Hard-to-get Hardware: Old Lenovo Laptop Fan

Hi everyone!

So, this afternoon, I was playing around on my son's Win10 laptop, and the fan started making that rattling noise again. When I had cleaned the laptop up and reapplied the thermal paste a week or so ago, I had tried to clean out the CPU fan as best I could and the noise did go away for awhile, but came back with a vengeance today. I decided to take it apart again to get the part number so I could look for a replacement, and (long story short) I dropped the fan and one of the blades came right off. Obviously I am the clumsiest klutz of all the klutzes and I feel just awful about it, but hey, I was planning on replacing it anyways, so no harm, no foul, right? Right. (hahahaha - silly, silly me...)

I found the part on Lenovo's part supplier site (encompass), and with shipping/taxes, it came out to just under $100 CAD. Not cheap, but the laptop without its fan is just an expensive paperweight, so I hit the BUY button and grab my credit card. Now, when I found the part, it said the ETA was mid October. When I got the confirmation email, the ETA magically changed to the end of November, so I figured - to heck with this, I'm going to cancel and find the part somewhere else. And so I did - I cancelled the order.

So then, I started looking around for the original part online. It's a weird looking fan - it's actually welded onto the heatsink, with a removable plate that holds the fan itself - but I'm hopeful that there's something somewhere that matches. There isn't. I've checked all the online parts places here in Canada and some in the US, newegg, ebay, both amazons, and I even ventured into aliexpress for awhile till I got nervous, and now I'm here, hoping that somebody has a fresh new idea on where else I can look, or maybe some kind of mod using another fan - or something. This is what it looks like:



I guess, if all else fails, I can go back to the encompass site and re-place my order, but I'm hoping I don't have to. Reviews of encompass were absolutely scathing - one customer waited 8 months for a replacement part (and I'm not sure if he's still waiting) and many more complained of crazy long waits and poor customer service, so understandably, I would rather not.

Thanks for hearing me out, and for any advice you can give me.

Looks like that fan housing has some screws and maybe you could open it up and find a fan that would work.

Jim

You need your exact laptop make and model.

The fan is usuall only this part.



If your heat sink has not been damaged. There is no need to replace the whole assembly.