Vaio SZ 4 series fan replacement and wifi + processor upgrade (Win7 + Ubuntu feedback)

I had replaced mobo on my dead SZ 4 series (don't ask why) and couldn't stop there since I was in the move thus consequently contemplated about possible upgrades. For now I settled for fan, WLAN card and CPU upgrade. If it works well, I might install SSD also.


1.Fan Modification

As you all proud SZ owners know, fan is very noisy on this machines so it made me think if there is any possible modification to reduce the noise. Since the BIOS is controlling it there is not much to do on the RPM part (in win at least, but more on that later) I settled for a fan and fan casing swap from SZ 4 to SZ 7 series.
In the photos you can see that fans, fan casings and heat-sinks are of different design. Besides design differences, voltage and the amperage are the same, 5V-300mA.
Only way was to install the fan and the casing of the SZ 7 heat-sink to my old one as one of the heat-sinks bolt bushings is off for a few millimeters.
There has to be some care exercised when prying off the fan casing, some heating was required from the aluminium side on three pins were casing is attached.
Not to be simple, the difference is also in the inlet hole. One on the SZ 7 heat-sink is bigger and off centre compared to SZ 4s. Had to do some filing there, to match it to the size of the new fan. Fan of SZ7 is not bigger, it is due to different design of the fan eye and its volutes.
I connected two heat-sinks together on two screw bushings that match to have them tight in order to do the filing.
This modification was to prevent possible uneven loading on the fan itself as the hole is off centre.
When done, casing was attached and fixed using Loctite.

There were some hiccups when starting SZ for the first time. I was rushing a bit to check if it is working (I really tried to do it slowly ) and computer would start and switch off instantly.
Detaching BIOS battery and all of the peripherals from the motherboard plus leaving it as is for five minutes did the trick. After, I booted up to win 7 login screen without peripherals, and repeated booting connecting one by one between boots. It's alive!




















2.WLAN upgrade

Upgraded from 3945bg to 5100bgn. Main reason was to avoid interferences with home appliances and better reception, besides the obvious speed bump. I went with 5100 as it has two connectors for antennas, 5300 and higher have three. LED screen has a very thin enclosure so a third antenna is an overkill.
Intel wi-fi driver package was installed previously for 3945 on win7 so driver for 5100 was installed automatically.


3.Processor upgrade

Upgraded from T5600 @1.83 to T7600 @2.33.
mPGA 479 socket.
Processors have one pin less then on the socket. I received ES sample, and it works well.










When compiling kernel in Linux, it will reach its maximum temperature soon and throttle itself to 1.87 GHz for protection every once in a while, though.






Windows 7 installed the driver for the upgraded processor on first boot as you can see from the screen shot.










4.Conclusion

SZ is running in this condition for ten days or so and I have to say it is doing fine.
Fan is quieter but still on high RPM as before in any x64 win (BIOS).
As for XP, it is working great, all the utilities are working good, you can slow down the fan with any of the S button you set for. X64 versions of 7 and probably Vista (haven't tried yet) do not have this kind of benefits, however.
Since XP is at the end of its lifecycle, that is of little comfort.

With Ubuntu and some resources to make work from, it becomes a machine that is enjoyable to work on. You could do it on different distro though, I believe it would work too.

You can look here to set the graphics card switching and some other good tips. Fingerprint reader is no-go on SZ 1-4 as Sony has decided to develop custom firmware for it preventing the reader to be associated to anything else but Sony's application, for now at least.
Here you can find nifty utility for setting your fan speed, making it more quiet, but it is really at your own risk. For me it is working fine. There are also some power saving scripts on his web page. I have tried this but using this fan seems fluctuating, I could think of not being quick enough to intercept BIOS, so I use the former as there is a bigger chance of damaging the fan on latter.
Using laptop-mode and PowerTop I can use up to 3 hrs on Stamina mode, though if my battery is not that old, I believe it could take more. Without any tweaking I could use it up to 1.5 hrs.



Disclaimer: Any of the above mentioned modifications are done on my computer with my risk!
I don't encourage anyone to do the same! This post serves as information only.

 

Quick question.

