Broken fan blade

Arvin sadeghi · April 14, 2022

Hello so I have a Lenovo mini pc which is pretty good rn but it has one problem so I was cleaning the cpu fan but one of the blades just broke off it never happened to me before.it has like 12 blades I think it didn't cause rattling or vibration or something I'm just worried about cooling it's some kind of weird fan it's laptop fan but alot bigger and better.so is this gonna affect performance it's not like pc fans it has both front and back covered so air can only go through heatsink and no where else.both of the covered with metal and around the fan is also covered it only has one exit point for the air.is this gonna cause Temps to be worst ?

manikyath · April 14, 2022

the biggest problem there is that it's probably off balance enough to slow the motor down significantly.

if you didnt throw away the blade yet, i'd suggest trying to glue it back on using some form of plastic glue.

mariushm · April 14, 2022

28 minutes ago, Arvin sadeghi said:

Hello so I have a Lenovo mini pc which is pretty good rn but it has one problem so I was cleaning the cpu fan but one of the blades just broke off it never happened to me before.it has like 12 blades I think it didn't cause rattling or vibration or something I'm just worried about cooling it's some kind of weird fan it's laptop fan but alot bigger and better.so is this gonna affect performance it's not like pc fans it has both front and back covered so air can only go through heatsink and no where else.both of the covered with metal and around the fan is also covered it only has one exit point for the air.is this gonna cause Temps to be worst ?

Buy another fan. The fan will break eventually, if it spins at high rpm other blades will break because the weight of the blades is not evenly distributed across the "circle", and your fan will vibrate, make noise, and potentially break other blades at high speed.

Open your mini pc, measure the fan as best as you can (or see if there's a model number to get the datasheet for it where you'll find dimensions, power consumption etc)

Then you can go at online stores like Digikey, Mouser, Newark/Farnell and try to find a compatible fan.

For example, here's Digikey's fan selection, > 21600 DC fans : https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/dc-brushless-fans-bldc/217

You can filter that list to see only 5v or 12v fans (depending on what your fan uses), then by type (I think yours is blower or "micro blower" or "squirrel cage" fan)

If you have the model of the fan, you may also find it on aliexpress or ebay.