VGN-NW270F - HSF failure?

All,

I have in my possession a customer's PC which shuts off randomly with no warning, obviously no BSOD/Minidump, etc. It does this also outside of Windows. Although I have not been able to definitively link it to this, heat seems to be the likely culprit. I also cannot hear any fan noise from the left-side vent under any circumstances, which leads me to believe that the HSF has failed.

Oddly enough, the temperature sensors do not seem to indicate anything alarming, and I'm not certain the shutdowns correspond with the crossing of any particular temp threshold. I see:

31C on the HDD
55C on "Temp1" and "Temp2" (this may be high?)
43C on Core 0 and Core 1

SpeedFan does not detect any installed system fans. Dust does not appear to be an issue.

Personally, I am not keen on taking this thing apart, as it does not look to be very sturdily-cased, and no service manuals for VAIOs are widely available, as usual. I know VAIOs historically have been a real pain in the #@!$ to disassemble/reassemble, so before I recommend she take it to Sony for repair, I'd like to get some idea that this is actually what's happening.

Does this sound like the likely part at fault here? And is there any place I can get some more accurate readings of fan speeds/temps? Sony's BIOS is an absolute joke as usual.

Thanks for any help,

Steve

 

Sure sounds to me like you are on the right track.

 

If you really don't hear the fan running at all even under load, this is surely the right thing to dig into deeper. If it is not the fan, the heat sink possibly became loose over time. Next thing on my troubleshooting list would be RAM and mainboard if reseating of heat sink and replacing/reconnecting fan unit do not help.