Cleaning Dust From x220 fan

[iceblitzed]

Hello fellow posters:

I've noticed that there is a whiny sound from the cpu for several months now ever since I got this laptop refurbished online. I've read into the problem and I've read several solutions

• Spray the vents with compressed air without opening laptop
  Open the laptop and spray on the fan holding the can air of vertically
  Open the laptop and clean the fan with a brush.

I'm afraid either static or moisture will harm the laptop

I opened the laptop today and noticed there were dust buildups in the wings of the fan but I didn't do anything (It was just an inspection for now I suppose).



This is a snapshot of some other x220 (not mine). In the upper left corner there is the cpu fan. I can access it by removing the palmrest and keyboard. I'm trying to find a way not to remove the heatsink/fan so I don't dig too dip into the laptop

What should I do to fix this dust problem?

[brchan]

The best way would be to remove the fan and use compressed air to blow out the dust. However, you can usually do this safely without removing the fan. Just make sure that you hold the can as vertical as possible to avoid blowing out moisture, and you should remove the keyboard and blow air in from there (not blowing into the vent from the outside). Also, make sure you hold down the fan with a finger to prevent the fan from spinning up very fast and damaging it.