[saxman]

My laptop is an HP Pavilion DV6-2173CL. It has had a bad fan for many months now. It's so bad, I rarely use this thing anymore because of how loud and obnoxious the fan has become (and because I'm afraid of my computer overheating unexpectedly). I have been searching a bit for a fan and found this:

http://www.laptopinv...2173CL/Fan/1215

I know nothing about fans. I've never had to replace one before. Does it matter what type of fan I get for my computer? Do only certain fans fit/work in it? Is the price and quality of that fan in the link a fair deal? Is there a better deal out there? Anyone who might be able to steer me in the right direction gets some cyber beer and pizza.

[Spanner]

Laptop fans aren't like desktop fans, you'll need the exact same fan for your laptop. If you think that's overpriced, give eBay a shot as used parts from scrapped laptops are pretty common, hell I've done it myself when my laptop was not worth repairing.

This post has been edited by Spanner: 27 April 2013 - 05:56 PM

[SeanieB]

First and foremost, that price is way too high. It'd be cheaper to call HP and order direct than that. (or surf Ebay)

The fan in the DV6 series is:

Quote

HP Part 579158-001 Fan/heat sink assembly for use only with computer models equipped with graphics subsystems with
discrete memory (includes replacement thermal material)

According to the HP repair manual (here) (page 4-40) you'll need to do a pretty deep dis-assembly, and you will need to have fresh thermal compound on hand.

You will need to buy the exact part number, and depending on the design the heatsink (it looks like it just screws in to me) and fan may be a unit. Searching by the part number should yield a lot better prices than by laptop model

For instance, here's just a fan. If you can retain the mountings to the heatsink, and get some thermal compound online to re-install the heatsink, you can simply replace the fan for $22, because I searched by part instead of machine model:

http://www.ebay.com/...w-/160873234348 (ships from China though)

Here's the entire assembly, sold from the US: http://www.ebay.com/...=item2c6e3179f9

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835100014 Simple thermal compound, most laptop heatsink assemblies are small pads on the top of each chip, a very little goes a long way here.

[Toasty]

I have the same laptop model (or very similar.) All I have to say is good luck, I'm interested to know the results because getting this thing apart is half the battle. I suggest Youtube to help you get it apart, I've taken mine apart only once to clean it and 100000 screws later I decided it wasn't worth it to totally disassemble it.

[SeanieB]

Toasty, on 27 April 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

I have the same laptop model (or very similar.) All I have to say is good luck, I'm interested to know the results because getting this thing apart is half the battle. I suggest Youtube to help you get it apart, I've taken mine apart only once to clean it and 100000 screws later I decided it wasn't worth it to totally disassemble it.

Art and Crafts stores will sell you jewelry or bead boxes that are great for organizing screws, every layer in a new box, I've even drawn rough schematics of where every screw goes on butcher paper and taped each screw to the paper. Laptops all have a metric ton of screws.

[gold lightning]

I'll just throw in my two cents and say that egg cartons can help with organizing screws as well if you don't have any of those jewelry cases SeanieB mentioned around.

[ashthedragon]

I have the same model, and the same problem. I've read that is the model who is faulty from the design, so changing the fan for another one exactly the same wont help at all. I've seen there some mods of putting a bigger fan...but I'm afraid of doing it since it would require cutting up the back case of the laptop, and add too that I've never ever opened up a laptop before so...yeah. here I am, hoping this thing doesn't melt in my hands today, every day.

[TmEE]

Getting that laptop open is a giant PITA, there's gonna be a handful of screws, bunch of flex cables and various bits of plastic.

Do what has been said here earlier : get the HP part number off it and use it to buy the fan. Don't go whole fan+heatpipes stuff, just the fan unless the other is a cheaper which is unlikely.

[saxman]

Thanks for all the input. I haven't gotten a fan yet. I figured before I bothered spending the money on one, I should at least make sure I can get my laptop apart and get the bad one out first. And WOW, it's hard! I spend a lot of time getting into it as far as I have. But everything is connected to everything else, so determining what order things need to be disassembled is the tricky part. To remove the layer that's covering the fan, I have to remove the back panel under the monitor which is screwed down, and I can't get to the screws without removing the monitor, and I can't seem to remove the monitor without first figuring out how to remove the cable that runs from it to the DE-15 VGA port...

I keep telling myself that doing this is worth it if I can get at least another year out of this laptop. But you people weren't joking when you said there would be a lot to remove!