Bad fan on p170em?

Hey Clevo Crew,

I think I have a pretty straight forward problem here, wanted to run it by fellow geeks in case there's anything else I can do. One of my fans is making noise. It's coming from the fan on the left, under the wasd keys, so I beleive it is the CPU fan. It sounds like it is making a noise with each revolution, like something is rubbing/hitting. To me, it sounds like the bearing is going bad. I've noticed that the sound will goaway for a second if I lift and tilt the laptop a little, which again leads me to believe it is the center bearing of the fan that is going bad. The sound is most apparant at start up/first few minutes of use, and goes away once I start gaming and the fan speeds up. It's been doing this slightly for the past few weeks, and has gotten louder/worse in the past few days. I already took off the back cover and sprayed the fan/heatsink area with compressed air. Some dust did come out, but nothing huge, and I doubt anything is stuck in there. I've already contacted my reseller and looks like I will get a RMA on Monday. Anyone know if there's anything else I should try or check for before replacing the fan. Also, I was going to replace it on my own. Seems like it should be pretty simple. Anyone know if I will be able to just replace the fan, or if this is one of those situations where the fan/heatsink will be replaced as a combo and I will have to repaste the CPU? One last thing, kinda of worries me that I'm already having this problem. The laptop isn't even 6 months old yet and I take good care of it. I've already had to replace the keyboard once (and it still isn't 100% better, I still have intermittent issues with the tab button), now I'm replacing a fan, and I will most likely have to replace one of my speakers soon because it sounds blown out (slight rattling sound), and finally the plastic piece that surrounds the screen gets damaged from rubbing during transportation when the laptop is closed (others have posted about this same problem). I'm starting to wish I had opted for something more than the standard 1 year warranty

 

If it's under warranty, better insist on them shipping you a new fan. IMHO, it's not worth the risk of shipping the whole laptop around for because of a bad fan.

If you want to save your self some time and hassle, you can try to lube the sleeve bearing with a little graphite powder and a little 3-in-1 oil. Better get used to the process as even with a new POS fan, you will likely run into the same problem sooner or later:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/672623-laptop-fan-issue.html#post8646221

 

I had a similar issue with an old desktop AGP graphics card. The fan would make a horrendous noise the majority of the time. I disconnected the fan from the card, and applied a small amount of WD 40, and it worked... for awhile. If you're getting a RMA, I would recommend letting them take care of it - despite the inconvenience to you. If you open it up yourself; goodbye warranty. There's no guarantee that they will ship you a new fan anyway (you can press them for it, but they will also probably recommend that you send it in, just to be safe).

 

I've got absolutely the same issue, appeared a week ago (bought the laptop less than a month ago)

I was wondering if someone knows what the part number is, I can just buy the fan and be done with it (replacing the thing should be pretty straightforward), I really don't want to RMA the laptop for just a faulty fan...

 

Why would opening the laptop and taking out a fan void the warrenty?? I thought one of the main reasons for buying a clevo (over a similar product like alienware) was not only price but the option to open and take apart your laptop without voiding any warranty, providing you don't do something stupid.. My reseller let me take out my graphics card and send it back for testing, I don't see why they wouldn't let you do the same for a fan?

OP you should definitely ask your reseller what they can do. Tell them it would be a pain to send the fan to them and not be able to use your laptop. Maybe they would trust you enough to send back your faulty fan once you received the new one? It's simple enough to replace the fans anyway.. only a few screws (atleast on the HM series it is, im sure the EM series are very similar).

 

Fan part numbers are not quite as widely publicized as - say, a LCD screen or keyboard - but you may be able to call the manufacturer/reseller and request one be sent to you. Or if you prefer to buy from a private/3rd party, then you can ask them for the part number of the fan, if applicable.

That's subjective to the reseller. In a lot of cases, they tack on that circumscription to cover their necks, because people are likely to do more harm than good.

Some are more lax than others about it.

 

Ah that makes sense haha. I didn't know that about the fan part numbers.

