2009-04-19, 09:54 PM
My laptop's fan didn't break, but it got so dirty that it wasn't working well, and the computer was overheating. My laptop is out of warranty.
After researching my computer's manual and a lot of DIY sites, I decided to send it to the shop. It'll depend on your model, but in mine, the fan was just about the hardest thing to get to. You had to remove almost everything except the HDD, IIRC, including the motherboard. I wasn't going to risk it.
I got some RAM put in at the same time and the whole thing cost about $150, maybe $50 of which was directly for the fan cleaning. It only took an hour of labor, so it wasn't that expensive. Those guys know how to take out the motherboard without frying it with static or something, so yeah.
The bottom line is, if you care about the laptop more than about $100 worth, I'd go ahead and send it to the shop.
After researching my computer's manual and a lot of DIY sites, I decided to send it to the shop. It'll depend on your model, but in mine, the fan was just about the hardest thing to get to. You had to remove almost everything except the HDD, IIRC, including the motherboard. I wasn't going to risk it.
I got some RAM put in at the same time and the whole thing cost about $150, maybe $50 of which was directly for the fan cleaning. It only took an hour of labor, so it wasn't that expensive. Those guys know how to take out the motherboard without frying it with static or something, so yeah.
The bottom line is, if you care about the laptop more than about $100 worth, I'd go ahead and send it to the shop.