Repairing my Lenovo T450s's laptop fan - Written: 25 October 2022

The fan of my laptop has been making a very loud noise recently. How did I fix it?

Hello!

I have recently been having trouble with my lenovo thinkpad’s fan as it has been creating a loud grinding noise and stopping when trying to spin up. Here is the process I used to fix it in under 45 minutes (published here in case anyone else on the internet will find this helpful).

First, I removed the external battery of the laptop, making sure it was powered off first.

Then, I used a screwdriver (shown below) to unscrew all of the screws holding the back plate on. Some of these screws had come out after I unscrewed them however some of them are designed to stay attached to the back plate.

After that, I separated the back plate from the rest of the laptop by prying it away, moved it off to the side, and disconnected the internal battery connector from the board, as well as the fan assembly connector afterwards.

Now, the fan assembly and the rest of the board has been disconnected from power, making it safe to work on. At this point, I used a can of compressed air to clean the main dirt and dust away from the laptop, but my cleaning was not over yet! Next, I removed the four screws from the heatsink that is connected to the fan assembly using the same screwdriver as before.

Now, I could fully remove the fan assembly from the laptop.

Next, I used a different screwdriver (shown below) to remove the smaller screws on the underside of the fan assembly.

However, there still was one last catch before I could open the fan assembly. A small metal hook that is bent to hook onto a small plastic nub from the opposite side of the fan assembly. I had to bend it in order to open the fan assembly. When I attempted to bend the hook, it broke off. This is not much a problem as the hook is not necessary to keep the fan assembly intact, however I would recommend caution if you are doing this yourself.

After I had opened the fan assembly, be very careful with the copper sheet of metal, as it is still attached to the rest of the fan assembly and cannot be bent too much. While holding the copper sheet up, take out the fan from the fan assembly by pulling directly up on the fan, away from the plastic base it is on. Place the fan to the side.

Now, I could see the electromagnets used to turn the fan. I used a cotton bud to clean these coils, along with the rest of the inside (and outside) of the fan assembly.

After that, I washed the plastic fan in some water to get the dust out of the hard to reach spots in-between the fan blades. After letting it dry for about half an hour, I sprayed a tiny bit of WD-40 in the middle of the fan to allow it to spin smoothly.

Finally, I reassembled the laptop and when booting up, I pressed enter to interrupt the startup and used the lenovo diagnostics program to check the fan was working OK.

After servicing, the fan was extremely quiet and worked much better than before, no replacement parts necessary!