Dell L400 - 2 Issues

[EllipsisVX]

Hey guys,

Two issues I'm having with this Dell L400 I'm rebuilding/upgrading.

Firstly, the fan is ungodly loud and annoying, any tips for quieting this down?

Secondly the CMOS battery Clip is broken/disconnected and therefore the BIOS settings and clock aren't saved and reset every boot, which is a bit more annoying. Now the system doesn't have a regular battery yet nor does it have an OS (it will in the next couple days - as the parts come in).

If anyone has ideas on how to reconnect it (connected with 2 pins - Solder?) and/or quiet down the fan please don't hesitate!

[Extasey]

Is the fan connected to the board?

You could buy an after market cooling system (air or water-cooling).
Most of these systems brag about the effectiveness as well as being "as quiet as a whisper".
To quieten the current fan, there is usually a RPM setting in the BIOS, but unfortunately they reset after reboot! You may be able to fix this once you install an operating system and get a program from nvidia or something to control your fan speed.

About the CMOS clip, sorry, I don't want to suggest something that could break your system (I'm too in-experience) but you could try tape it on with duc tape, haha.

[EllipsisVX]

Is the fan connected to the board?

You could buy an after market cooling system (air or water-cooling).
Most of these systems brag about the effectiveness as well as being "as quiet as a whisper".
To quieten the current fan, there is usually a RPM setting in the BIOS, but unfortunately they reset after reboot! You may be able to fix this once you install an operating system and get a program from nvidia or something to control your fan speed.

About the CMOS clip, sorry, I don't want to suggest something that could break your system (I'm too in-experience) but you could try tape it on with duc tape, haha.

Yes the fan connects directly to the motherboard and it is a side-ways blowing fan, not the usual upwards blowing type. It's also very small, something like 1-1.5 inches and probably no more than 4-6mm in height.

Dell L400 is a tiny little laptop, so water cooling isn't going to be an option. I suppose I could try to find a similarly sized fan and try to file it down to fit. I was wondering if anyone knew if you could oil it at all.

The connector pins are tiny, maybe duc-tape but i'd think that the adhesive would not be a good addition to the motherboard.

[Omniscient]

You can try to get a fan replacement. If you can open it all up and take a peek at it you might be able to find a replacement from somewhere like Newegg.

The battery is probably fine to just tape down. I recommend electrical tape though.

[EllipsisVX]

Nice to see you here Omni. Yes I'll try to get some small pieces of electrical tape and precision place them in there (the pins are absolutely tiny! lol). And thanks, I hadn't even thought of that as the laptop is a bit outdated.