On Tue, 03 Oct 2006 02:27:11 GMT, "The poster formerly known
as Colleyville Alan" <nospam@nospam.net> wrote:

>First the rant-
>My case cooling fan has bad bearings and is very noisy. So I went to the
>Dell site to try and find a replacement.

Ok but why do you want same fan again?
I've seen a fair number of these fans, some weren't so bad
but for a big problem- random mismatch of the fan's stall
RPM (threshold) versus the reduced PWM speed control. In
other words, not all fans respond the same to fan speed
reduction, particularly higher current fans and aggressive
throttling. Particularly when this throttling is temp
controlled (as usual), one need not even choose such a high
RPM fan as the controller would speed it up anyway.

In short, get your fan dimensions and # of pins it uses, and
from there you might pick out a more ideal model but also
keep in mind your room ambient temps (highest they'll be
year-round), so you don't get something TOO low.

A random suggestion would be a Panaflo "M" speed, it's
probably a 92mm x 25mm thick fan but measure to be sure.
http://www.svc.com may have some and low USPS shipping too
for single parts or very small orders.


>Going to the "replacement parts
>for your Dell" area, I did a search for "fan" and got hits for dedicated
>fans for graphic cards and other stuff that was not a fit. I tried putting
>in my service tag number which in the past was recognized by Dell, but not
>this time.
>
>On some other screen, I also tried choosing the model but while it had Dell
>Dimension XPS it had series like 200, 500, 700 but not B866. It had some
>series ending with M or MT - I am not sure, I cannot even find the page I
>got stuck at earlier today.

You could always pick a different model # so long as it uses
same size fan.


>
>After doing lots of Googling, I find that even for this part, Dell has a
>proprietary part.

From what I recall, no they're pretty standard... but I
don't remember seeing a B866, don't know if there's anything
unusual about it compared to the others. When I mentioned
92mm fan, I was thinking of some newer models but it appears
yours is a Pentium 3 era system?

>Fine. I was willing to pay the damned money for it. I
>really do not care if I pay $40 for the proprietary part when a $10 part
>will suffice. The fan did not make noise for 5 years and if $40 will get me
>another 5 years, I am ok with that. But the damned Dell website will not
>even allow me to find the damned part! Even when I opened the case and got
>the number from the housing and it was 443YT, having that knowledge did not
>really help on the Dell site. I tried searching for that and got zilch. I
>imagine that perhaps it is possible to find parts on the Dell site, but it
>must require the sacrifice of a goat.

Eventually everyone comes to the conclusion that relying on
an OEM is a painful and expensive proposition. Figure out
what size the fan is, there's probably a few thousand places
selling something suitable. Dell doesn't make fans, at most
it might have a special connector but I doubt that.

>
>I went to Google with the part number 443YT and I found a year-old post in
>some forum where a guy used a CompUSA replacement SKU 280286 and it worked
>fine, but he had to break the old fan apart bit-by-bit from the shroud using
>needle nose pliers.

I can't see your shroud, but usually it just clips on. Hard
to say why that guy had trouble, but you should be able to
just pop that shroud off and see for yourself what's
involved.


> It seems that Dell made this a proprietary part by
>fusing the shroud and the fan into a combination unit.

You say this based on inspecting yours, or only that other
guy's tale about what he did? A good, linked (not posted to
the newsgroup) picture might go a long way, with the shroud
off so we can see the rear side of it without the case wall
in the way.


>The poster said he
>went to Frys and several other electronics stores and could not find this
>part but took a gamble when he saw the one at CompUSA. This is amazing to
>me - not that Dell wants to keep margins high by selling proprietary stuff,
>but that they make it impossible to find the stuff! How the hell are they
>gonna sell me something and make money on it if it cannot be located???

Dell would much rather sell new systems at a few hundred a
pop than to stock misc. parts for several year old systems.
Could be they had 3,000 spare of those but 3,000 people
already had theirs fail, bought the replacement and when
they're gone, they're gone.


>
>Ok, enough of the rant, now the question.
>The post I found on the other forum did not have much info in it. So, a
>question for this group. Anybody had experience with the Dell 443YT fan?
>Is it really the best bet to go to CompUSA and tear the old fan apart from
>its housing or is there a place that I can simply buy the whole unit and not
>have to mess with it? (perhaps this might even reside on Dell's website,
>hidden and guarded by a fire-breathing giraffe?)

There's lots of things that might work, depending on how
handy you are and exactly what that fan and shroud are like.

What I'd expect is you have a plastic piece that slips or
clips onto the rear wall of the case. Onto that, the fan
slides on, then the outer shroud that bends towards the CPU
heatsink, has a couple of large plastic clips on 2 sides.
Those clips can get brittle so you have to be careful
bending them to get the fan out.

If it were a sleeve bearing fan, you might be able to relube
it, though I suspect it's ball bearing as I vaguely recall
some of them were (but all? I don't know.).