Lenovo IdeaPad S10: Annoying Fan Noise Fix and Heat Conduction Upgrade

Here's a repost of my message on the Lenovo.com board:

I would like to thank Slash (on Lenovo.com board) so much for his messages on this thread: http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=IdeaPad_Netbook&message.id=1183#M1183

I decide today (February 28, 2009) to walk into a Lenovo Service Center inside a computer mall in downtown Bangkok because I cannot tolerate the constant grinding noise from my S10 anymore. I bought my S10 in late November 2008 and I started to hear some grinding noise in late December 2008.

I have been using the S10 as my primary computer both for work and for home. At work, this noise has embarrassed me many, many times. At home, I left the S10 with Vista in High Performance mode on overnight so that it can complete the maintenance tasks, e.g., HDD Defrag and Indexing, but the fan noise from high CPU temperature woke me up at 4:45 in the morning!

I learned from Slash's picture http://i41.tinypic.com/25alq3d.jpg that Lenovo chose to use cheap, thick silicone "heat conductor" between the CPU & Chipset to the aluminum (not copper) heat sink. As also suggested by Slash in #108, thick silicone material does more harm than good. It functions as an "insulator" or "heat collector" rather than a "heat conductor."

I also learned from many discussion threads online that many other netbooks, e.g., ASUS EeePC & MSI Wind, also suffer from the "Fan Grinding" noise as well; and that the most promising solution is to disassemble the fan and apply some sewing machine oil at its core, c.f. http://delicious.com/thitiv/ideapad_s10%20fan%20annoyance

I was fortunate enough that the Service Center wasn't crowded when I arrived and that I had a chance to talk to the technician. He seemed to know about the "sewing machine oil" trick so I was happy. I also bought the Arctic MX-2 high performance thermal grease at the computer mall (for approx US$11) and asked the technician to use it to replace the cheap silicone at the heat sink. The reason was that he had to remove the heat sink to access the fan anyway and some heat conductor must be applied back.

After two hours waiting for him to work on my S10, I had a chance to test. The grinding noise was 99% eliminated. I still hear very, very minor grinding noise at times when the fan worked at full speed but it was a lot better. The Arctic MX-2 does the trick! When there is a significant increase in CPU activity and the CPU temperature increase--from say 44C to 47C--the fan runs for only less than 15 seconds to bring the CPU temperature back from 47C to 44C. Heat transfer inside my S10 is significantly better and the fan runs less often now.

My S10 is super silent now and I am very, very happy!

In summary, here are what had been done to my S10:

1. Heat Sink and Fan Removed
2. Sewing Machine Oil applied to the core of the Fan (to fix the grinding noise and improve fan efficiency)
3. Cheap & Thick Silicone "Thermal Conductor" replaced by High Performance Thermal Grease (to improve efficiency of heat conduction)

FYI, I am also using the BIOS Version 56 posted the other day.

Technorati Tags: IdeaPad_S10, Fan, Annoyance, Solution