Thinkpads Forum

Does anyone know if the fan assembly is covered by the warranty? Is the fan assembly a part that I can replace as a customer and not void my warranty?

I was looking at the fan assembly tonight trying to clean out some dust and I mangled one of those thermal pads that cover the GPU and northbridge. I've been underclocking my CPU as I'm afraid I'm going to fry something and I wanted to replace the thermal pads and hopefully not void my warranty.

Any help anyone can provide is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

From other thread around here where people has modified their fan assembly, I think I've seen it said that it would void the warranty. I'm not 100% sure though.

BTW... how in the world did you mangle the thermal pad without removing it to begin with?

hoplite wrote:Does anyone know if the fan assembly is covered by the warranty? Is the fan assembly a part that I can replace as a customer and not void my warranty?.....snip

1. Yes.

2. It depends, if you call IBM and persuade a tech on sending you the fan assembly (which IBM rarely does) and install it successfully on your own then no harm is done, on the other hand if you buy a part somewhere from online and install it yourself and lets say your machine experiences some serious problem in the future and you send it like that to the repair services then IBM deserves the right to refuse you in providing any warranty services.

Consider looking at my post in the following thread to determine the components you as a customer shouldn't replace:

Will installing RAM by meself void the warranty?.

Thanks for the information guys. I checked out your thread ryengineer. My fan still works I wonder if I can persuade them to just send me the thermal pads. We'll see tomorrow.

@acasto I mangled the thermal pad primarily because I am stupid. I took the entire fan assembly out and saw the thermal pads and then my curiosity/stupidity got the best of me, "hmmm i wonder if i can take this stuff off and....."

You can get it exchanged at a local IBM authorized repair center under warranty too, another option is to send it out to EasyServ.