How to fix a noisy MacBook Pro fan

I clean the dust around the fan but the noise is still there. I’ll try to disassemble the fan as your advice next time. thanks.

This worked great! I cleaned and lubed the spindle and vacuumed the vents out. Thank you for the tip!

Raise the roof!

Thanks a million for taking the time to do this. I am about to try it.

Hey, has the noise come back at all since the repair?

Awesome tip, fixed my noise and wasn’t that hard to do.

It worked great! I couldn’t stand my incredibly loud fans anymore and this did the trick! Saved me 100$ in ordering new fans. I used a spray called jigaloo instead of WD40 since it’s 100% transparent and doesn’t leave any residue.

You’re a lifesaver.

Thanks! I am going for it right now. Don’t you think Apple computers are weaker than before? My firsts Apple computers were real tanks! Unbreakable. And now… look at that mess…

I don’t know how to thank you for this. I swear that if I didn’t come across this post, I would’ve been in a mental hospital by now.

Whoever wants to ruin their day can listen to my story…

My fan started to make a noise 2 – 3 weeks ago, so I contacted Apple warranty. They said it could take 2 – 3 weeks, so this being my primary laptop, I went ahead and bought a fan of the same model off of eBay. It arrived, and all was going well until I got to unscrewing the old fan, which had screws that seemed they were of a different size. I tried screwdriver upon screwdriver, and it just wouldn’t come off. All this trying lead to the screws being stripped, and i was left with a noisy old fan, a new fan in a sealed bag beside me, and screws that wouldn’t come off even if i tempted them with a million dollars! Not to mention, I’d voided my Apple warranty.

So, I woke up today morning and with dedication, thought I’d give it a last go before i empty my wallet by showing it to a computer repair store, none of whom by the way were confident they could fix the problem (“oh, we can try drilling or pliers, but not sure we can do anything other than that.”) After a couple hours, I was able to unscrew one of the screws by essentially cutting it half with a knife and using an ordinary screw driver. The other 2 screws, however, were pretty much impossible to remove this or any other way as I found after 5 – 6 hours of trying, because they were indented 1 – 2 cms below the surface.

Anyway, in a last last last attempt, I googled “macbook noisy fan” and came across this post. By this time, I had pretty much destroyed the old fan, because the top plate had come off, and I could remove the actual spindle/part. I cleaned it 3 – 4 times with some water spray and a cloth, and VOILA! It was quiet! Kapoof! Silence!

Not sure how long it’ll remain like this for, but as I said, if this hadn’t had happened, I would be either selling my socks to pay for the $100 – $200 extra bill (not to mention the $100 price of the new fan), or selling the 3-month old MacBook for a 100 month-old price because the computer guy couldn’t remove the screws.

So, thanks!

This worked like a charm! After disassembling the mac: I just opened up the fan, blasted it with air duster, drenched it in silicone lube, and then put it back together. D/L’d the fan app and ramped up the speed…and it is essentially silent!

Just in case anyone else notices that the wiring on their left fan is a bit different then in the link, I’ll tell u a bit about my experience. I bought my MacBook Pro right before they came out with the unibody model. The wiring on the left fan was a little different than the link to the disassembly instructions. My wires going across the very top of the left fan and the way those wires attached to the motherboard was different than in the picture in the guide. I was able to remove the fan without detaching that group of wires by lifting the electrical tape just enough to free then fan. Hope this helps,

Brandon

For me, lubrication didn’t address the problem entirely as the fan blades were slightly scraping the housing. Upon closer inspection, the aluminum part that the fan sits on (partially shown on the left side of your picture with the arrow) was slightly bent which caused the blades to hang too close to the bottom part of the housing. I carefully bent it back so it was a level as I could make it, put it all back together and no more scraping sound.

Not sure how it get bent in the first place. Perhaps when they replaced my logic board a while ago (fixed under the NVIDIA recall)?

Without your post, I wouldn’t have thought the fan was serviceable at all, so thanks a bunch. Now that my MacBook no longer sounds like a leaf blower, I can get back to work.

Cheers

Craig

cool this worked really well, i was able to do the fix easily, now my macbook pro is as silent as it can be

Can’t believe that my 6 month old unibody macbook would have a noisy fan!!!
Talk about quality parts!
Ordered a new replacement fan from a company in Hong Kong… as Apple want 3days with my macbook to fix this issue and the noise is real annoying…
Saw your page and hadn’t realised the fan comes apart so easily!!
Will 5 minutes later the fan off the unibody macbook was in 3 bits and a drop of silicon oil later and back to gether…. one silent macbook.
Very happy!

I used a dry lubricant on my MCP 17″ SR and noticed quite a bit of dust in the sinks where the fans emit the air. Cleaned everything up and reassembled now the fans are at 1500 and the cpu(s) are around 99F, much cooler than the usual 125F and silent now. I too, noticed one of the blades making contact with the housing and made an adjustment. Good DIY.