Where did you get the replacement fan from? My SZ fan is making weird clicking noise and I really want to replace it.

 

This may help;

http://e-techsiliconvalley.com/stor...&cPath=5_62_64_238_1712_2017&products_id=9676

 

I had it ordered from Sony repair shop. No warranty though since it is not for that model and not installed by them.

btw You say it is clicking sound coming from your fan? I can relate clicking to HDD but not for the fan. Fan would be vibrating noise if dirty and/or bearing failure.

On unrelated note: How is Corsair SSD working for you? I guess it is a significant change.

 

Do you have any info about the drivers you're running with Win 7 64? I'm thinking about throwing some more RAM in my SZ430N and upgrading from 32 bit to 64. That fan mod is ingenious! Mine just went out and I just replaced it with a used fan from another SZ4. I've been searching all over the interwebs and there doesn't seem to be too much info out there about upgrading SZ's, let alone SZ4's.

 

Sorry for the late reply and thanks for the compliments on the fan. It is still working On the intrerwebs search comment I have to say the same. That's why I did the post, so people would have some idea.

I had W7 x64 but since it is 4 series there are not much drivers available.
I had it tested on RC version, now I have W7 x86 Home Premium and everything is working great. I had upgraded HDD to Intel X-25M SSD (Continuous transfer speed is slower due SATA I interface but random R/W is same AFAIC) Works a treat.
Only thing you should not do is install original Vista Power management but 4.0 version instead.
Original one would drive system to a halt. At least it was for me.

Edit: You mentioned RAM upgrade so just to answer. If you are having 2GB and normal usage it shouldn't be a problem but anything bigger would be 2x2 GB (in order to work in dual channel) and due to 945 chipset only 3.2 GB would be registered. And it it is not so much of a speed rise. To give you an idea, now I am having 29% of RAM used, you make a number.
The biggest change for me is SSD but it is expensive.

 

Thank you very much for sharing the info about your fan mod. I have a sz3 and as you have mentioned its quite noisy. I use RMclock to undervolt the cpu quite a bit (still is stable though) and therefore the fan runs at a much lower rpm automatically and the noise isn't as severe as before.

I seriously need to ugprade the laptop to Win7. Still on xp.

 

I guess it is old as mine, some three years. I used it on XP and it was very snappy, without much noise. Since M$ dropped the support for XP it is not an option anymore.

As far as I know, there are two reasons why it could be loud. One could be due to sony drivers/utilities, also power management, where you can individually set fan behavior for each power scheme. If this is not functioning properly BIOS is taking great care to turn SZ into a blower. I might be wrong tho.
Other one is that cooling grill is clogged and heat sink compound is old. To rectify this, complete laptop must me disassembled in pieces. If you would only clean and replace the compound on the processor heat sink you would still have one on the intel chipset and one the nVidia GPU that is old, which in turn would effect on the fan speed irrelevant of how cool is the CPU.
As I mentioned, I have ES sample of 2.33 C2D and there is no reason for it to run cool at all since it is alpha/beta version but it is managing to be relatively quiet.

I cannot say if the fan has improved the situation here, I just liked the fan vanes on the SZ 5-7 better and since I had to replace mine I thought to give it a try.
I would rather say Arctic Silver and blowing out the dust that did the trick, but to disassemble SZ just to clean and replace compound properly it takes one day plus bucket of nerves, however it becomes a different machine afterward.

 

regarding the replacment of the thermal compound. Do I really need to take the laptop completely apart? I thought I could access the cooler from beneath without having to remove the keyboard. Ah never mind. I think I will give it a shot. I need to clean my keyboard anyway so I think I can do that all at once.

 

To reach GPU and chipset you have to completely disassemble the laptop.
It is very time consuming and nerve wrenching. Especially when assembling everything back together.
I don't encourage you to do it, quite contrary, if you are not sure give it to a professional, but if you are going to do it anyway, here are some tips that I found helpful:

Take great care for the bolts, that you know which one is going where. The ones on the palm rest, below the kbrd are different, then the one of the keyboard, from below, is of one size, one near the screen cable is different, and ones below the speaker mask are different than the main group.
Additionally, compound applied should be sized like half of the rice grain, then spread gently with the syringe tip. Excessive use will render cooling useless.
Do use good quality compound, not to repeat the job again
And try not to spread it everywhere, as silver one is conductive and can create more damage then good.
Do not use sharp tools for cleaning. Use Alcohol and cotton swabs to clean the surfaces of CPU, GPU and chipset.

