How hard is it going to be to open and clean out the fans/vents in the Z11-14?

i need to clean the fan vents i think... my temps went up over the 11 months i have the z13 for. is it beneficial to clean the z? or is it not going to make that much of a difference?

i dont even know if there's dust in there, because nothing is showing from what i can see, but im sure there must be a few dusty spots in there during the times, this laptop has almost 3000 power on hours always running in performance fan mode..

 

Given all the horror stories I've read about individuals breaking the vaio when they open it up (in particular, the various connectors), my advice would be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"!

 

It takes an expert to deal with the problem.
Laurie Anderson - Only An Expert (Live Letterman) 2010 - YouTube

 

Opening the Z1 isn't hard, if you are accustomed to that kind of thing. Be sure you have the correct screw driver sizes.

I made a simple disassembly walk through way back when: http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...pcz1-unboxing-photos-movie-9.html#post6009997

Make sure you remember where each screw goes, some are different lengths and you will deform your keyboard tray if you put a long screw in a short screw hole. (preemptive "that's what she said")

Printing a photo of the bottom where you can put each screw as you take it apart is highly recommended (second pic in the aforementioned post).

As for the cable, don't pull on it, pry it off horizontally. I've taken the Z1 apart easily 20 times, no problems what so ever.

On cleaning the fans, using compressed air is OK, but don't let the fan(s) spin. You can dork up the motor

 

Oh.. that is exctly what ineed zoinks!! thanks a mil.

 

easy 1 banana job

 

I would not recommend using a banana to clean the vents.

 

I opened it up and cleaned the fan blades. I couldn't find any other reachable places to clean, and it didn't help cooling that much. I ended up using my vacuum cleaner from the outside vents. That didn't require disassembly.

 

... especially not a non-vegetarian one.

LOL at your sig. Leave Justin ALOOOONE!

 

I think you mean Britney

 

Feedback from the clumsy class: the cable can be your downfall! Zoinks' video was very helpful to me, but by the time he did it he apparently had already "mastered" dealing with the cable that connects the keyboard to the chassis. Unless you are very familiar with how these things work, I suggest you look carefully at both pictures of the connector and, before you disconnect on your own, look carefully at the actual connection before you pull it apart, because you really need to know how it connects and locks in before you can reconnect it without much difficulty. It's a two-step process: 1) releasing the tiny piece that locks the connector in, 2) after doing the above, disconnecting. I found 1) to be easy to undo, but incredibly difficult (like, 10+ tries til success) to re-connect that piece that locks the connector down. One other thing: the length of the ribbon cable is not really long enough for you to easily visualize the connection while still connected, so plan to very carefully maneuver the keyboard piece and peek under it if you want to see the connector before you have disconnected it.

I may be the only person on earth so clumsy as to find this difficult, but if you are at all uneasy with working with tiny parts that do not fit together with ease, you would do well to know what you are working with before you jump in. Then again, since I just jumped in and fought with getting it back together, I can attest that you can figure it out on the back end, just with more frustration.

 

think im really going to have to do this now. this is the 8th time ive been working in 3ds max and all of a sudden the fan speeds on max speed for 2 seconds and the machine is off. and the funny thing about that is, while rendering on it (god forbid), it reaches 95c but doesn't turn off.

any such thing as a vaio Z cooling pad?....

 

Nothing from Sony, but any cooling pad should do.

Weird problem tho

 

Try the vacuum method. Also, get a small fan and aim that at the vents on the left. Improving the air circulation around the vent areas helps.

 

oops double-post...

 

Well i've finally opened it and reassembled her back. Didn't seem like that much of a task at all, primarly because all i did was remove the keyboard, to see the fan. Didn't remove anything or clean anything either. No real dust to speak of, and temps remain the same.
Alot of small rubber thermal pads in there though (attached to underside of keyboard). I think that could probably use some 3rd party mods to make them cool better...

 

It looks fairly dirty to me. Get some compressed air and blast it, being sure to get the copper heat exchangers. That much junk on the copper will affect its cooling efficiency.

Like I was saying earlier, don't let the fans spin when blasting them.

 

ps: I see that you overclocked your GPU. Might be a good idea to revert back to stock and see if that fixes your problem.

 

those fan blades do look dirty..... mine look like they did when new. Don't think it's enough to overheat to shutdown temps but it can't be helping :\

 

Alright, i'll clean em out. Didn't really look at it that good until I saw the oversized image when blown up.. then i was like , that's dust overhanging the fins.....

Thanks :0)

 

For future reference, you don't really have to disassemble any laptop to clean the dust out of the fan blades and heat sink. Every few months, just take a can of compressed air and blast it into the fan exhaust while the laptop is off. That'll get rid of most if not all the dust.

The only time I've had to take apart a laptop to clean the fan was a 4-year old laptop which had never been cleaned, and the dust was caked in there so thick that the compressed air trick wouldn't loosen it. (CPU temp went from 80 C at idle to 45 C after cleaning, to give you an idea how bad it was.)

 

^The #1 way to overspin your fan(s), causing damage to the motor. You could probably stick a paperclip in one of the holes to hold the fan stationary while blasting it.

I say this because I've borked multiple fans doing that very thing. The danger is real.