Cleaning your Desktop PC's Cabinet Fan

After almost 6 years of continuous PC usage I found that my PC cabinet fan had become very noisy. A PC technician told me to do little bit of oiling. I tried cleaning the fan blades superficially & applied some oil near its spindle. Unfortunately that did not work & the fan continued to be very noisy & would sometimes stop rotating. Though it was not a critical component for the PC to run, I still thought that I had a role to play for the fan to function properly (:-)

I then started looking out for options to dismantle the entire unit. Though it seemed difficult at first sight, but very soon I discovered how easy it was to dismantle the fan. I first disconnected the Power Supply running to the fan from the SMPS & brought the chasis outside. The first image on the top shows you the fan blades (one blade broken due to my experiment) & the outer chasis. On one side of the chasis you would find the fan manufacturers advertisement sticker stuck on it, along with the fan rating & other specifications. On carefully removing the sticker, you would find a small Black plastic disc (shown using a red arrow) at the centre. On removing the disc you can now see the fans' spindle held to the inner core & the chasis using a small white stopper (shown using red arrow). On carefully removing the stopper, the fan blades along with the outer core would easily come out from the other side of the chasis (shown in the next diagram).

You can now remove all the dust stuck in the joints & the spindle, clean the fan blades carefully & reinsert the spindly back to the chasis. Now fix the white stopper & apply some oil near the spindle area on both the sides. After the oiling is done cover the spindle area with the black disc & seal it once again using the manufactures sticker or any kind of adhesive tape.

You can now fix the fan back to the PC cabinet & enjoy noise free operation for the next couple of years. Isn't that very simple? Why don't you tryout & share your experience with me.

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