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laptop fan broken

Sureshot324

Diamond Member
I just got a laptop from ebay and noticed that the exhast fan is broken. Is this likely to cause stability problems or even damage some componts of the laptop? Is it possible to replace the fan and if so how much would it cost?

The laptop is a dell latitude with a p3 500 and 128mb ram.
 
On a P3 you shouldn't have too big of an issue burning anything. However, if you were to say do some CPU intensive stuff like play games for long periods of time I might be worried about some damage, or more likely freezing/crashing the system.

As far as fixing it, not very likely you can always check ebay and see if somebody is selling parts from your laptops (or better yet the cooling system). You might be able to improvise a fan of the same size but that would be pretty hard to find a fan small enough. However if you do that your going to likely have to do your own rewiring for the fan since they usually use propriety connectors.
 
Dell sells replacement fans through their spare parts division. For my laptop, an Inspiron 8200, they are about 15 bucks plus shipping. I would guess they'd be about the same for yours.
 
Are you sure its broke? I ask because I had a Laptop that I also thought the fan was broke. However turns out, it would detect the heat and when it gt to a certain temp then the fan would kick on. You might try running a game or something intense to see if it will kick on. Just a thought.
 
Yes, all the Latitudes do the "fan turns on with heat" thing. I would try that first, but do some serious benchmarking! My 733Mhz Latitude takes about 10-1 5 of games minutes before the fan kicks on.
 
PIII's and P4's have thermal protection on them. They will either throttle back clock speed or just crash the application. No worries about overheating while benchmarking to get the fan to kick in if it is really not broke. If it is, I would try to get a repalcement from DELL themselves.
 
Ok, i feel better now 🙂 This laptop is only for web browsing and office stuff so i guess i have nothing to worry about. Unfortunately the battery seems to be dead, but i guess i can't expect a good battery when buying a laptop this old. Thanks everyone for your replies.
 
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