On Tuesday, 23 December 2025 02:12:37 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote: > P. S. I had to replace the fans on my CPU cooler. I had a power outage > the other day and when I booted back up, one fan made a little noise. I > figure the bearings are running dry. I ordered two replacement fans and > put them in today. I can't figure out how to take that old fan apart. > I usually take old fans apart and put a few drops of oil in them to use > them for less critical cooling. CPU fans always get replaced. No idea > why that fan went out so soon tho. I don't think it is even a year old.
Some older/cheaper plain sleeve bearing fans could be oiled to keep them going for longer. You'd peel back a sticky label on their top and pry open a plastic dust cap - assuming they were expensive enough to have a dust cap fitted. A drop or two of very low viscosity oil would re-wet the bearing surface and it will thereafter carry on spinning quieter and faster. The modern sleeve design of the Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) variety is typically sealed and needs no addition of oil to keep it going. This assumes you didn't buy some alibaba discount 'special' whereby the manufacturer was economising on every oil drop on the assembly line to cut costs. The shaft on the FDB construction may have magnetic support/centralisation, is secured with a lock washer and the bearing is sealed to stop dirt from going in, or the oil from evaporating too soon. If you try to pull off the fan from its armature by force you will most likely break it, but YMMV. Even a plain sleeve bearing should have the best part of 3-5 years life depending on temperature and vibration/orientation, before it starts rattling. I suspect yours was poorly manufactured. I want to think reputable manufacturers of expensive kit would be interested to investigate the failure mode of this fan bearing, so you could try RMA'ing it.
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