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Lenovo Y400/Y500 fan mod.


Ryae Anthony De Luna

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My Y400 ran into some trouble a while back and still isn't fixed but I won't tell what happened to it here as I will post it on a new thread. Simply put, I had to mod the laptop fan so that it would run at 100% speed no matter what. It made the fan run louder but made my temps considerably lower. This is a post to show you how I did the mod.

1. Open up the bottom cover of your Y400 or Y500

2. Locate the cables for the fan.

3. There should be four cables there. One red, one black, one yellow and one brown.

4. Cut the brown wire. The brown wire is for the motherboard to control the fan speed. Once you cut it your laptop fan will run as fast as the dust cleaning process lets it in lenovo's energy management tool. This is the fan's normal speed. It was made to run slower by lenovo to make less noise.

post-14258-14495000030898_thumb.jpg

I got the image above from this thread: http://forum.techinferno.com/lenovo-ibm/2773-y500-disassembled-pictures.html

It shows roughly where the cables should be for the Y400 and Y500.

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My Y400 ran into some trouble a while back and still isn't fixed but I won't tell what happened to it here as I will post it on a new thread. Simply put, I had to mod the laptop fan so that it would run at 100% speed no matter what. It made the fan run louder but made my temps considerably lower. This is a post to show you how I did the mod.

1. Open up the bottom cover of your Y400 or Y500

2. Locate the cables for the fan.

3. There should be four cables there. One red, one black, one yellow and one brown.

4. Cut the brown wire. The brown wire is for the motherboard to control the fan speed. Once you cut it your laptop fan will run as fast as the dust cleaning process lets it in lenovo's energy management tool. This is the fan's normal speed. It was made to run slower by lenovo to make less noise.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]14878[/ATTACH]

I got the image above from this thread: http://forum.techinferno.com/lenovo-ibm/2773-y500-disassembled-pictures.html

It shows roughly where the cables should be for the Y400 and Y500.

why not use ideafan?

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why not use ideafan?

Ideafan is good and should be used if you aren't comfortable with hardware mods. The only thing about ideafan is that there are small pauses between fan-speed bursts. I know it may not seem like much but getting rid of those pauses helped lower my laptop temps a lot. My GPU is currently running at 38°C and the CPU at 41°C on idle, and that's in 33°C weather.

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Ideafan is good and should be used if you aren't comfortable with hardware mods. The only thing about ideafan is that there are small pauses between fan-speed bursts. I know it may not seem like much but getting rid of those pauses helped lower my laptop temps a lot. My GPU is currently running at 38°C and the CPU at 41°C on idle, and that's in 33°C weather.

Is that outdoor and on battery?

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Hey... So I have also done this fan mod. From TONS of fiddling with the innards, making the fans run at full speed seems to be the most effective thing in terms of cooling. the only problem is its loud.

Currently I am toying with the idea of either hooking up some sort of termperature switch, or perhaps a manual switch on the side, so that I can have the fans running normal speed most of the time, but will pop to max speed when running a game or when the temp gets over say 70C.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of mod?

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Hey... So I have also done this fan mod. From TONS of fiddling with the innards, making the fans run at full speed seems to be the most effective thing in terms of cooling. the only problem is its loud.

Currently I am toying with the idea of either hooking up some sort of termperature switch, or perhaps a manual switch on the side, so that I can have the fans running normal speed most of the time, but will pop to max speed when running a game or when the temp gets over say 70C.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of mod?

A manual switch would be easier to make. You can put a switch connected to the brown wire. It shouldn't be too hard to set up. But you'll have to make a hole somewhere to make the switch accessible.

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On 5/16/2015 at 10:26 PM, Ryae Anthony De Luna said:

My Y400 ran into some trouble a while back and still isn't fixed but I won't tell what happened to it here as I will post it on a new thread. Simply put, I had to mod the laptop fan so that it would run at 100% speed no matter what. It made the fan run louder but made my temps considerably lower. This is a post to show you how I did the mod.

1. Open up the bottom cover of your Y400 or Y500

2. Locate the cables for the fan.

3. There should be four cables there. One red, one black, one yellow and one brown.

4. Cut the brown wire. The brown wire is for the motherboard to control the fan speed. Once you cut it your laptop fan will run as fast as the dust cleaning process lets it in lenovo's energy management tool. This is the fan's normal speed. It was made to run slower by lenovo to make less noise.

DSC_0156_DxO_zps0ab78e81 (1).jpg

I got the image above from this thread: http://forum.techinferno.com/lenovo-ibm/2773-y500-disassembled-pictures.html

It shows roughly where the cables should be for the Y400 and Y500.

 

On 5/21/2015 at 9:16 AM, Ryae Anthony De Luna said:

A manual switch would be easier to make. You can put a switch connected to the brown wire. It shouldn't be too hard to set up. But you'll have to make a hole somewhere to make the switch accessible.

made a manual switch. but after a couple of hours, I decided it's too ugly. removed the switch & soldered the brown wire.
the sound is too loud for a library btw.

Edited by I_Hate_U_2
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Hmm, I might figure out a way to get a magnetic reed switch wired in so there's nothing visible but placing a small magnet in a key spot will close the brown wire circuit.  Away from the HDD of course.

 

Got me thinking now.  If only there was space to jam an arduino in there somewhere.

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On 7/6/2016 at 9:24 AM, divinitous said:

Hmm, I might figure out a way to get a magnetic reed switch wired in so there's nothing visible but placing a small magnet in a key spot will close the brown wire circuit.  Away from the HDD of course.

 

Got me thinking now.  If only there was space to jam an arduino in there somewhere.

do tag me if ya decided to proceed with da idea of magnetic switch.

 

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