[Samyaza]

Hi,

I have Lenovo's ThinkPad W510 laptop. I bought it used around 6 months ago. It had been working flawlessly until around two weeks ago, when the fan started making a weird buzzing noise. (I'm not 100% sure it is the fan, but quite sure as the noise is clearly coming from somewhere around where my fan is.) I'm rather inexperienced when it comes to hardware, but I (rather stupidly, as it seems) disassembled my laptop in attempt to track the cause of the buzzing. There was no visible damage on the fan, so I put my laptop back together. The buzzing is still there, obviously, so I ordered a new fan, which hasn't arrived yet, though.

Weird thing is, after putting my laptop back together and booting it again, my games won't run anymore like they used to. For example, Civ 5 and WoW used to run very smoothly with low settings, but now neither of them work properly. They run fine at first, but after a few minutes they start to stutter and they're simply unplayable. This happens with all my other games too, for example, Duke Nukem 3D which is a very old and light game, starts to stutter after 5-10 minutes of playing.

I thought this would be an overheating issue since I poked the fan a bit, but I don't see how I could've damaged it (I'm not surprised if I had though, I was a bit rough when trying to get it out) - the only thing I accidentally did was rip the tape a little bit on the side of the fan, but I put more electric tape in its place and it should be fine, but the problem still persists.

I downloaded SpeedFan and monitored my temperatures while trying out Life is Strange. Normally my GPU temperature is at around 50-60 degrees (which is already pretty high), and when I ran the game, it got up to 105. So this is definitely a GPU overheating issue I think - what could I do to fix this?

If anyone would want to help me I would be SO grateful. I'm devastated if I can't play games anymore!

Thank you!

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Definitely overheating. Don't use it until the fan has been replaced.   When you replace the fan you need to clean the interface between the heatsink and the fan.  It;s common to get a dust buildup that blocks the airflow.  (Make sure the fan's connector is making good connection.  You can normally hear the fan start up when you start the computer but it will probably stop shortly afterwards until it warms up)  You should probably also replace the thermal pads with new thermal paste.  I always use Arctic Silver 5.  Amazon has a kit of cleaner and paste:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LOXCNPC? which I prefer.  Replacement of the thermal pads is mandatory if you unscrew the copper heat pipe.

[RKinner]

Definitely overheating. Don't use it until the fan has been replaced.   When you replace the fan you need to clean the interface between the heatsink and the fan.  It;s common to get a dust buildup that blocks the airflow.  (Make sure the fan's connector is making good connection.  You can normally hear the fan start up when you start the computer but it will probably stop shortly afterwards until it warms up)  You should probably also replace the thermal pads with new thermal paste.  I always use Arctic Silver 5.  Amazon has a kit of cleaner and paste:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LOXCNPC? which I prefer.  Replacement of the thermal pads is mandatory if you unscrew the copper heat pipe.

[Samyaza]

Thank you for the fast reply!

 

However I cannot NOT use my laptop until the new fan arrives, I had massive trouble finding a relatively cheap new fan online (Amazon didn't deliver to my country, and the one who did would've cost a fortune) and the one I found was on a slightly sketchy looking website, so I have no idea when it will arrive - IF it arrives at all.

When I took out my fan to check its condition I did make sure to clean it as well, so there should be no dust in there.

Would replacing the thermal pads be enough for me to be able to use my laptop as I used to (without gaming, of course)?

[RKinner]

The fan itself rarely gets too dusty.  Usually where the air goes into the heatsink is where the dust builds up.

 

 Replacing the thermal paste shouldn't hurt (especially if you unscrewed the copper heatpipe during your cleaning.)   It is common for the thermal pads to dry out over time and cause a laptop to overheat.  So if you don't mind taking it apart again then it's worth a shot. 

[Samyaza]

Thanks for the help, replacing the thermal paste helped a lot. Now I can play games again, although my gpu still does get rather hot - peak temps during gaming were around 85. That's still 20 degrees less than it used to be.

Thank you so much!