Cleaned a dusty laptop fan with a toothbrush and it actually ran slower

I figured less dust meant better airflow, but the motor must have been compensating for the drag. Has anyone else seen this with older Dell models?

3 comments

3 Comments

thea24620d ago

My old Thinkpad T60 did something similar after I blew the dust out with canned air. The fan started making this high pitched whine and the reported RPMs in the BIOS dropped by like 300. I ended up just replacing the whole fan assembly in the end.

sagesingh1mo ago

That's a weird one. Did you check if the fan blades themselves got knocked out of balance? A wobbly fan on those old spindle motors can cause a huge drop in speed.

fionas391mo ago

Yeah, a wobbly fan was my exact problem, and just tightening the blade mount fixed it.