Vaio VPCZ13M9E/B very high fan noise, almost out of warranty makes me angry

Hello there, I have a Sony Vaio VPCZ13M9E/B that was bought on January, 2011, so the warranty which is 2 years is near to expire.

The problem is that when booting, or using nVidia dedicated graphics card the fan makes a lot of noise. It always made a minor noise (normal as Sony told my distributor) but those latest weeks increased in a way that is too much.

My concerns is that after receiving it from Sony technical's service, I will have to face the same issue some time after out of warranty, which only the fan costs about 120 euros.

Here are the fan high noise recordings (listen online)

VAIO VPC Z1 FAN NOISE (1) - VAIO - goear.com

VAIO VPC Z1 FAN NOISE (2) - VAIO - goear.com


The computer overall is very good, and the screen, but those kind of things make me very angry on a computer that cost 1800 dollars.

In case the same issue arises again, I am planning to buy a Macbook Pro (not retina) that a friend of mine has and says there are no such problems, and that Sony's tech service is very expensive.

 

Sounds pretty bad. I think someone was able to oil the fan (if you need to once you are out of warranty), but it's hard to do and perhaps half the people who remove the motherboard have killed their Vaio Z1.

 

Finally Sony replaced the fan and also performed a complete cleanup of the computer everything for free.

Superb tech support but thanks it was in warranty, because Sony's manpower is very expensive.

 

You do realize that most of the time the fan noise problems are due to dust being clogged between the fan and the heatsink correct? This happens to ALL computers, including Apple. I've owned many Dells and now currently a Macbook Air and they all have the same problem if you don't clean out the dust.

You're supposed to routinely blow out the dust between your heatsink and fan using a high pressure dust can sprayer every now and then. This is exactly like changing the air filters in your car. Eventually, the dust will inhibit air flow and the fan will have to work harder to perform the same task, thus destroying its life. You didn't need to waste time getting Sony to fix this when it could be done in less than 1 minute by yourself.

This hasn't anything to do with the quality or anything of a computer; this is just routine maintenance that you should do every now and then. Same thing with changing the oil in a car. You should have to do it no matter what brand of car you buy.

 

I understand what you mean. Who should really have to open the laptop to clean out dust when it's not really exactly user-friendly for the majority of people to do? right. But if you could learn to do it, and have atleast a fairly nimble pair of hands and a don't mind taking a bit of risk, it can certainly be opened and cleaned out. As a matter of fact, that particular VAIO Z model is very easy to open. Just unscrew everything from the bottom, excluding the 3 screws on the underside of the battery, then carefully lift the Top (keyboard part of gently), flip it gently and pop-out the keyboard ribbon then spray the dust out of the fan through it's blades. This is a better way to do it than blowing it from the exaust vent, thus simulating natural air flow and also getting the opportunity to spray out virtually the entire laptop from that vantage point.

Although, I dont find this laptop really benefits from spraying out that much. It could also be that the thermal pad has gone too dry untop of the CPU. i just replaced mine with some ArticCooling MX-2 and the temps dropped by 10c. That particular part was alot more work to do but it's possible but be Very careful.

 

It's not that easy to disassembly the Vaio Z, has a lot of screws and requires small ones.

Furthermore, it was not just dust, the fan has been physically replaced as stated in the invoice:

FAN UNIT (defective) -> replacement (1)

With cleaning the computer, I mean to all its internals and externals.