Did you know you can lubricate PC fans? I had no idea.
Wouldn't you like to be able to use a sleeve bearing fan and not have to worry about your CPU overheating? Read on to learn how to lubricate PC fans to do just that.
www.overclockers.com
I have this old (from 2018) laptop cooling pad that did service on an old laptop, which was acting as the driver of a TV. The laptop had a burnt out CPU fan (of course, it was a Razer. Crap laptops.), so I took the bottom case off and stuck this cooling pad under there and it did service 24/7 for like 4-years.
Anyway, the cooling pad has been in storage until I recently took it back out to help with my very hot new laptop. I'm not necessarily convinced it does anything, but propping up the laptop and/or getting it off my lap helps both with throttling and not burning the hell out of my legs.
But one of the fans in this cooling pad was a bit noisy and basically refused to spin, so today I figured I'd take the cooling pad apart and see if I could replace the fan with something else. Long story short, it doesn't appear that I can, but I looked into lubricating them and found the above article and it was shockingly easy. I have some oil I used for my RC car shocks and it took the fan from feeling very gritty and barely spinning to working flawlessly.
I had been investigating a new cooling pad (it still would be nice to have something more slim), but now that I've salvaged this one, I've saved us $30 (wow.) but more importantly, kept something out of the garbage, which I'm happy about.
Edit: Opening it up also allowed me to get the last of the spiderwebs in it, as well as thoroughly clean the fans with some IPA.