Thinkpads Forum

Hello, my fan started to make noise recently. If i gently tap on it, then it becomes like a chainsaw most of the time.. I cleaned it and looked if there wasn't something in the way, but couldn't find.. Yet doing that will make this issue stops for a (very) little while. I thought maybe it's common & experienced people here may know some (easy!) way to fix it?

There could be a loose piece of plastic in there... What do you mean by "cleaning it?"
Did you disassemble the machine and take the heatsink / fan assembly out, or did you just blow air through it?

I did blow air, as much as i could, everywhere. I also checked cables & screws, none seemed loosened. About that chainsaw sound, it actually happens when the unit is lifted on its side. Once that happens, only way to "fix" it is either stop/restart the fan (with tpfancontrol), either sleep/reboot. Maybe that can help you guess what's wrong?

Really, the only way that I can think of to proceed is to replace the fan / heat sink assembly.
They go for about $30 or so on ebay. The first step would be to download the hardware
maintenance manual from the Lenovo support site, and give it a thorough read.
There are also some pretty detailed threads in this forum about how to do it.

It's an involved procedure, and you might as well replace the heat sink compound and
thermal pads (if any) at the same time. If, after reading about it, you don't feel up
to doing it, I'm sure that there are technicians in this group who will do it for you
for a reasonable fee.

By the way, what kind of temperatures are the CPU, GPU, and motherboard sensors reporting?

The temperature didn't change, just the noise. It's about 60C° without turbo and 50C° in lowest power mode.

It's about $30.. But there's shipping too! And it's not nothing, even "just $30".. So you think it's useless to try fixing?

EDIT: I removed kbd + palmrest this time, cleaned in every way i could, but still didn't fix the issue..

it sounds like the fan is going bad, you can try to clean it, try to disassemble the fan itself, and add fan grease, (Vaseline might work)

You can also try to buy the fan only without the heatsink module, which should cost less.

How do you mount fan only, it's just about few screws? Yeah grease, i thought about it. But WHERE do i put it..?

Not grease for the bearing! Use oil even engine oil in a pinch will do.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

try to find a fan like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-for-Lenovo- ... 33912b6d86
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-IBM-Origina ... 5d425f37c0
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-for-Lenovo- ... 33912b71d5

you can probably find a fan for less than $10 if you looked for older ebay listings...


you can try greasing the fan with some engine oil or vaseleine, but it depends on whether than fan is easy to open or not,

check this video at 9 minutes onwards:
https://youtu.be/xaVs_lm_gis?t=530

If it's only $18-$20 to buy a new fan (including shipping) then I'd just put in
the new fan rather than try to re-lubricate it. The hardest part of getting to
the heatsink/fan is removing the palmrest because of all of the screws
that you have to remove and replace.

The W520 is a very high-end machine. Lenovo changed the keyboard
after that generation of machine, and many consider the T420/T520/W520
to be the last generation of "real" thinkpads.

It's a major operation to get into the guts of a machine like that, but, IMHO,
well worth it. You might as well put in a new fan, and re-apply heat sink
grease while you are at it. I recommend MX-2.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6835186020

You may also need to replace some blue thermal pads which go between
the heat sink and some chips on the motherboard. I don't know if the W520
has them, but my W510 did. The material is cheap on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Blue-100mmx100m ... 1523853145

I used 1mm thick on my machine, but you can also get it in .5mm and 1.5mm thicknesses.

Be careful when you remove the heat sink, there may be some fiber or plastic
washers holding the screws to the heat sink, you don't want to lose them!
It's also a good idea to put penetrating oil on the heat sink screws and let it
work for 12-24 hours, you don't want to strip the screws!

But, first of all, download the HMM and read it! There you'll find all sorts of important
information, including FRUs for all of the parts that you'll need, and procedures
for removing and replacing them.

Go with Delta fan.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

What's delta fan? Anyways, i unmounted it, there was dust under but it's not the problem.. I put some oil, looks little better (buzzing is constant at least, not changing like 1-2-1-2..) until it goes to max speed.. By the way, it's the 04W1574 which is AFAIS the best fan for the W520 (which is -also- the most expensive on ebay), tell me if i'm wrong..

Get the good heatsink off the ebay, don't have to be exact same heatsink as yours just as long as you have GPU and CPU heatsink for W520 for reasonable price. Delta is a brand name that made fan assembly. But won't interchange on different W520 heatsink that has different fan manufacturers. Just saying that I find AVC fans little slightly questionable.

You DO still need to replace heatsink/fan assembly since the fan bearings is shot.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

Well well well.. Guess what? I decided to fully unmount and tried oil inside the wheel system. IT'S FIXED!!!!

As the video said "it's like brand new now". I knew it was fix-able. Why'd you all push me to spend money?

Just little issue, when i open screen now i hear a weird sound. Had that issue before, think it was screen screw..

But i un-tightened it and it's still making it.. Please help me recall which screw/thing is making this f**** noise!

Try this; see if you can see fan blades and the topside cover where heatpipes is soldered onto is bent and touching fan blades? If so, flex the cover upwards with small flat screwdriver against fan's opening edge.

Does anyone know if the W520 has any sensors that senses if the gpu is tigten down? I stripped a screw bad and I couldnt tight it back to how it was all I get is a black screen.

thinkpadcollection, could you show a picture of what you're talking about? Anyway i had to open it again and this apply A LOT of oil, now i barely hear anything wrong..

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad- ... SwI-BWIPPJ Part number FRU: 04W1576

Here's this fan heatsink, delta fan, keep in mind cannot swap different brands of fans between different heatsinks.

If you have paypal, easy to pay quickly.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection