MSI GE72 2QF Apache Pro - need to replace fan, but how?

[Sarramy]

My laptop started making a not so good noise yesterday. It sounded like one of the fans was trying to turn on, then off, then on, but with a weird whirring sound right before it would turn off again, and then after a while an awful squealing noise from time to time. I have determined it's the fan on the side by the hard drive (removed hard drive to make sure it's not where the sound is coming from, nope it's definitely the fan). When I watch it with the cover removed I can see that the fan is in fact turning on and off and on and off. I turned on the monitoring program (Dragon Gaming Center) and it shows the rpms fluctuating a lot. The right side is running fine but the left side would sit at excatly 3609 rpms for a minute of so, then make the weird noise, then the rpms would drop to 0 for about 15 seconds before starting the cycle over again. This happens regardless of if I turn on the booster fan button (from what I understand the fans are only supposed to run if the temp goes over 60 but they are trying to run now at much lower temps too).

I believe I need to replace the fan and that's where my problem lies. The fans appear to be soldered or glued to a large copper heat sink that is also soldered or glued to a cover over the gpu. How am I supposed to replace the fan? Is it possible? I really can't afford to buy a new computer. I found a replacement fan that supposedly fit this model computer for around $20. That's about the limit of my funds for replacement parts at this time so I'm really hoping there's a way to do this.

 

[Lutfij]

1| If you don't know what you're doing, then don't go any forward.
2| If you have access to a certified repair shop then they should be able to look into it.
3| Have you made sure your motherboard BIOS is up to date? Please be careful while updating BIOS since a failed update can brick the unit.
4| If you want my opinion, you're going to need to remove the entire unified copper assembly but will yet require you to technically pry the fans off the copper assembly. After you've removed the unified copper heatpipe, remove the screws holding the fans in place and after unlocking the clips on the side of teh fan, it' should come off for you to replace with the fan you've sourced.

At the end of #4 you're going to need a tube of TIM since you're going to remove the heatpipe from the CPU as well.