Would cleaning my fans manually void my warranty? Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54

Hello, this is my first time posting on the forums, I have not found an answer to this yet so I thought I would ask the question myself.
I have an Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54 with a i5-9300H processor. I got this laptop around march of this same year off best-buy.

(Battery and Memory health is good according to Care Center.)

Just this morning, when I started my computer, I noticed a drilling sound coming from the fans. From what I've been reading, it may have been dust packing inside the fans...
I've not cleaned the fans at any time yet, I was wondering if it was better to send the laptop to Acer as my warranty should still stand, or it was better to do it manually or even at a local computer shop. I heard that reparations/replacement may take like 2 weeks+ to get back and I would like to keep the laptop, at least until the start of January. I don't know if cleaning the fan will actually solve the issue OR if the issue is very important and can damage the laptop after some time.

I've also been getting another issue, a weird grinding/screeching noise sometimes comes from the left of the laptop, it usually happens when the fans make no noise or when i open the laptop, I hope I can learn where that is from.

Thank you.

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DeadShot

Hey, we have the same laptop and I got mine in April, 2020. Anyways I had buzzing/rattling noise as well, when turning on the laptop in the morning. It only lasts for 5 minutes and quiets down. I decided to take the risk and clean the laptop fans, what I mean by this is that I unscrewed the laptop fans with the heat sink attached and unscrewed the tiny screws holding the fan cover. After this you'll see there is tape on the air vent both sides, peel it off as it can be replaced with normal electrical tape (imo i think any tape is fine). Make sure to flip over the whole heat sink so that the copper looking side is facing you. You can now pull the fans back and youll have access to clean the inner vents, and oh my god there was a whole load of dust/lint building up like it would in a dryer filter now here is the fun part PEEL ALL THAT DUST OFF.

you can assemble the laptop just remember how you disassembled it and make sure the screws are organized. do this at your own risk, and yes warranty is void if you do this, for me i dont really care because you only live once.

batmalin

If you don't have "warranty void" sticker on top of a screw and you don't break anything while cleaning you are good and you warranty will be valid.

getskilled

Someone mentioned that some places put a sticker or piece of tape somewhere as a kind of security indicator that make it so you can't disassemble things without altering it, so be careful of that. Even if it DOESN'T have that sticker or tape anywhere, some places will just say that you voided your warranty if you open up the computer yourself at all, even if you made no changes/repairs. I don't want to encourage dishonesty, but if you do open this up and to clean your fan and then later need to get service, even for a completely different issue, mentioning that you opened your laptop could give them an excuse to void the warranty, though I figure it's also kind of at the discretion of whoever does the service. May want to check your warranty info carefully if this is at all important to you.

sri369

DeadShot said:

Hey, we have the same laptop and I got mine in April, 2020. Anyways I had buzzing/rattling noise as well, when turning on the laptop in the morning. It only lasts for 5 minutes and quiets down. I decided to take the risk and clean the laptop fans, what I mean by this is that I unscrewed the laptop fans with the heat sink attached and unscrewed the tiny screws holding the fan cover. After this you'll see there is tape on the air vent both sides, peel it off as it can be replaced with normal electrical tape (imo i think any tape is fine). Make sure to flip over the whole heat sink so that the copper looking side is facing you. You can now pull the fans back and youll have access to clean the inner vents, and oh my god there was a whole load of dust/lint building up like it would in a dryer filter now here is the fun part PEEL ALL THAT DUST OFF.

you can assemble the laptop just remember how you disassembled it and make sure the screws are organized. do this at your own risk, and yes warranty is void if you do this, for me i dont really care because you only live once.

Why not use a compressed air can instead of taking fans out? I have always used the compressed air, and been doing this over the last decade with no issue on any of the laptops... and more importantly, without unscrewing any of the fans.

fluffycp

sri369 said:

DeadShot said:

Hey, we have the same laptop and I got mine in April, 2020. Anyways I had buzzing/rattling noise as well, when turning on the laptop in the morning. It only lasts for 5 minutes and quiets down. I decided to take the risk and clean the laptop fans, what I mean by this is that I unscrewed the laptop fans with the heat sink attached and unscrewed the tiny screws holding the fan cover. After this you'll see there is tape on the air vent both sides, peel it off as it can be replaced with normal electrical tape (imo i think any tape is fine). Make sure to flip over the whole heat sink so that the copper looking side is facing you. You can now pull the fans back and youll have access to clean the inner vents, and oh my god there was a whole load of dust/lint building up like it would in a dryer filter now here is the fun part PEEL ALL THAT DUST OFF.

you can assemble the laptop just remember how you disassembled it and make sure the screws are organized. do this at your own risk, and yes warranty is void if you do this, for me i dont really care because you only live once.

Why not use a compressed air can instead of taking fans out? I have always used the compressed air, and been doing this over the last decade with no issue on any of the laptops... and more importantly, without unscrewing any of the fans.

I used a compressed air can, fixed my CPU fan but there is still the issue with the GPU fan. Maybe I'm missing it? From what I got, both are next to each other. Do you know where I should aim? If this keeps up, I'll try to open it though.

sri369

fluffycp said:

I used a compressed air can, fixed my CPU fan but there is still the issue with the GPU fan. Maybe I'm missing it? From what I got, both are next to each other. Do you know where I should aim? If this keeps up, I'll try to open it though.

I would try blowing on the sides of the fan at an angle so the fan rotates pumping away any dust on the fins. This I do to rotate the fins both clockwise and anti clockwise.

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