Franchu’s lair

Some weeks ago, my MacBook Pro started to make very loud and unpleasant noises and the microprocessor temperature was abnormally high. Playing a little bit with the controls in the smcFanControl application I was able to spot that the problem was the left fan that was making lots of noise and remembering me the noise that fans make when they are full of dust and the bearings cannot rotate smoothly.

The solution I used to prevent the laptop from overheating and avoid the disturbing noises, was to stop the left fan (down to 1000 rpm which is as slow as you can set the speed with the smcFanControl) and put the right fan up to 6000 rpm (which is the maximum speed that you can set the speed to) and managed to control the temperature. Nevertheless this is a far from optimal solution as forcing the right fan would make its lifespan shorter and in the long run the laptop would overheat as the fan fails to move enough air through the heat sink.

The only option then was to repair the laptop and for that there were two options: sending it to Apple for reparation which would imply remaining without the laptop for some days, or trying to buy the parts and do the reparation myself

After looking a little bit online, I found an online shop (ifixit.com) that would sell me the fans I needed and that provided some illustrated step by step instructions to carry the reparation. As the dollar is very weak against the Euro and as the reparation looked tricky, I decided to change both fans in order not to have to open the case again when the right fan would start to fail!

Well, I can just say that the parts arrived very fast (less than a week from the US to Spain), well packed and that today I managed to change them. It was quite easy to do, although you shouldn’t try to undertake the reparation if you don’t have the right screwdrivers as you will damage the heads of the screws and you will remain with an open case or if you already closed it and forced it, you will be locked out from opening the case again without destroying the screws.

While you are at it, clean all the dust that gets on the entry of the heat sink and that makes the efficiency of the fans to decrease as the airflow gets dramatically reduced. I think that next time that I will see the temperature rise abnormally and that forces me to increase the normal speed of the fans, I will open it for a cleaning; and that I will only change the fans if the bearings start to make weird noises.

Now I have again my MacBook Pro with the fans spinning at 1000 rpm, totally silent, and running very cool (55ºC as of now)

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