Awesome! this is a life saver. Thanks for sharing! I’m going to try this tomorrow. Very nice step by step

Thanks a million for sharing this. My mac book pro come back to very quiet now.

Thanks! My work book just lost a logic board a couple of days ago and I was not in the mood to pay for more repairs for my personal book.

Hi there, I have just done this today on my unibody MacBook, it has worked a treat, I just used a dab of silicone oil to lubricate. Hopefully it will last for a while.

All up the service took about 10 minutes.

Thanks for the informative article.

WD-40 FTW! To others: Re-lubing is the key. I tried to get away with just taking the fans apart and cleaning them (it’s cold outside where the WD-40 can was…). That didn’t help. Taking the fans apart and lubing the spindle quieted things all the way down.

Thanks for the hint!

THANK YOU! It took two times to get it right. After the first attempt (I used Silicone spray on a q-tip to clean the axle), the noise was the same! I just couldn’t take it again – and the epic fail… so I tried again – this time with WD-40. I noticed that one of the fan blades was bent and just about broken… I finished it off an broke it off. I was worried about the balance – but oh well – … I had to move forward. I sprayed the q-tip with WD40 and cleaned the axle thoroughly and used the dry end to clean up the mess (and dust in the chamber area). Put it all back – ran SMCFAN – boosted up to max and back down – … and????…..

NO SOUND – like new. RPM’s of both fans are about the same. So, if you still have the loud noise – check the blades (and use WD40).

Good luck to all – I’m VERY HAPPY. Thank you for my sanity!

For what it’s worth… WD-40 is NOT a long-term lubricant. It has a small amount of lubricant in it but it will break down within a few months… it’s intended to get inside tight spaces and break corrosion bonds and remove water (WD stands for “water displacement”, the 40 is because it took them 40 reformulations to perfect it).

The best stuff to use is sewing machine oil (about $3 for a bigger bottle than you could ever use for laptop fans), since this is pretty much exactly what it’s made for. You can get it on amazon or from a lot of craft/sewing/etc shops.

Alternatively, 3 in one oil is something a lot of people will have around the house, and it’s almost as good. You can get that at any hardware store or department store that has a hardware section.

I too had this problem, although I didn’t perform this search until after I fixed it. My fix also gave me immediate great results.

I did exactly what is recommended above except for the following…

First off I cleaned out cotton ball sized dust bunnies out of the blades and housing. That helped keep it balanced and quieter. However I also needed some lubrication, I was really hesitant to use any oils or spray lube as I didn’t want to cause a short or have internal leaking. Tthis is a possibility no matter how negligible the amount you use, as a laptop’s internal components are very delicate.

I instead opted for using graphite a metallic dry lubricant often used by locksmiths and machinists. Not having any handy, I just scraped the “lead” (which is actually graphite) from a pencil into a little dust pile and deposited that into the inside of the fan and around the spindle.

Let me know if this works out for you.

you rock this has been killing me for months thanks dude :) huge thumbs up

Thanks for this post.

I start having this noise in my (almost) 4 years-old MacBook Pro1,1, so I guess I’ll give this trick a try.

But I think JC (3 posts up) has made a good point. WD40 isn’t a long term lubricant. Better to use sewing machine oil or graphite powder as mentioned by Elvin (2 posts up).

Just thought I would pass by to say it worked-out like a charm.

I’ve open-up my Mac, cleaned and lubricated both fans – only had noise on the left, but hey!, I don’t do this every day, so I took advantage of the fact it was already open ;)

I’ve used something called SuperLub (?) and my MacBook Pro is working in pleasant silent again.

Thanks once again for the post!

Dude thanks so much for puttin this on here you saved me so much stress. i did it exactly as you said. i have a silver unibody macbook that i got in may of 09. i had HUGE clumps of dust and lint inside the fan. i spent like an extra hour trying to do it though because i accidentally stripped out two of the screws that mount the fan casing down. i recommend buying the right size screwdrivers before trying this. but after i finally got it undone i got all the lint out, airdusted the shit out of it then put some WD-40 on a Q-tip and rubbed it on the spindle of the fan. then put it back together and worked like a charm. now my macbook runs at 97 degrees farenheit :)))))). thanks a lot man. saved me a lot of stress and trouble.

I was just about to buy myself a torq screwdriver today to fix my left fan which is making ugly sounds since about 4 days. But just today I couldn’t get my mbp to heat up making the fan cry horribly – and after waking it up from a cooling sleep the fan is steady on 0 rpm. I hope it didn’t crack completely. I’ve read in this thread a number of causes – dirty parts, bent parts, broken parts – so I just hope it’s something I can fix, still after the left fan died.
Otherwise, this machine is scheduled to go to repair on a malfunctioning sleeping sensor by the end of january so I could have a double repair… *sigh*.
I’ll keep you updated!

