UKC

Hey,

Right so I have a Lenovo N500, every so often the fan goes into overdrive and sounds like a moped on steroids. It hasn't done it now for a few months, thus I can't seem to work out what triggers it and what stops it.

I have googled, Only thing I can think of is cleaning it. I looked into how to do that but it never explains when you should do it. Any advise. Since writing this it has stopped. Doesn't seem to be logical.

In reply to The Green Giant:

Every time your laptop f*cks around like that tell UKC. If it works once...

In reply to Chambers:

Let us be honest, at least I don't sit on UKC commenting on every post just so I can get on to the top 40 weekly poster.

In answer to your round about way of trying to tell me I am wasting the members of UKCs time; let us think about how a forum works. People use them to gather information. It just so happens my request for information is unrelated to climbing, this however does not make my post any more or less relevant to the prime usage of a forum. If there were not posts like mine (and others which are non-climbing related) this forum would not be here today. Which would be a sad moment for you. You would have to go make snide comments to people face to face. No top40 out there mate. Just people who end up in A&E because they have limited or no actual social skills and have no idea what to say (if anything) and when.

I hope that you don't actually have anything information about the problem I am having with my laptop, because really that would actually make you look like even more than a dick.

If anyone actually has any information one why my laptop has these weird sessions of fan over use, hope you wouldn't mind enlightening me on the matter.

I'm a nice person really!

In reply to The Green Giant:


Is it perhaps the DVD drive rather than the fan?

Remind me of the old RAF squak:

(P) DME volume unbelievably loud

(S) Volume set to more believable level

In reply to The Green Giant:

I'm sure you are a nice person, really. Most people are.

Here's three facts. There's one of them I'm sorry about.

a) All of my sentences make sense.
b) Everything I write is meant to amuse, entertain or educate.
c) You've had a sense of humour bypass that means you have hair-trigger reactions.

The answer is, of course, c. Sorry about that!

In reply to Cobbler:

Cheers for your sensible answer Neil!

I'm 100% sure it's the fan though, I can squeeze laptop casing around it and it starts hitting it.

I have no idea what you mean by RAF or P and S!

In reply to The Green Giant:

My girlfriends laptop was doing the same thing. If it's an older laptop it might have just packed in. It could be intermittent at first and then just conk out one day.

Your theory could be correct and it could be clogged up and just need a clean.

Google your model and there will be a set of tear down instructions Do this and have a look for yourself. Actually I just spotted some for actually cleaning the fan.

Your fan is about 15 quid to replace. Also get some cooling paste if you choose to change it out.

Easy job this. Have fun.

In reply to Chambers:

Well to be honest, I'm here to ask help on fixing my laptop. Not to be fed terrible humour by someone who feeds off the attention of a crowd of people they don't know. Leave your humour to your own threads? Perhaps ones that may not mean the op has to fork out over £500 for a new laptop if they cant fix their present one. I hope my humour bypass doesn't deter people from wanting to answer this post with constructive answers.

In reply to The Green Giant:

P.S Let me know how you get on, if you get stuck let us know.

In reply to FreshSlate:

Yeah I just went to raid the shed for a screwdriver small enough! Can't really justify paying for a new laptop if it does pack in! Hope that won't be the case. It's so on and off which is weird. Seems to be connected to when its working hard, but then just does it out of the blue as well.

£15 to replace the fan is good. Will look into this thanks.

In reply to The Green Giant:

Here's a few links for some new fans. There are some used fans with the heat sink/assembly as well (though this should be okay) on ebay and the like. Not saying you have to replace it yet, just that if you do they are mildly harder to track down than I imagine they once were.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Laptop-CPU-Cooling-Fan-for-Lenovo-N...

http://www.ukeyboard.co.uk/lenovo3000n500laptopcpucoolingfan-p-3768.html


Yours looks dead easy. Had to take much more of the laptop apart to access the fan last time I did this.

http://support.lenovo.com/en_GB/product-and-parts/detail.page?&LegacyDo...