And google for service manual.


Edit:Remembered few more.
Get old toothbrush, or cheap one and use it with alcohol to clean the grills of the heat sink. Do it after you've removed it from the computer and after you cleaned the greater part of dust that is collected on it. Like this you will clean the inner surfaces form micro-dust and make them smooth again.
Do not use vacuum cleaner anywhere near your laptop. It creates static electricity when dust is sucked.
One more, arguable by some, is that you can use touch of WD-40 (drop of ricinus/castor oil even better, used for sewing machines) to lubricate the bearing of the fan after you had it cleaned. Just a touch in the crack between the rotor and the stator. I know, this is nitpicking and counter argument could be that because of oil it could collect more dust, but I done it on several laptops till now and never had that problem and benefit is lubricated bearing.

Good luck.

 

Hi bourne, thanks for sharing with us the solution
Just one question: can you give us the number of the sz7 fan? Do you think i can find it without buying the whole heatsink?
I am just going crazy with this absolutely annoying noise of my SZ4 fan and i am wondering if send it to Sony to change it (and in the occasion, let them change my keyboard which is totally deformed and usb hub ports which are giving bad signal as they do not work always as USB 2.0) or do the work by myself

 

Sorry man, I don't have casing+fan No. available. I do have for the whole part, but I'll post it later if you are interested. I don't have the box available atm.

I have to stress the facts that it is a lot of work for something that is untested by sony and verbally interpreted by me. I shared it only for the info, to answer people's curiosity. I was curious so I guessed there are more people wondering the same.
It will not help you with the noise (well it will, temporarily, since it is new).
Good service will help with the noise and proper driver/utilities installation. And avoiding glass surfaces.

 

Happy New Year to everyone, your families and friends. May it be enjoyable, healthy and successful!

 

Great job and post. Can you please update the thread with part number and where to order fan info please? Thank you very much in advance!

 

Hi! I also have SZ4 and was wondering what is version 4.0 of power management and where can i download it? I googled it and saw only ver.3
I had installed Windows 7 prof. 32 bit, i did an upgrade.
At first everything seemed to be OK, all functions buttons worked, but i couldn't edit my power schemes anymore, and i got blue screen couple of times, also i thought that my laptop was noiser than on Vista, may be it was because of original vista power management?
I used Win 7 only for 5 days, than i went back to Vista... May be i should give another try?

 

bump!
I'm still looking for Win 7 compatable vaio power management for for my SZ4!

 

Check the link in my sig. The utilities and such listed are ones I have found compatible with Win7 X64.

Power management works on my SZ just fine.

 

Thanks!
Do you think that SZ7 power management is compatible with SZ4? I could be mistaken, but i think i remember reading somewhere that they aren't compatible since sz4 is non santa rosa platform or something... not sure though

Just to make sure, you're saying that in comparison to Vista battery life hasn't changed, fans don't run all time, and laptop don't get overheated?
If yes i will try.. ...

 

Sony only made one utility like over the last few years, they just update it. I use an SZ4 battery care on my 750. The platform may have changed, but it all goes through a bios compatibility layer.

 

Well, turns out you were right and thanks again!

I installed vpm from SZ7 and it works ok, fans are no louder and battery life is good too. BUT, there seems to be not 100 % compatibility, because when my battery power is low, 2-3 %, laptop automatically hibernates, then when i switch it back on, screen is really dim for some reason Even if i turn brightness to full, it's still way too dim? I can hardly see what's on it...
I have to reboot my SZ to bring normal brightness back.

BUT, if i hibernate it myself, and then switch it on, everything is ok?
So, screen is too dim only when automatic hibernation on low power activates..
May be you know what could cause this? It's a little annoying..


I see there are some few new items in my new power management, may be there is something that adjusts this brightness after hibernation...Will look now.

 

There likely isn't.
If this is in stamina mode though, be sure to disable the Intel power management in control panel (the Intel Icon). It causes all sorts of issues I have found.

There is a setting somewhere i think that lets you enable or disable or change when the laptop hibernates. Be careful, 2-3% is a good time for it to hibernate instead of standby. It saves your battery from going entirely dead, which is VERY hard on li-on batteries. 3-5 times and it usually kills them dead.

 

Just to make sure
There are 4 settings in intel power management utility (Intel (R) GMA driver for mobile)
It's in russian, raw translation says something like this:
1 maximum power saving
2 extended power saving
3 normal power saving
4 Power saving is off: maximum graphic performance is on
5 User defined power saving

I think it's 4? or is it 5? It's a bit confusing...

btw, i replaced battery lately, and was wondering if it's normal that it takes almost 5 hours for standart battery to get recharged? I think it's crazy long, especially considering it works only 3 hours and around 10-20 minutes.. In comparison, extended battery on my older IBM T42 (15') takes only 3 and a half hours to get charged, and it works 4 and 1/2 hours, may be a bit longer..

 

bourne tm, may I ask what kind of a hiccups you experienced with the processor upgrade as you mentioned? I have an SZ4 too and I tried to replace my original T7400 with U7700 (the ultra low voltage line) but the laptop stopped booting reliably afterwards. Sometimes it boots OK and everything runs smoothly but most of the time the system freezes right at the beginning, even before the initial BIOS screen with the Vaio logo is shown. The system thus becomes quite useless in general.

I tried to reflash the BIOS, but the update utility says I'm running the latest version and refuses to do anything.

Or does anyone else have any experience with replacing processor in a Sony Vaio? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

Charging takes longer than draining in almost every instance.


You want to disable power savings, number 4.

 

Thought i would add some extra info i gathered a while ago that might be useful to this thread.

If you looking for replacement fan there is two versions i found:

TOSHIBA MCF-519PAM05 (For SZ1-4 Models?)(SZ90-93)(Blue Label)(Napa Motherboard, MBX-147?)
TOSHIBA MCF-523PAM05 (For SZ5-7 Models?)(SZ94-96)(Red Label)(Part No. 178745811?) (Santa Rosa Motherboard, MBX-170?)

You can order off sony (about $80) or refurbished ones off ebay for about half the price.

Much easier to get correct model for your laptop since the heatsink/fan are custom built for those two model ranges. However if you wish to swap (up or down a model) as mentioned, be prepared to do some modification to the plastic and metal assmeblys in order for the fan to fit.

(I did reverse from orignal thread opener, replaced a faulty newer model SZ fan with a working older model sz fan)
The newer model SZ fan can also suffer from the clicking noise.

Below, Aqua colour circle are modification area needed (Cut/file down) due to CPU pipe heatsink fitting. Only the fan itself was swapped out (Heatsink is orignal one from my sz as it was semi-interchangable). Frankly it be easier to stick to replacing the fan with model intended for your sz.

Also, another idea, it might also be possible to switch to a newer SZ 7 motherboad (MBX-170) from a older SZ1-4 (MBX-147) but you will need the newer heatsink fan assembly and possibly guessing other fittings. (A ghosted XP image from a pre SZ1 laptop didn"t have any booting problems imaged to a SZ7)

MCF-519PAM05 modifed to fit on SZ7 heatsink (Left)

 

Bourne,

I just purchased a 5100 AGN Wifi card for my SZ, and can't get the cpu to recognize it. I'm getting a code 10, which appears to be either a dead card, or a compatibility issue. I have two SZ's and two cards, and both get the error, so I'm thinking its probably not bad cards. Do you have any info about the driver you're running with your Wifi module? Any info would be appreciated.

 

You probably have an HP or Lenovo locked card.

Supposedly there is a way to fix it, but I never researched it much and just bought an Intel branded card.

 

Hmm..The card I bought is labeled Model 512AN_MMW Intel Wifi Link 5100. Anyone know of a good site to verify compatibility? I'm having trouble finding info online.

 

That sounds like an open card (I could be wrong), but code 10 usually means a locked card.