I always wondered, are the fans around 80mm?? What if someone purchased an aftermarket fan - like an awesome LED one and somehow managed to fit it inside the casing? If this could work OP could do it and save a lot of time

 

a similar thing happened to my 8170, gpu was overheating no matter how many times i cleaned and repasted, ordered a new heatsink and fan for the gpu (and extra fan for the cpu) from mythlogic. replaced my old ones and now working great.
cheaper than warranty and shipping my laptop (being in the Philippines to ship the laptop to the u.s. and back would probably cost me over 500usd lol)

 

I think laptop fans are usually around 40mm (some as small as 20mm!). Haha, an aftermarket LED fan would be a headache to install, but no doubt it would look awesome!

 

The bearing used in the CPU fan is a sleeve bearing. This is a plain bearing that contains no moving parts, unlike a ball bearing. How it functions is that the entire bearing is shaped like a hollow cylinder made of a sintered porous material, containing oil applied from the factory as a lubricant. The oil is absorbed by the porous material, and a little of it seeps out from the internal cylindrical surface made of the porous material to form an oil film that is microns thick.

The shaft of the plastic blades passes through this hollow cylinder, with the oil film sandwiched between the internal surface of the bearing and the shaft itself. No part of the shaft actually contacts the actual porous material of the bearing since it is encapsulated by the oil film at all times.

Overtime, the oil can dry up leading to an incomplete oil film, allowing the shaft to rub against the porous material at certain regions. If no remedy is taken, this will cause the material to prematurely erode due to the rubbing action, and the bearing cannot be salvaged.

Using WD40 will only exacerbate the issue. WD40 is mainly a water displacement chemical, not a lubricant. It stands for Water Displacement, 40th formula. The only time it provides lubricating properties like an oil is when it is still wet and fresh out of the can. Applying it into the bearing will displace the initial oil from the factory, leaving it dry as a bone over time.

Also, while there are anecdotes proving that graphite powder and 3-in-1 oil do work generally on fans, I can personally testify that it does not on our fans. I screwed up my 6990m fan that way. Logically, graphite powder no matter how fine is still a solid particle larger than your oil molecule. So it will not be fine enough to diffuse into the porous material. What it ends up doing is acting like a super fine sandpaper, slowly grinding away at the shaft and bearing material as the fan spins at thousands of RPM. Not good.

Grease is too thick as well, and will not allow the fan to spin with little resistance especially for the initial spoolup. I've tried the higher end synthetic ones like SuperLube grease and have to physically aid the fan to spin when it first starts up. Once spinning though it is fine.

The best way to salvage the fan is to use a high quality synthetic oil, like Break-free CLP, which is available from gun stores, or Tri-flow synthetic oil, available from most bicycle shops.1 or 2 drops go a long way, do not drown the fan in oil, it only ends up on other components once the excess is flung out.
3-in-1 oils are too viscous/thin and gets flung out/dry up too quickly.

Alternatively, Clevo sells the CPU fan directly. It is not cheap though, especially since it's a proprietary part. My 6990M replacement was around $40-50. You can frigging get a full size Noctua fan at that price.

 

Synopsis for OP: WD-40 = quick fix/temporal. Avoid. Grease or graphite powder + 3-in-1 oil = arguably useable, but should probably avoid.

Consensus: Use a high quality synthetic oil. Recommendations/Examples: Break-free CLP, Tri-flow, etc.

Thanks for the info, yhchoong! I'll keep this in mind as well.

 

You are very much welcome, thanks for the summary too

 

Hey NBR Crew,

Thanks for the replies. Some interesting info there from yhchoong, I did not know all of that about the bearing lubnrication. Thanks for all the feedback.
I got a replacement fan from my reseller/Sager and the problem is solved. Pretty easy install. Just remove the 4 screws for the large bottom back cover, remove the 3 screws that hold the CPU fan in place and it's power cable, swap out the fans, reconnect power, put screws back in and done. Took less than 5 minutes.