(I saw I made one bad sentence… I meant, I had some apps running while battery got a recharge, so heat went up and my fans started spinning louder than the left one could appreciate.
It’s december, I’m tired and my sentences start going wrong… srry!)

Thank You. You’ve just solved my nightmares with MBP, that longed for a year recently! :)

I had a big presentation to do and didn’t want the PC professors to make fun of my noisy Mac. I never opened my Mac before but after seeing your site and reviewing procedures on Youtube, I methodically approached how I would remove the fans with wires around it and what to do about the air shroud. I figured it out and it went smoothly. More importantly it worked! Been skint after Christmas and your site saved me! A million thanks. Deus beatus tu!

It worked for me too, my right fan was dead but now it’s spinning nicely again!! I hope the noise won’t return, because initially it was a bit noisy once fixed, but after boosting the rpm with smcfancontrol it seems all fine.
Btw, I didn’t really encounter large amounts of dust or bent parts… I removed some minor dust between the blades and put some lube on the axle, that’s it…

I just wanted to add a comment and say thank you for the great advise. Recommend that the fan air vents, mother board, and air vents at the back of the mac be cleaned out to reduce over heating.

When the fans started to make a loud noise, I assumed that the hard drive was I about to crash from previous experience. I spent $100 (320GB) for a new drive and the OWC usb casing to clone the drive. When it comes down to data, I never have a second thought about replacing a drive that appears faulty.

Replacing the drive did not solve the heating and noise issue. I decided to take it apart and starting the computer to see where the problem lied (not recommended, I’ve been a system administrator for 9 years) and found it that it was coming from the fans. I was going to replace them. But after looking at the price ($100), I decided to look for other ways to fixing the issue.

I came a cross your page and your solution was so simple that it was genius. Why didn’t I think of that. I just want to say thank you for saving me $93. The cost of fixing and removing the dust from the internal components was a total of $7. I picked up a silicon lube at a hardware store. As far as the hard drive expense, I had no more space on the old drive so I need it anyway. Besides, I got a 7200RPM 320Gigs Western Digital Scorpion Black which is way more faster than the drive that came with the macbook. Some people had commented on the drive noise, but I can’t hear any noise on this drive. My macbook was 4 yrs old and a veteran of the afghan war :). So it’s no surprise that the vents and fans were clogged with dust causing heating problems.

Thank you Again
Andre

Oh, one more thing. The plastic fan needs to be pulled out in order to remove it from the casing. I was looking for a screw that might be holding it. just stick a screw driver underneath to pull out the plastic part. I had a little hard time on this because I was afraid of breaking it. I recommend pulling the fun evenly so it doesn’t get damage, but it seems to be pretty sturdy. Another thing was a cable on the left fan that appears to connect to the left speaker. I didn’t know how to unplugged it so I pulled it out from where it plugs to, but i learned I just needed to pull the little tiny tab to disconnect the cable. I was lucky I didn’t cause damage to the tab. otherwise, I would not be able to fix it.

Thank you. It works!!! My fan has been making noise for more than a month. And today…peace and quiet. Used very small drop of sewing machine oil. Worked like a charm.

Thanks again!

Jim

Tnx for this info.

Last monday my MacBook Pro started making terrible noise while I went on my lunch break. You can imagine I was kinda worried.

I ordered a replacement fan costing 40 euros. That was before I found this post. The lube I used was a teflon based dry lube I usually use on my mountainbike chain during the summer. Dropped a drop on my table and dipped the little axle once with the tip. Wanted to make sure not to lube it too much.

Fortunately the Apple service provider where I ordered the fan allowed me to only order the part and let me do the installation myself. Else it would’ve costed ad aditional 40 euros.

Now I kinda regret that I ordered the fan though. It seems to work wonderful. In fact. The fan I “fixed” makes less noise compared to when the system was brand new. :) Logging the fan RPMs and graphing the result to see if there are any deviations. None yet.

Thanks for the info!

I was going to order a replacement part but i really didn’t want to spend $40 or $50 for the part. It has been over two weeks now and it hasn’t make a sound! Thanks.

this was incredibly helpful! thanks dude!

thanks for posting this! i fixed both of my fans on macbook pro 17″ A1151 with WD-40. the first time around, i dabbed the axle with kleenex with WD-40 on it, but apparently it wasn’t enough, so i just sprayed the axle directly, poured out the excess on to kleenex, let it dry a bit, and it worked perfectly! no more noise, and my laptop runs much cooler too! even if WD-40 is temporary, i wouldn’t mind re-applying them every year or every few months. i should probably clean out the dust in the fan every year or so anyway.

Thanks for the help man… I was freaking out and was worried that it was sign of death.

2 days now and not a sound, you my friend are a freakin genius. Thank you.