My laptop is one year old and I love it dearly. However, it started making noise and most of the time it comes from the fan. I have heard that the fan dust can be cleared by using a vacuum cleaner. But I never understood how it is exactly done. I am thinking of taking the laptop to a service center. Do you have any other ideas for cleaning the fan?
I haven't experienced this with my laptop, but I did with our desktop computer. To clean the fan, I just remove the case of the CPU and clean it using a small paint brush. You can also use a handy vacuum cleaner. Just make sure that you won't get it too close to the other parts of the CPU. Dust really accumulates in the fan. If it gets damaged, your computer might overheat. I don't know what to do when it comes to laptops though.
Same thing with a laptop but be even more careful, remember where each screw goes when you're unscrewing the back cover. Try not to touch anything you don't know and be delicate! otherwise you might end up breaking something
I'm not very smart when it comes to the insides of a laptop and computer. I've not had a fan problem With mine but I did have some other minor issues. I took it to my brother where he fixed the problem and for free. If I was to have a fan problem, I'd do the same thing.
All you need to do is remove the case and use condensed air on the fan and surrounding parts. It's safe for the entire interior. Don't use a paint brush or any kind of brush to remove the dust because you could easily damage parts of the computer that way, including the fan. If that doesn't help, then you might have to replace the fan, and finding a replacement usually isn't that hard or expensive. Then you just remove the old fan and pop the new one in.
I'd recommend troutski's route. Just take off the covering on your laptop and blow some condensed air. You can get some for a few dollars at a department store. It'd be much safer, and also a lot easier to do. There's practically no chance of it damaging anything, so, if you're not very familiar with the parts, it's best to take the safer course in managing your laptop.
In addition to blowing out the computer, have you started playing a new game, or starting streaming movies more that would put more stress on your processor? Because if so, the fan coming on really isn't an issue, it's just running faster to keep your computer cooler for extra processing speed needed. But if it's going crazy with just surfing the internet, then there might be another issue with the hard drive that you need to get checked out. But I would look at blowing the computer out before doing anything to drastic that'll cost a lot more money.
You have to blow the dust out, take your computer outside and blow it, and buy some dust filters next time, so you can prevent dust from entering inside your computer that might cause some other problems. Last resort is to buy a new fans but make sure the computer is dust free first.
Compressed air is definitely the proper first approach to dirty/noisy fans. Oftentimes as your laptop ages it will get a build up of dust around the internal components and they will start running a lot hotter, which the fan will attempt to compensate for. If you can properly clean it, you will get much more life out it. It's also possible, however, that the issue is a bad bearing in the fan, which would cause a lot more noise and it's fixable with compressed air.
AresBlade is right. The first thing you should try is compressed air. It works wonders. If you have no technical knowledge about laptops, it is best not to open it up and fiddle around the parts inside.
No need to go at the service center just yet, save your money, try blowing some air in the fan and see if it gives any results. Most of the time dust is the cause of noisy fans so using compressed air or vacuuming works wonders. Don't try to open it tho', a one year old laptop may be still in warranty. Hope you get it solved, noisy fans are quite annoying, especially at night.
If it's making too much noise then I'd just take it to a service center, especially if it's just one year old since it might still have some warranty left on it anyway. I think it's much better than tinkering with it on your own since you might just break something on it and end up causing even more damage and repair costs. I think the other comments here are also good, you might want to try and blow some dust off it first just in case it's that minor.
Unlike desktop computers, laptop for me is the hardest to open. This is why I need to leave it to the pros who regularly do it. I once tried opening an hp compaq laptop last year and resulted to adamage harddrive and lcd screen. Thr advantage of giving it to the pros is that you have the warranty they'd fix your issue.
Please take my experience in "what not to do" in this case. My HP laptop started making fan noise right in the middle of midterms last spring. First, I pretended not to hear it. Then, it got so loud other patrons in the library got distracted. So, I stopped working at the library, naturally! Eventually, it overheated with several incomplete papers I was working on inside. I did save earlier versions to a flash drive. I was lucky enough to find someone who resurrected my computer in their basement for $75. However, it's kind of a Pet Semetary situation where "what came back" is very different than the computer I had. I wish I had backed up all of my data and used a compressed air can.
My old laptop is now 8 years old and to tell you the truth that beast makes more noise than my car. For the most part it is the fans fault. It could be really dusty or some of the gears and other plastic stuff is getting to old to hold it firmly that's why it makes a rattling noise. But cleaning the fan isn't as simple as it sounds. It depends on the laptop. Some laptops you would have to completely take apart in order to get into the fan and you might need to replace the thermal gels. I suggest you take it to a service center, better pay to stay safe than sorry.
Unfortunately some computers are just poorly designed and prone to overheating. I've seen this issue many times with Dell and HP laptops and desktops in particular, but it also happens with home built systems as well. No amount of cleaning will ever completely stop the issue in those cases. In fact, if the computer is an entry level system that was perhaps upgraded during the initial purchasing, adding something like a dedicated graphics card, the problem can become even worse since the computer may not have been designed to be ventilate properly to begin with, and now you have this graphics card that will generate even more heat inside the system. I had two Dell systems die on me because of this, and in both of them I had opted for an upgrade to a dedicated graphics card during the checkout process. They were rather loud when I ran them for the first time, but the problem only got worse over time, and I had to wear headphones to hide the issue. Ultimately on both, a plume of smoke came out of my system and it just died. I even tried taking the second system apart and putting that cooling gel on the processor, as well as installing apps which would limit programs that were too much of a strain on my CPU to keep it cool, but nothing really helped. Don't waste too much money on cleaning products or replacement parts or service, I would put that all towards a new system personally, and back up all your important files now rather than later.
I'm kind of jealous, Ohiotom76. I never got smoke! Mine just made a groaning sound and threw up the "black screen of death." It is a cheap laptop, though. I'm still typing on it right now. They say you have to take it to an official HP repair station, but that's not entirely true. They'll just try to sell you a new one there.
Well, in the past, when I have had my computer's fan beginning to make noise, I have removed the screws from around the fan, cleaned and hoovered the inside of my computer out, because it gets full of dust after a while. After having cleaned it out, I make sure that I screw the screws around the fan in extra tight, and the noise then stops. I should mention that whenever the noise starts, it doesn't effect my computer's performance.
It's got to be dust. Since you're laptop is already one year old (fairly young to make noises in my opinion) it probably might have to go to service shop and have it checked out. Even though it's only just the fan it's going to be hard to clean since it's connected to the CPU and the heat sink so you might need to take the whole laptop apart, well at least a portion of it.
My laptop gets really heated too. But it never over heats - at least I don't think that it does. The fan sounds okay to me also. I dread to think of what it will sound like in another four years. The plastic groves where the fan is built into the laptop at the sides, are broken off. Some of them anyway. Luckily everything still works.
