Very noisy Thinkpad Advanced Dock

[thojep]

Hi all, I'm a new owner of a W500, which (apart from serious wireless connection problems) is an excellent laptop. For my home office I also bought the Thinkpad Advanced Dock and was appalled by the extreme noise made by the fan! What use is it from Lenovo to develop a fairly silent laptop, when the docking accessory offered makes the sound of an old vacuum cleaner?

Does anyone know a solution to this problem or is this buy just bad luck?

[hausman]

It's possible that the fan is defective. Do you or your friends have any other ThinkPad docks to compare with?

[PanEuropean]

Thojep:

At the risk of having all my peers here on the forum think that I am a real caveman, I'll tell you the solution that worked for me.

I also bought an advanced dock for my W500, and found (like you) that the fan in the dock was very noisy.  I took the cover off of the dock to have a look inside it, and I discovered that there is really nothing inside the dock that needs cooling, unless of course you install a big card in there.  I have not installed a card.

So...  Using a paper clip, I devised a very convenient little U shaped device that wraps around one of the fan blades and stops the fan from spinning.  This completely, positively, 100% eliminates all of the fan noise, because the fan no longer rotates.

I have been running for 6 months with this paper-clip device shoved in the back of the fan, and have had no problems... except of course that I occasionally fall asleep in front of the computer now that it is so quiet.

 Link to picture

Michael

Moderator Note; embedded picture > 50K converted to link

Message Edited by andyP on 05-25-2009 08:10 AM

[hausman]

---

PanEuropean wrote:

So...  Using a paper clip, I devised a very convenient little U shaped device that wraps around one of the fan blades and stops the fan from spinning.  This completely, positively, 100% eliminates all of the fan noise, because the fan no longer rotates.

---

That also stalls the fan motor, could cause it to overheat and fail so that in future, should you install devices that require cooling there won't be any.

[PanEuropean]

Hello Hausman:

Although it is true that putting the paper clip in the back mechanically prevents the fan motor from turning, the fan motor does not appear to generate any heat at all when it is not turning.

About a month ago, I took the paper clip out (after it had been in there since last November) to see if the fan motor still worked.  It spooled up just fine.

In a worst-case situation, I suppose I might have to replace the fan if:

a) it ever fails, and;

b) I want to put a PCI card into the docking station.

However, I doubt that the fan is an expensive part, and I also doubt that I will ever want to put a PCI card in the docking station.

Michael

[awardedtogods]

mine is noisy too but only when the weather is really warm.