In reply to The Green Giant:

I once saw the heat sink inside my Dell laptop, which used to overheat regularly and go on strike to protect itself. I was shocked at the crudeness of it; a small tube of beaten coppper coiled around the chip and heading off to a simple radiator through which the fan blasted air. Cooling is essential and as the laptop ages the cooling fan and radiator will be getting progressively more clogged with dust and skin cells, reducing its efficiency and making it work harder.

You could try sucking hard at the vent with a vacuum and tapping the laptop to dislodge the dust.

In reply to The Green Giant:

Every now and then on my work PC, the processor fan sounds like a jet engine and the PC slows down. I uninstalled a program I'd downloaded that used a lot of processor power and the problem seemed to go away. Maybe your processor is being overloaded by a program or possibly a virus. Have you updated your anti-virus recently?

<caveat> I know sweet FA about computers but this was my recent experience.

In reply to The Green Giant:

I've been warned against using a vacuum cleaner due to static, but have had great success with a can of compressed air stuff used to blow all the dust out of the body of the laptop. It ran much quieter and cooler afterwards.

In reply to cuppatea:


No word of a lie but I saw a sticker on the base of an Advent in the workshop last week, it said the laptop gets hot if vents are blocked and the user should not use the computer on their lap!!!

Strip and replace the fan <ebay> use new paste and a new thermal pad on the GPU if its a dual heatsink <GPU & CPU>
Many CPU & GPU's have an internal thermometer and they crank up the fan speed if getting hot. A combination of degredation of the thermal paste and build up of dust often means the fan is running at full pelt most of the time and this wears them out.

In reply to The Green Giant:


Sound like the fan needs replacing. I work with a lot of equipment containing fans and this is typical dodgy fan behaviour. One minute they sound like they're vibrating themselves to pieces, then as you're trying to figure out which one it is it shuts up and hides from you.

For £15 its piece of mind, I'd also recommend replacing the thermal paste on the CPU heat sink (if you feel up to it) at the same time, there are plenty of you tube guides on how to do it.

In reply to The Green Giant:

I think there are two things this could be:

1) The fan is actually spinning up to high speed some of the time. The laptop monitors the CPU temperature, and adjusts fan speed to keep it cool. If this is the case you should be able to see the increased temperatures and fan speeds with a program like speedFan.
1a) If the extra fan noise is not too loud, and comes when you are doing something very processor or graphics intensive, that's normal.
1b) If the extra fan noise is not too loud, and comes on at low load, it could be dirt/fluff/dust blocking the cooling vents, remove with compressed air or potentially a hoover, but be careful about static.

2) The fan bearings are failing. The fan isn't running any faster, just noisier, possibly grumbling or clicking rather than whirring, and the fault is intermittent and seemingly random. In this case, the fan needs replacing.

It isn't a difficult task, Lenovos tend to be easy to work on and repair, and it's just a case of removing some screws and one cable connector. If you're used to poking about in electronics, or just careful and practical, you'll find it easy enough. Any decent repair shop could also do it if you aren't keen.
Tips:
- Unplug mains and remove battery first (obviously)
- Keep careful track of the screws (though there's only five for this)
- Avoid touching exposed circuit boards
- Take care with the cable connector - don't use too much force or you'll break the connector off the motherboard.
- You don't need thermal paste if you are only replacing the fan, you do if you start moving the big copper bits about.

In reply to The Green Giant:

Use a hoover or even better a can of air (Air Duster) to blast dust out from the vents. Failing that take it to a copmuter nerd like me!

In reply to David Staples:

*Computer* What a dumb ass!

In reply to The Green Giant:

Had a similar problem and it turned out to be a paper label peeling off and curling up to catch fan blades, ripped label off and cured noise problem.

In reply to The Green Giant:

We had to update the BIOS on our work computers to solve this. I think it was a known problem on a lot of Lenovo models.

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-70994