Is my Lenovo Ideapad 320 15iap missing a fan?

Jstagzsr · November 1, 2018

So the other day i opened my laptop up for the second time to exchange the 1tb hdd for a 160gb ssd (i have a custom built gaming desktop with multiple tb's in ssd's and hdd's that i store everything on. i only use my laptop for mobile laptop stuff and very light very casual gaming).. The first time i opened it up was to change out the single 4gb sodimm for an 8gb stick.. i didnt notice it then, but i did notice when i opened to do the ssd that there is not a single cooling fan in it.. i noticed it because i took off the heatsink to swap thermal paste while i was in there with some arctic alumina.. when i had the heatsink off and i flippe dit over i realized there is no fan at all.. i dont know if it had one and i removed it for some reason when i did the ram all them months ago, and forgot to put it back in, or if it never had one.. i cant find ANY posts online about people saying their 320 15iap doesnt have a cooling fan, and every picture i see of the motherboard is of a different heatsink (one with fins and an "L" shapped vapor tube and the end of the tube has fins on it) and there are very very few pictures of the one i have (more of a "U" shaped vapor tube that attaches to a flat piece of aluminum, and NO cooling fins).. it is ON that flat piece of aluminum that looks like a fan should be there.. one of those crappy small laptop fans you always see.. but theres no contacts that look like a spot where a fan woul ddraw heat off the aluminum part.. so does this model just have passive cooling? idk why i never noticed this before. there are plenty of vents in the chassis for air.

the first two pictures i posted are what my cooling unit looks like.. the third picture is what exactly the inside of my laptop look slike, identical, but there is not that style of vapor tube, and theres no fan.. BOTH of these clearly different cooling styles are from the exact model number as my computer..

anyone ever take apart one of these before? have any ideas as to whats up?

thanks in advance

Galahadv · March 6, 2019

Did you ever find out why there wasn't a fan? Opened mine up a couple of days ago and found a similar situation.

Jstagzsr · March 19, 2019

On 3/5/2019 at 10:41 PM, Galahadv said:

Did you ever find out why there wasn't a fan? Opened mine up a couple of days ago and found a similar situation.

im sorry, i didnt see this till now..

no, i didnt figure it out.. i barely ever use that laptop so it hasnt been an issue, and when i do use it its for mobile web browsing and stuff like thta.. nothing that would heat up this whopping huge 1.1ghz processor. lol.. it doesnt throttle so im assuming it is supposed to be like that.. i have no idea why. and if i find a way to put a better cooling solution in it i definitely will, but i dont think its a big issue so i stopped researching after not being able to find any info the first few days.

Esenbek · January 24, 2020

Me too man. I also have this sh*t instead of normal fan. what the heck they didn't put a fan????. Now I'm having some problems with laptop, and I'm sure that the cause of this problem is that there is no fan. I think smth is overheated in CPU or motherboard. Now I'm working on it. Later I will reply. Now I'm looking for a "L" shaped heatsink and fan. This is very embarrassing that lenovo didn't put any fan in here which causes problems for us(customers)