Need help finding a 4 pin fan header for my laptop

[Jgreener6]

Hello Linus tech tips!  

 

Recently I was repasting my laptops and upon reassembly I accidentally bent the cpu's fan header pins (I know, stupid and careless mistake), in a attempt to bend them back into place I accidentally broke several of them off.

Im having a hard time finding anything online that would be a replacement. I have a local shop who said they would be happy to re-solder the fan head on but they said they would need help finding the part. The laptop is a MAINGEAR Vector Pro 17 inch with a 3080 and i7-11800h, its the same chasis as the Eluktronicss Max-17. I called both Maingear and Eluktronic and both said they would not be able to send me a new part since its a part of the motherboard. The fan header is a 4 pin header.

 

I'm looking at buying a cheap motherboard online and just taking the header off of that one and using it in my laptop and was wondering if you guys had any suggestions on motherboards I should look at? Or better yet, a website that would sell these sorts of fan headers? The Maingear associate I talked to said that it is a common design and comes standard in a lot of laptops. I went ahead and attached tow pictures, one is of the broken fan header and the other is of the one from the GPU side, please note that these did have a little plastic piece on top that just went over the top that I took off, it wasn't a separate piece but part of the whole unit, and just bridged the two sides together. 

 

I would really appreciate the help with this, and if you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer. Thank you!

[Bombastinator]

Back in the day one generally looked in a molex catalog.  It is/was a company that made connectors and was widely used in PCs so much so that one power connector was actually known as “molex”.  That’s not a traditional fan header though. The approach Might not work these days. There are likely numerous companies that are used. You need to find the make and model of the part.  Trying to think of anything to narrow it down..  I suspect it was put on by a pick-and-place machine so the thing will likely be available on pick-and-place ribbon.  It’s possible the manufacturer willl simply know off hand what part it is.  Once you find out the trick is going to be getting just one instead of a thousand.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Broski]

Could glue it and some wires over the connector if you can't find a replacement

[Jgreener6]

Do you guys think that having some micro-solder the fan right onto the motherboard would be able to fix the issue? Seems that its going to be very hard to find the exact replacement unfortunately 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Jgreener6 said:

Do you guys think that having some micro-solder the fan right onto the motherboard would be able to fix the issue? Seems that its going to be very hard to find the exact replacement unfortunately 

A connection is a connection.  Problem with it is when the fan dies unless you can desoldering it and put on a new one it kills the whole machine.  This is one reason why connectors exist in the first place.