The poster formerly known as Colleyville Alan 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. 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.
>
> After doing lots of Googling, I find that even for this part, Dell has a
> proprietary part. 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.
>
> 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. It seems that Dell made this a proprietary part by
> fusing the shroud and the fan into a combination unit. 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???
>
> 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?)
>
> Thanks

Is this the disassembly page here ?

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...g_fan_assembly

The processor looks like it uses ducted cooling, and the fan shroud is
held
in place with a couple plastic tabs. Are you sure the shroud and fan
don't come
apart easily ?

And someone asked a question about this 11 months ago :-)

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.sy...7d74331fc8f257

Brushless DC fans come in standard sizes. I have one electronics store
in
town that stocks a few fans, and at least some of them are nice ball
bearing units. That is where I go when I have a duff fan. There are
also sources on the Internet, but it is harder to inspect what you
are getting that way. My store also stocks pins and connector bodies,
if the fan doesn't have the right connector on the end. It takes five
minutes to crimp a couple pins onto the wires and shove them into a
three pin connector body, to make the fan ready for use.

Fans are rated according to the CFM (cubic feet per minute) of air they
move. Some product lines divide the fans according to "low", "medium",
"high", "ultra". Your replacement fan should try to match what you've
currently got, and it is pretty hard to guess which one might be
a good replacement. Your processor might be drawing about 35W or
so, and the fan dimensions might not be that large. But the Dell info
above doesn't show any dimensions.

The Dell computer could be controlling the voltage to the fan, and that
could be why it is quiet most of the time. Does the fan speed change
with
time and CPU load ? Does it run faster on a hot day ? If the fan seems
to be a fixed speed design, then you know the fan speed and air volume
you see, is a constant all the time. Finding a replacement might be
easier if you know the fan you are looking at is getting a full 12V
all the time. If the fan speed is being modified by the Dell board
reducing the voltage, then it is harder to tell what the fan runs
like at full 12V.

Replacing the fan with an aftermarket is not hard, but will involve
some guess work when it comes to picking something that matches
performance-wise. It really helps a lot if the original fan is still
functional, so you can compare the performance of old and new fans.
And it also helps to have a source of +12V to run any fan you want to
test. Thus this job isn't for everyone.

Do you know of any service facilities in your area that handle Dell ?
Perhaps such a company can order a replacement assembly for you, and
you pay them cash and do the install yourself. They can deal
with the "fire-breathing giraffe" for you. And if the part is the
correct one, it likely won't require the use of a Dremel to install
it.

Paul