is there an easy way to clean the fan

[juibre]

Hello as the title says I'm looking for an easy way to properly clean my laptop fan and not just blow compressed air in through the vents. My laptop is a HP Envy M6 model. I've been looking for how to do it and I've found plently of youtube videos but they're all full disassembly videos which seems way OTT. I cannot seem to find the HP manual for my specific laptop to see if there is an easier way.

So basically is there an easy way to access the fan? The videos I've seen include removing the motherboard, ram, wifi, hdd, bios battery, etc which I dont particularly want to do as I bet I'm 90% sure to pop the cpu or break a wire

[mdklassen]

> I've found plently of Youtube videos but they're all full disassembly videos which seems way over the top.

Unless those videos are an "April Fool's" spoof, those videos are extremely likely to be accurate.

You might not need to physically remove the fan from its mounting to clean it (Q-tips and/or compressed air).

Sorry, but what you see (on YouTube) is what you get.

[iomare]

Hi,

You mention the two ways to clean a fan. The first is to try to clean out the vents with compressed air when computer is off and cold. The only way to really clean the fan is to remove it and clean with canned air or soft brush. Many times a small carpet of dust will form where the fan blows out the air through the heatsink (radiator) which you can remov by removing the fan. You do not provide the exact model, but by looking at the general service manual for Envy M6 it seems like one of the easier models to remove and clean fan:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03694820                   (page 74)

Theh question is also why to you want to clean the fan? Is it making noise? Is the CPU overheating? If the fan is making noise your best bet is to replace it once you have opened computer.

Hope it helps,

David

[mdklassen]

>  which you can remove by removing the fan.

Note that there usually is a layer of "heat-paste" between the CPU and the bottom of the fan.

If you remove the fan, you interrupt that layer.

It is "best practises" to remove the old heat-paste from the CPU and the fan, and apply a new layer, before "buttoning-up" the new fan onto the old CPU.

[iomare]

> there usually is a layer of "heat-paste" between CPU and the bottom of the fan

In notebooks I have never come across heat paste being placed on the bottom of the fan. Thermal paste is between heat sink and CPU. Sometimes to remove the fan in notebooks, you have to remove the heatsink to get at some of the fan screws. In that case it is good practise to clean off old thermal paste and replace with new high quality paste. 

However in this case (as in nearly all newer notebooks) the heatsink from the cpu takes the heat through heat pipes to the side of notebook where the fan blows air through radiator and looking at service manual for this notebook it is quite easy to remove the fan, as one doesn't even need to remove motherboard or any other devices.

David

[juibre]

>Unless those videos are an "April Fool's" spoof, those videos are extremely likely to be accurate.

They are accurate, the problem is they do a full laptop disassembly while I'm just looking to yank out the fan as easy as possible. Doubt its too easy to put back together without breaking anything if I make it into 100 pieces.

>You do not provide the exact model, but by looking at the general service manual for Envy M6 it seems like one of the easier models to remove and clean fan:

Thanks for providing that link it looks easier than some of the things I have seen. I also didnt realise there was so many Envy-M6's, mine  is the HP Envy M6-1232sa. Sorry I'm not massively familiar with this, is that manual still applicable for that model?

>Theh question is also why to you want to clean the fan? Is it making noise? Is the CPU overheating? If the fan is making noise your best bet is to replace it once you have opened computer.

The laptops nearly 4 years old and never been cleaned out. During normal usage its fine only runs about 60-70 degrees. It seems most envy's run quite hot anyway but recently I had to start using a program thats pretty high intense and mines now going up to 90-95 degrees so i think a ventilation cleaning its a little overdue! This model is rated to go up to 105 so I'm getting close and dont want any damage but cannot afford any downtime either.

[juibre]

Before I start just wondering if that manual is correct for my model? Any video I have seen didnt look that easy but I'm not sure they were going straight for the fan and not sure of the Envy-M6 model they were working on.

Also anything special I should be careful of or watch out for? Or anything easy to break? Just trying to cover my bases before I do this. It was so so much easier on all my old laptops didnt have to go messing with so much.

[mdklassen]

> I'm not sure they were going straight for the fan.

Probably not -- I'm guessing that they were trying to be "thorough" in their documentation.

Well, you could try to omit some of the steps, e.g., removing the sticks of RAM, and removing the CD/DVD drive, and removing the disk-drive.  But, some steps may be "necessary", e.g., disconnecting the antenna-wire from the wireless card (so that the antenna-wire does not later "bind" against anything), or removing the battery (to access some screws hidden under it) or removing the disk-drive (again, to access screws).

All you can do is to go "forward-one-step-and-back-step-two" when you have skipped a "necessary" step, and then find that you cannot complete the next step until you "regress" and complete that "necessary" step.