Almost immediately it started making a consistent clicking sound that was originating from somewhere in the fan/heatsink area (ie the corner of the laptop that has fan vents). I haven't been able to pinpoint it further than that. It sounds a little like a mouseclick and happens every few seconds, but is somewhat random (ie not like a regular beat).

I stopped orienting it vertically but am curious if anybody else has experienced this issue?

 

Sounds like some plastic flexing and getting hit by the fan blades. It's best not to seat a laptop like that anyway - some rely to some degree on gravity for keeping the heatsink assembly tightly over the board.

Orienting them vertically may cause the fan to run loud, shutdowns, or even permanent damage to the CPU or GPU. My DV9000 does that (even if there isn't anything obviously wrong about the heatsink assembly but i haven't studied it in detail). On the other hand, it has no problem with being placed bottom side up, go figure.

 

that's a bummer - I suspected it was probably against spec to run it upright, but from my quick googling I hadn't come across anything and just wanted to see what other peoples experiences were.

I was sort of hoping that thinkpads with their legendary toughness would have been able to handle something minor like a change in gravitation direction turns out they're only for deep space!

 

FWIW: I once picked up a T520, which was idling in Windows, to carry it into the adjacent room. For a moment I thought that made the pulsing fan noise stop. I experimented - holding it at different angles, gently rotating it, leaving it propped it up at many different angles for awhile, etc and all the while listening to it very carefully - but was unable to duplicate what I thought I heard and was also unable to produce anything in the way of a different or strange sound.

I wouldn't expect such common and gentle handling to put the unit outside of its operational range. If there were such a limitation it obviously should be spelled out in the unit's specifications (something that could be checked if you are interested).

Perhaps your fan can shift along its shaft and come into contact with something? Otherwise, whatever bent due to mere gravity must be flimsy and/or poorly secured. Is there a thin flexible cable in the immediate area of the fan?

 

It happens to my T400 occasionally. I think the fan uses magnetic bearings, and they don't align properly at an angle.

 

So what do you think makes such an infrequent (relative to RPM) and discrete click sound? Does the fan break free of a retaining magnetic field, briefly bounce against something, then get recaptured by a retaining magnetic field?

 

having now had an opportunity to open my laptop and look inside (due unrelated issue involving a cup of water), I reckon it's the fan just wobbling a bit and hitting the top of the keyboard bezel